THE CODDLING OF THE AMERICAN MIND

[queenofknives]

We are going to read Jonathan Haidt's book The Coddling of the American Mind and the discussion will start here on 17 October 2020. Everyone welcome!

Further books suggested for discussion are:

Cynical Theories, by James Lindsay and Helen Joyce
The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes, by Jonathan Rose
On Liberty, by JS Mill
Why You Should Read the Classics, by Italo Calvino
The Madness of Crowds, by Douglas Murray

Further suggestions are also welcome. Looking forward to the chat!

So I enjoyed the book but I was a bit put off by the 'self help' style delivery of ideas. Having said that, I think the focus on CBT was interesting, especially as it seems to have fallen out of favour in recent years. The idea that you can have control over how you think and feel is kind of the opposite to the whole trigger warning culture which suggests people have no control over how they react and respond to things. I thought that in itself was quite a radical proposition.

I think some of siablue's questions may have been addressed by the last part of the book which is full of practical advice although possibly not for feminists as such! I guess I more and more think of feminism as a form of identity politics and yet I do think there are real rights issues for women that we have to resolve.

I mentioned a while ago that I watched the Intelligence Squared debate with Julie Bindel and it made me want to renounce feminism. She condemned the silencing of women but argued for silencing people she doesn't agree with. There was no principle there, only a claim for special treatment. And the reaction (I was watching on youtube) was pretty much that people were cringing whenever anyone but Ayaan Hirsi Ali spoke. I do think identity politics is unappealling to many.

I think that the first part of the book, looking at the three "great untruths" was probably the most helpful for me and I definitely recognise all those ideas playing out in public life.

Queen

Having said that, I think the focus on CBT was interesting, especially as it seems to have fallen out of favour in recent years.

Can I ask what gives you the impression that CBT has fallen out of favour? My sense is that it is still regarded (by mainstream psychologists) as the one type of therapy that has evidence behind it. I also didn't think it was self-helpy, really - they were making a clear argument for their ideas. Could you maybe elaborate on this?

Yes, of course. When I said 'self-help' I was referring to the style of language and layout rather than the content/ideas. I agree they made clear arguments throughout and I found them very convincing. I guess I just wonder a bit who this book is meant for? I think it might be a very good book for students to read, what with the summaries at the end of each chapter and the checklists and so on. But for me personally, I found all that a bit offputting.

You are no doubt right that CBT is still very much supported by mainstream psychologists, but I think there is a general perception that it is a cheap version of 'real' therapy and it's used to fob people off rather than giving them proper help. Maybe that is because it is something GPs can tell patients to do online rather than actually referring to CBT practitioners. (I think it's also a 'woke' idea that CBT isn't great, because there's a sense that being depressed or having a mental health issue makes you more oppressed, so someone saying 'hey we can definitely help with that' is not telling you what you want to hear. Or is that massively cynical of me?)

CBT hasn’t fallen out of favour. It has become less effective over time. There are a few likely reasons for that - as more therapists get trained in it the quality reduces, as not all therapists are as good or have received high quality training. Another element is that the public have become more familiar with CBT ideas, so have already implemented them before therapy starts and it is a different piece of the mental health jigsaw they are missing. Thirdly patients tended to over report improvement in CBT because it puts quite a lot of pressure on the patient to please the therapist.

So in the U.K. at least it is no longer more effective than other types of talking therapy.

So I did not like the CBT focus in the book.

I also disliked the notion that the response to university handbooks and talks about how students should get along with each other and develop emotionally and socially was to change the advice.

All of this seemed to be conflating academic life and personal life. Beyond basic laws, universities shouldn’t be telling students how to relate to people outside of professional development. The problem is the lack of boundaries between the university and the students.

This book gets better as it goes along, but Cynical Theories is a much better book.

‘I think it's also a 'woke' idea that CBT isn't great, because there's a sense that being depressed or having a mental health issue makes you more oppressed, so someone saying 'hey we can definitely help with that' is not telling you what you want to hear. Or is that massively cynical of me?’

I doubt this is the case as it was never claimed that CBT would work for everyone. Even for the people it does work for, you would remain a person prone to mental health issues. You would always have to work at keeping them at bay, so you could keep your oppression card.

I thought this book was superb. The part I found most interesting were the chapters on a Durkheimian analysis of witch hunts and the ideas around safetyism which contributed to events on campus circa 2017. The idea that words are violence and therefore physical violence is justified is a direct attack on Enlightenment values. This is a recurrent theme.

Yes, that was where the book really explained things well - when it applied sociological theories to what was happening.

In the first part of the book, I thought the peanut allergy was being used as a metaphor by Haidt for the damaging consequences of the rise in safetyism. He suggests that the sharp increase in nut allergies has been triggered by children not eating nuts and cites an experiment which supports that conclusion. The idea of children as essentially fragile becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

The three great untruths:

1. what doesn't kill you makes you weaker
2. trust your feelings
3. life is a battle between 'good' and 'evil'

The features of witch hunts

1. arise quickly seemingly out of nowhere
2. involve crimes against the 'collective'
3. very trivial or fabricated trigger
4. people who know accused is innocent keep quiet

It is interesting that the Yale, Evergreen and I think Claremont McKenna witch hunts were all triggered by polite emails. There was only one Professor who publicly supported Brett Weinstein aside from his wife, Heather Haying. That was Professor Mike Paros Veterinary Science department.

During the period they are looking at, in the U.K. there was a massive increase in use of childcare for young children and babies. I find it odd they didn’t look at that, although maybe there wasn’t the same increase in the US?

They actually say the problem is seeing life is a battle between good people and evil people.

I’ve no issue with life is a battle between good and evil. It’s applying that to in groups and out groups that is the issue.

Yes, I thought the stuff on witch hunts was brilliant and I really liked the fact that they applied a sociological analysis as it really made it so clear. I also appreciated where this book didn't take sides, explaining how we can all be vulnerable to these ways of thinking, but also showing how what they call iGen is especially vulnerable. The point they make about young people being "younger" these days made a lot of sense to me.

Well sounds like I don't really understand CBT then! I did have some about 17 years ago and found it really helpful, definitely many of the techniques have stayed with me. But yes I can see how it is also only one part of the story.

What I never understand about Evergreen was the complete capitulation of the Dean. He made that situation far more likely to happen in the first place.

This book gets better as it goes along, but Cynical Theories is a much better book.

Cynical Theories is an excellent book and is a really thorough analysis of ‘social justice’ theories, their origins and how they relate to activism. It has given me a great insight into how the various branches of activism attempt to enact change and the claims they make to do so.

What ‘Coddling’ did for me was to outline in some detail the subtle but continuous changes that have taken place in education and wider society over the last decade which have led to a reluctance by the ‘adults’ to challenge the claims made by activists/students/children.

It definitely seems to be the case that Universities have gone from being institutions where students are expected to ‘measure up’ to certain standards and accept that they will be challenged, corrected and even offended to being more like theme parks to be enjoyed and where the customer is always right.

I recently listened to the Triggernometry podcast with Colin Wright and it confirmed the idea that academia must be a terrifying place to work at the moment.

Maybe life is a battle between good and evil but I don't think that's the most useful way of looking at it. I do think there is something 'evil' in the world or in human hearts but i think the battle is mainly with oneself. I also think most people feel they are on the side of good, and they want to do good. So I do believe that democracy can work and the arguments in this book suggest some practical ways how we can improve society. I think the thread on the terrorist murder of the teacher just now is a terrifying glimpse of how muddled some people's thinking is on these ideas and how needed these books are.

The Evergreen dean wanted it to happen. He didn't predict his own humiliation at the hands of the mob but he went there with these extreme equity ideas. He brought Robin Diangelo there, he oversaw the whole canoe bullshit. I think he wanted it all to happen.

Yes - that is what I was thinking of - the good and evil within yourself. Peterson talks about that - recognising your own capacity for evil.

Yes - I am currently reading the Gulag Archipelago, on Petersen's recommendation!

I think what is very interesting is that environments which don't have a diversity of viewpoints are more susceptible to groupthink and witchunts. I posted this in another thread:

That is a very interesting point and it is discussed in Haidt's book The Coddling of the American Mind in relation to events on campus in 2017. Haidt cites startling statistics about the overwhelming left wing bias which dominates social science and arts departments. This has always existed, but it has become much more pronounced since the 1990s, with ratios of 17 to 1 leaning left. He attributes this to the 'Greatest Generation' of professors retiring. Many of those had fought in WW2 and entered academia as a result of grants designed to help veterans. They included Republicans and Conservatives thus guaranteeing a bulwark against group think, confirmation bias and political monotheism. That has been obliterated and now US campuses are dominated by an increasingly intolerant, rigid orthodoxy which is antithetical to freedom of speech, freedom of debate, academic rigour. Haidt specifically states that this is particularly evident in prestigious New England universities. And it's getting worse because new hires are expected to reflect the orthodoxy not challenge it.

Haidt quotes that line from Solzhenitsyn

The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart

Grorge Bridge's actions are astonishing. He promoted one of the ringleaders to his council of 'equity advisers.' 25 percent of faculty signed a letter demanding Weinstein be 'investigated.' It really is extraordinary.

George Bridge's comments about errant faculty in the sciences ' they are going to say some things we don't like and our job is to bring em in or get them out. Bring em in, train em and if they don't get it? Sanction them

just now is a terrifying glimpse of how muddled some people's thinking is on these ideas and how needed these books are

Absolutely agree queen. It is truly frightening and it is indicative of a profound attack on Enlightenment values.

Interesting how some found the CBT part of it offputting, because that was the one that really sucked me in.

I didn't know CBT as such (have now bought few books around the subject) but now having a language around what I found happening around me. The extreme cognitive distortions happening. I don't think it's THE cure but it's a part of a cure/self help.

I'm a very much so GenX kid so quite antifragile and have always loved discussing ideas from all perspective, and was lucky that my family was quite political and so were my friends, and there always had to be one "devil's advocate" so we would definitely try to get all perspectives on board. (There was a brilliant talk between Greg Lukianoff and Bret Weinstein that I watched last night that I'd recommend which touched on this issue).

Around 2000 when I started teaching, a new idea of the "safetyism" started to creep in, first only for physical safety (good one) then little by little ideas and small/minor confrontation happening with kids. Overprotection and in lots of cases overcorrection regarding safety and mental safety then went into overdrive around 2009-2010 (Hmm fb?? All of a sudden all the parents heard about that one horrible accident that happened, so let's make sure that will not happen in our school. Let's ban all snowball fights/ snowgames).

I wish CBT would have been bigger then as I think it might have saved a lot of heartache in current times.

Although yes the cynic in me is thinking there is no money in properly curing/helping people. Misery is a trillion dollar buisness.

I really found the actions of the University leaders quite astonishing, the absolute lack of backbone was just scary. It was like seeing toddler tantrums in semi grown up's and the "bosses" being the very tired parent who gives in because they are just so tired at the moment.

(Is the Jo Rogan thread referenced the one about his interview with Douglas Murray?)