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!

It is like watching someone with an ice pick chisel away at words until their meaning is obscured, defaced or removed.

I watched one of the documentaries about the Evergreen riots. One of them showed the interactions between the protestors and the campus police. The police were accused of ‘literally killing us’ and ‘constant police brutality’. It was pretty clear from the ‘examples’ given that this was well beyond exaggeration. I think one of the examples of ‘brutality’ was the police had knocked on a students door and asked to check his room because they’d heard disturbing reports about his mental health state.

The problem is that this leads to a sort of ‘boy who cried wolf’ reaction. If the police are literally killing people’ all the time when they, in fact, aren’t then you end up dismissing all the legitimate claims of police malpractice.

I think some of it is self-dramatisation. They want to enact the roles of persecuted and brave rebels and revolutionaries, but so much has been achieved by previous generations that they are floundering for actual problems to address.

Real social problems like actual racism and class disadvantage are too difficult and diffuse, with no obvious solutions, so they are resorting to literally making stuff up.

TheRealMcKenna
I think the other thing is events like Evergreen demonstrate a total lack of proportionality. Haidt says that Evergreen is the most extreme example on a US campus and can only be understood through a Durkheimian lens. All the conditions for a witch hunt were present. Extreme lack of political diversity creating group think, collective electricity generated by rituals such as the canoe thing, weak leadership, zero consequences for multiple serious violations of student code of conduct. In fact its ring leader was selected by George Bridges to be in the equity group whose first task was to rewrite the student code of conduct! The disproportionate response at Evergreen is an example of something seriously out of whack on campus. So then what happens when something actually horrific occurs? One answer is to be seen in events in Portland.

I think some of it is self-dramatisation. They want to enact the roles of persecuted and brave rebels and revolutionaries, but so much has been achieved by previous generations that they are floundering for actual problems to address

I think this is a really important point. I was struck by the chant
'Hey ho hey ho Charles Murray must go'

It's a long way from 'hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?' There is no draft. There aren't college kids being shot down at Kent State. This isn't 1968. But some of these pampered college kids have got a serious case of St.George in retirement syndrome.

Can't find the pp who recommended listening to the Greg Lukianoff/Bret Weinstein chat - just wanted to say thanks. Am listening to it now and it's fascinating and feeds a lot into this discussion too - they're talking about twitter and how people 'live' online now. Really interesting.

@queenofknivesas me. I found it so interesting.

There is another chat that links to what we are talking here between Dr. Mike and Jonathan Haidt.

The overview of the book is so important in the sence of how good intentions can go off the rails.

How GenX was a keychain generation that felt like they lacked parent involvement. So we made sure we are now involved in our kids lives but went a bit overboard with it, coupled with the ideas from so many parents that no is a bad word. And on top of that life is getting so much easier for so many people so now parents have more time, more things, more resources so a slight difficulty is tackled like the worst thing happening.

While we can all agree on that this is not a large group who does/behaves this way I do keep at the back of my head a quote I heard Gaad Sad say that it didn't take millions of people to change the landscape of New York and flight security as we know it. It was 19 very committed individuals.

So I have completely let go of the thought of "Come now you're just exaggerating, it's just few people"
A part of me feels we really are fighting for our common sense and ability to use it.

@kesstrel

I think some of it is self-dramatisation. They want to enact the roles of persecuted and brave rebels and revolutionaries, but so much has been achieved by previous generations that they are floundering for actual problems to address.

Real social problems like actual racism and class disadvantage are too difficult and diffuse, with no obvious solutions, so they are resorting to literally making stuff up.

This is exactly what I have been thinking. The young people of today seem to want to replay the big political struggles of the past; they see those people who fought the Nazis in the Second World War as heroic, and want to emulate those who took part in the civil rights movement during the 1960s. But what causes are they fighting for? The world has changed, and it's not quite like what it was in the mid-twentieth century.

Thus, we have the woke left recasting people in the role of Nazis. This includes people who use words carelessly, who can be described, rightly or wrongly, as using microaggressions, people who support freedom of speech, and so on. If you look at modern political dialogue, there are some incredible complaints about fascists, their supposed influence and power within society. However, once you have identified some fascists, you can then go fascist fighting.

With Nazis in particular, I think the rise of this type of behaviour is due to the fact that the Second World War is now passing out of living memory. For those of us who grew up with grandparents who actually served during the war, it would have been ridiculous and pretentious to claim we are fighting fascists when policing language online. For millennial and post-millennial generations this link to direct experience has been severed.

So, ultimately we have a situation where language is extended, to serve the notion that people are freedom fighters. Fifty years ago, a white supremacist was someone in a white hood, who burnt a cross on your lawn. Now, it's someone who accidentally uses the phrase "coloured people" when they mean to use the phrase "people of colour". This shift makes it so much easier for people to find fascists to fight.

@Stripesnomore

Have we all read the whole book now?

I admit that I am only about two-thirds of the way through. Turns out that I couldn't get a physical copy for love nor money, despite the fact that a few of the local bookshops initially thought they had copies. Maybe I live close to some other Mumsnetters, who got to the shops first...

In the end, I had to give up, and get an electronic copy.

I am about two thirds of the way through.

A part of me feels we really are fighting for our common sense and ability to use it.
I think so. Thanks for mentioning the Greg & Bret talk. I thought it was really fascinating and I really liked Lukianoff a lot. It was worrying to hear that he is moving out of washington DC for the election month. I wonder what will happen there. We in the UK seem to just trail behind the states most of the time.

Also I watched Heather Brunskell-Evans talking to Glinner, and that was really excellent and a slightly different perspective on queer theory and the role it plays in all this.I can see she's done a longer video with Posie Parker, so I will watch that too. Heather has a book out called Transgender Body Politics which I would be interested in reading.

This shift makes it so much easier for people to find fascists to fight.
I agree with all of this. I once got called a nazi for saying that I was a pacifist. It would be entirely ridiculous were it not for the fact that these people seem to have so much influence over education and social policy. I remember saying stupid, extreme things as a teenager. I may even have believed them to some extent. But the rest of the world treated me as exactly what I was: an idiot who had no clue what I was talking about.

It's interesting that in Coddling they talk about safetyism and the way children are over-protected. But at the same time, I think children are being given a lot more responsibility in terms of how adults now 'centre' their views and assume they know better than us because they're younger. So there must also be some sense of pressure on young people, that they are supposed to have this wisdom now. It's like the idea is that children are perfect beings who know everything, and the older they get the more corrupted and sytmied by our sick society they become, until they are adults who are almost completely broken.

Have we all read the whole book now
I've read it but think we can take our time with the discussion and keep the thread active for as long as we want. I think we are meant to be on Part 1 right now, so apologies if I've skipped ahead.

Are we wanting to read Cynical Theories after this?

19 committed individuals and a ruthless administration...

@Mimishimi

19 committed individuals and a ruthless administration...

What do you mean?

^And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal^

I think the distinction Haidt makes between those who believe in a 'common humanity' paradigm and those who believe in the 'common enemy' paradigm is a very important one. In America, the themes of patriotism, of the ideals of its foundation, are woven into its DNA. As Haidt points out, those themes have been central to succesful civil rights in the US, which have called on America to live up to its original, Enlightenment values. At one of the 2017 protests on campus, the chant was

The Revolution won't uphold the constitution

The 'common enemy' theme is a deliberately divisive, regressive, inflammatory and destructive paradigm. Its aim is to entrench schism, deny progress and create a feedback loop of relentless conflict. One of its hallmarks is to deny that any progress has been made. This is reinforced by the ice pick chiseling away at the definition of words and stripping them of any linguistic or historical substance. One of the biggest ironies of all is that those claiming to fight 'fascists' march thru the streets in paramilitary gear, using black block tactics, threatening people for not making the correct political hand gesture. They are staring into the abyss and they can't see their reflection.

I think children are being given a lot more responsibility in terms of how adults now 'centre' their views and assume they know better than us because they're younger. So there must also be some sense of pressure on young people, that they are supposed to have this wisdom now. It's like the idea is that children are perfect beings who know everything, and the older they get the more corrupted and sytmied by our sick society they become,

I follow education twitter, specifically the pushback against so-called "progressive" educational ideas by teachers who believe the evidence supports more traditional approaches. A sub-topic is behaviour management in the classroom. One side believes that firm classroom discipline empowers children to gradually learn to manage their own behaviour and helps build psychological resilience. (As well as being better for learning and for preventing bullying.)

There is a distinct group on the other side, however, that takes a very unnuanced "therapeutic" approach that believes that any disruptive classroom behaviour must be rooted in either trauma or neurodiversity, and that the only valid approach to such behaviour is accommodation/discussion/support. This approach is rooted in the idea that "all children are naturally always eager to learn and always want to please the teacher until corrupted/damaged by trauma". There are many schools where these ideas and approaches are very influential.

Could the idea of "safe spaces" have developed from this, I wonder? From young people who've experienced/observed this approach at school?

@kesstrel

I think children are being given a lot more responsibility in terms of how adults now 'centre' their views and assume they know better than us because they're younger. So there must also be some sense of pressure on young people, that they are supposed to have this wisdom now. It's like the idea is that children are perfect beings who know everything, and the older they get the more corrupted and sytmied by our sick society they become,

I follow education twitter, specifically the pushback against so-called "progressive" educational ideas by teachers who believe the evidence supports more traditional approaches. A sub-topic is behaviour management in the classroom. One side believes that firm classroom discipline empowers children to gradually learn to manage their own behaviour and helps build psychological resilience. (As well as being better for learning and for preventing bullying.)

There is a distinct group on the other side, however, that takes a very unnuanced "therapeutic" approach that believes that any disruptive classroom behaviour must be rooted in either trauma or neurodiversity, and that the only valid approach to such behaviour is accommodation/discussion/support. This approach is rooted in the idea that "all children are naturally always eager to learn and always want to please the teacher until corrupted/damaged by trauma". There are many schools where these ideas and approaches are very influential.

Could the idea of "safe spaces" have developed from this, I wonder? From young people who've experienced/observed this approach at school?

We have just left a school systemn that followed that "therapeutic" approach (we did not leave because of that though!). It was designed to "teach" empathy, and was rolled out "passionately" across the entire public system. It was deeply flawed however - children sat around in a circle discussing what other children had done, what was was good about them or bad or needed improvement. Of course it developed in a predictable way, and in the end was abandoned by our school after about 6 months. I wonder if the idea was Amish in spirit but became North Korean. Similtaenously, they decimated the reading programe which has to be the best way by far to teach empathy.
Seems there is way too much social engineering.

Education has always been a focal point for ideologies in various ways. I always liked Ken Robinson's talk about how the school system was set up to meet the needs of 19th century industrialists and has never managed to adapt to the changing world. Yet successive governments get ever more involved in education, each one overturning the decisions of the previous one, until education is very fragile and vulnerable.

I teach 16+ and the students really do seem less resilient and independent than ever before. They have been taught that everything should revolve around their feelings and it is really shocking for some of them when you have even basic rules, such as not marking a piece of work if it wasn't turned in on time, or even expecting students to attend class. We cannot discipline students because they are adults, but they behave like children. We are considered to be 'working for them' and students think that w are there to serve them. It is a very messed up situation. If teachers and schools have no authority, then who is responsible for children and young people?

It's almost like they are expected to be the centre of everything while having zero understanding of how things work. 'Student centred learning' has come to mean treating children as though they are magical wise beings.

I can't remember if it's part 1 of the book where they talk about childhood and how circumscribed it's now become. I've talked with others on these threads about how we used to take out the neighbour's baby and play out all day with little brothers and sisters trailing us. We got up to all sorts of things but they were very practical lessons in taking responsibility and being independent, because we were literally left to our own devices. We definitely didn't feel special and we knew that grown ups were not especially interested in us, and while it might have been better for some kids to have a bit more attention, it did make us resilient.

I'm very worried about children and young people now. I am really concerned about the amount of time they spend on screens (adults too) and what that is doing to their minds and bodies.

^They have been taught that everything should revolve around their feelings and it is really shocking for some of them when you have even basic rules, such as not marking a piece of work if it wasn't turned in .

Interesting, that was one of the demands of the Evergreen protestors who wanted Brett Weinstein sacked. Haidt thinks that the 'Stranger Danger' movement of the 1980s and 1990s combined with the rise of IGen has produced a generation of kids who have not developed the practical resilience created by an outdoor, anarchic free play. He also makes the point that key landmarks of the transition to adulthood; getting a job, learning to drive, navigating a city alone; are being delayed because of helicopter parents. He thinks that online life increases mental health problems, provides a platform for the three untruths and prevents the social development of free play. What you describe about your students supports his theory.

I wonder if the idea was Amish in spirit but became North Korean

That should be the epitaph of the woke movement!

The figures Haidt quotes about the increase in girls self harming are quite shocking. He attributes this to social media.

www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8860865/amp/Black-people-not-automatically-victims-white-people-not-oppressors-says-Kemi-Badeno.html

I am reading the book and following the discussion but haven't had time to post but wondered if anyone had seen this from Kemi Badeno? Specifically saying critical race theory should not be taught in schools.

4) people who know accused is innocent keep quiet

That’s frightening but it shows the power people have in that no one dares speak up.
Can nothing be done about troll farms, or are they all run from overseas?

That is an amazing speech from Kemi Badano. I haven't heard about it from any other quarter.

You know, it's weird how the government get parts of this picture and we (ordinary people) get part of the picture, but the whole show seems to be run by people who don't get any part of it at all. How can Sainsburys, for example, promote Black History Month when a black government minister speaking on behalf of many is saying that some of these teachings are breaking the law? I am gradually realising we are completely fucking doomed.

Is anyone even ttrying to do anything about troll farms? But if it were just trolls we would be okay. It's the fact that it's friends, colleagues, family that turn against you.

@BovaryX

The figures Haidt quotes about the increase in girls self harming are quite shocking. He attributes this to social media.

Yes, this is really worrying. I think it fits in with Abigail Shrier's book as well, where she digs into the kinds of effects social media is having on girls, including (but not limited to) ROGD.

I'm sorry for being a bit of a doom-monger this morning but I am feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything that's going on! I have a class full of young female students who I'm teaching online and none of them will even show their faces, despite it being clear that there is a necessity for them to do so. They are too scared to do it and I think it's because the pressure of 'online' is just so intense, they fear the judgement of their peers, it just doesn't feel safe for them and they don't know how to get over it. I assume that there are other factors maybe for some of them (e.g. they have gone back to bed and have no interest in the class!) but I don't think this is the whole story. Of course this is entirely anecdotal and based on my subjective reading of the situation. I would like to be wrong and think maybe they are all fine and just can't be arsed with the class.

Is anyone even ttrying to do anything about troll farms? But if it were just trolls we would be okay. It's the fact that it's friends, colleagues, family that turn against you.

Yes, you’re right and it’s really grim. How did so much power fall into the ‘cancellers’ hands?
However occasionally people have the guts to stand up to it - there’s an excellent article in the Spectator a few weeks ago when someone complained to the Co op about their advertising in the Spectator and some intern at the co op promised it would be stopped.
However Andrew Neil retaliated saying the co op was now banned form advertising in the magazine at which point the co op caved in pretty tamely.

Part of the problem is that so few people stand up to the cancellers, so those who do can sound extreme. I absolutely loved the response from the Spectator, and it gave me a whole new respect for them and despair of papers like the Guardian who have caved and been captured long ago.

I sometimes wonder if there is an actual conspiracy in action or maybe several small ones that have neatly come together. So we have sex criminals influencing major political parties and the police; we have a complete takeover of the universities; total gender confusion and sexualising of very young children at school, with entertainment and supermarkets etc all on board with it.

I'm sorry, I am feeling quite in despair about it all. Maybe it doesn't do to look at it all at once - they have captured so much, how can it ever all be undone? I really hope the trans stuff is the key, that once they ban puberty blockers and medical interventions on young people, everything else will start coming apart. But it all seems so entrenched. BLM is hugely influential too - a group that specifically wants to destroy the nuclear family. I don't think anyone is taking that idea anywhere near seriously enough, but we can't talk about it because it immediately becomes this whole OTHER conversation about supposed privilege and racism, and before you can make a point, you're having to defend and contextualise your statement and it's all too easy for that to become a derailment which just ends up making people feel more entrenched.