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!

Excellent post Queen.

Hello all, I'm not reading the book, but really enjoying following the discussion of it and related issues.

On the topic of Kemi Badenoch taking a stance against Critical Race Theory, there's a good piece on her in The Spectator. I hadn't realised she had worked there in the past.
www.spectator.co.uk/article/kemi-badenoch-the-problem-with-critical-race-theory/amp

On another slight tangent because it was mentioned by others in this thread - about teenage girls struggling with social media, mental health and suicide - I came across an article that touches on these points in a rebuttal towards 'The Social Dilemma' programme on Netflix. I like to read arguments for and against any position. So it was intriguing to read a different viewpoint on the issue of teen girls and mental health.
arcdigital.media/how-the-social-dilemma-got-social-media-mostly-wrong-3bde48077140

Thank you for those articles, PP. The Spectator one was great. I'm going to suggest that my daughter chooses Kemi for her Black History Month project!

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.

Actually, I have to object to this a bit. There’s a common myth in left-wing politics that Victorian schools were some kind of capitalist conspiracy, and this tends to go unchallenged. But, if you look at the contemporary literature, educational policies during the nineteenth century were incredibly forward thinking, and designed to benefit the individual. Teaching, say, girls to read doesn’t do much for exploitative employers, but is massively enrich the individual. In the papers presented as part of the Newcastle Report in 1861, one witness states that girls should learn to write, so that Working-class women can send their own love letters. This is treated as a wholly legitimate use of state-funded education.

Where this intersects with wokeness is that there’s a big push for major changes in education, due to the belief that education, as it currently exists, is essentially a capitalist, racist, right-wing function of the state, and needs to be decolonized to make it suitable for the modern world. You can only do this, however, if you basically ignore the history and philosophy of education, and recast the past as inherently evil. The education systems of fifty years ago, for all their failings, served young people far better than their modern equivalents. But that’s an uncomfortable truth, and it’s far better to ignore this, and pretend that the problems in modern education are legacies of the distant past, than relatively recent debasing of what were relatively sound systems.

There’s a common myth in left-wing politics that Victorian schools were some kind of capitalist conspiracy, and this tends to go unchallenged.

I haven't argued that, and that's not the argument in Ken Robinson's talk either, at least as I understand it. He was making the point that when widespread education was established, it was educating children for a very different world than the world we live in now, and yet the basic format of school has remained much the same - maybe that's worth thinking about. I don't think he's arguing that the problems with education are due to the legacy of an unfair past, or even that the past was unfair.

My experience is that educational standards and achievements are much poorer than they were. I don't think children are getting a good 'general' education anymore and certainly by the time they get into post-16 education, they can often barely read or write. So I am very interested in education reform.

Thanks for the article links NonnyMouse. I thought the Social Dilemma one was interesting. I have been listening to Abigail Shrier talk about her book and she certainly thinks that social media is having a massively detrimental effect on girls. It makes intuitive sense to me that this would be the case, but I wish we had a lot more data about everything that's going on with young people's mental health, because I don't think we really know very much at all.

Sorry JohnRoke my comment sounded a bit snappish, didn't mean it to.

the belief that education, as it currently exists, is essentially a capitalist, racist, right-wing function of the state

Ironically (or not), the people most likely to espouse these views seem to be university professors. Kehinde Andrews springs to mind. He is a lecturer at Bham and he says that universities are hotbeds of disgusting racism. I think it's a bit shocking still to hear people say stuff like that (but then again I think Kehinde just says anything that comes into his head at any given moment - he always seems desperately unprepared to speak.) He's the one who went on GMB and told Piers Morgan that whiteness is a psychosis. Not entirely sure what this means but apparently this idea is Kehinde's big contribution to the world so far.)

I was just listening to this discussion between Sam Harris and Andrew Marantz about racism. I thought it was quite a clear setting out of priorities and concerns from both sides. And just fascinating to hear the contrast between one person's clear and logical argumentation, and the other's slippery and confused responses. At one point when talking about definitions he says he wants to 'make things more fuzzy' which I thought was exactly right. The woke thing is always to make things more fuzzy and confusing (because any other way is a 'binary' and those are racist).

He's the one who went on GMB and told Piers Morgan that whiteness is a psychosis. Not entirely sure what this means but apparently this idea is Kehinde's big contribution to the world so far.)

His great ‘explanation’ is in this paper which manages to include a spelling mistake in the title. Then again, emphasis on the King’s English is a feature of Whiteness, so it could have been deliberate.

www.open-access.bcu.ac.uk/5774/1/Andrews%20%282016%29%20Psychosis%20of%20Whiteness-%20Green%20access.pdf

Andrews comes across as being a goady arse. He is happy to go on mainstream TV and use language and terms that have very specific meanings in post-colonial theory whilst knowing full well that the average Brit won’t interpret them in the same way. He does all this with a smug and patronising grin on his face. He sets out to provoke an angry response from the ‘viewer’ whilst then using that to prove how racist everyone in Britain is.

James Lindsay rips his writing to shreds in Cynical Theories as well. It seems to be Butler-esque postmodernist word salad which amounts to nothing more than ‘it’s true because I say so’.

unherd.com/2020/10/how-cancel-culture-captured-campus/

This is a great article which explores the way woke ideology has become the dominant force on campus. Douglas Murray has written a piece about Portland's descent into the maelstrom and has some podcast with Brett Weinstein. He is also pictured with Coleman Hughes and Peter Boghossian, good to see that there is a growing backlash against cancel culture amongst academics brave enough to speak out.

This is Douglas Murray and Brett Weinstein on Portland and other topics

There is a brilliant part at the end of that excellent podcast where Brett talks about his and Heather's decision to move to Portland after the Evergreen lunacy and how he is now watching a similar unraveling in Portland. He talks about being born in 1969 and how growing up, WW2 and the Holocaust seemed a long time ago, but as an adult he understood how close those events were to his birth. He says

I don't know how to convey to those attacking the foundations of mathematics, of logic, of the Enlightenment, how much they are scaring the shit out of those of us who know anything about history

Douglas Murray says it is utterly shocking that in a major city of the most powerful country in the West, there are signs sprayed everywhere calling for the murder of a journalist. It is a terrible indictment of the violent fanaticism which dominates a vocal section of the left wing.

I don't know how to convey to those attacking the foundations of mathematics, of logic, of the Enlightenment, how much they are scaring the shit out of those of us who know anything about history

A massive part of the problem is that even saying 'there is a problem' is considered to be highly problematic and marks you out as an enemy of equity.

Thanks for the link, will look forward to listening.

That discussion was amazing. I will listen to it again as there was so much in it, I definitely didn't get it all. But I was struck by Douglas Murray's horror about what is happening in Portland and their discussion about how they see that going. It's frightening.

Douglas Murray is always worth hearing. I was rather underwhelmed by Bret Weinstein though; he uses an awful lot of words to make a few not very precise points. He did make/repeat the observation that people's compassion is being weaponised against them, which I think is very true, and very dangerous. Well-meaning people who wish not to be unkind, find themselves being pulled further and further down the road towards insanity, both of language and of society. Those who wish to be anti-racist, or 'trans-inclusive', gradually must make more and more accommodations to more and more unreasonable demands, including changing the dictionary definitions Of Words, and consequently Of Reality. It's a very slippery, very dangerous slope.

Brett also showed up his very own little echo-chamber when he blithely assumed that Murray would of course! agree that the possession and distribution of pot should be decriminalised, which I found rather funny. I did NOT appreciate him then pronouncing that "we", "society", had created the problem of super-strength pot because of the arguably excessive legal penalties (including incarceration) for distribution (which had resulted in a disproportionately high number of black men going to jail.)
He did rather too much 'we'-ing, without clarifying whether he was referring to Americans, or Democrats, or...

They also touched on an unintended consequence of that policy: it was one of various factors which contributed to the creation of a large number of single-parent families, which are statistically at greater risk of a whole raft of negative outcomes.

Most of the points that I found most interesting and perceptive were articulated by Murray. I'm now belatedly listening to his discussion with Joe Rogan.

I agree Douglas Murray is great but I also like Bret. I think he's a very clear thinker. Sometimes he takes a while to get to his thought but I think it's because what he does is make every connection visible, so he goes from describing an initial instinct to coming to a conclusion, and in between he fills in all the logical steps he's taken to get there. It takes a while to get used to this way of speaking but it's excellent and very honest because it means that an interlocutor can step in at any point to articulate a disagreement or clarify a point, and it's easy to see where views diverge. Such as in the example you give, where they disagreed about the decriminalisation of weed. I thought that was great as Bret was so transparent in his thinking that they could quickly work out what was relevant and useful, and what could be put aside for now, and Murray was able to articulate clearly the details of his own view, without either of them ever losing the more important point that was being made.

I actually thought their discussion was brilliant precisely because they don't share the same political approach, they look at the world from different angles, but they are both such clear thinkers and speakers that they were able to find endless points of connection where their different views created new insights for both of them. And between them they modelled a fantastic example of how to discuss issues at that level of complexity. I thought it was absolutely brilliant.

(I should admit this is the first time I've heard/seen him.)

I admire Weinstein's courage in taking a stand at Evergreen: I wish more intellectuals would follow suit, but I do understand that people are afraid of losing their livelihoods. Murray is slightly annoying me on this point too; he seems a little blind to the fact that his livelihood is not dependent upon him not pissing off the wrong people. I REALLY do not want to use the "P" word, but he is insulated from the visible, scary, aggressive blow-back that normal people (eg Maya Forstater as opposed to JKR) know they will face if they put their heads above the parapet.

That said, there is strength in numbers, and I believe in the silent majority. Murray tells Joe Rogan that he doesn't believe that sports teams would still be 'taking the knee' before their matches if the stadiums were filled with crowds, as they would no longer stand for it, and would make their displeasure heard and felt. There may be something in that: many voices joined together in an anonymous crowd might be a way to say things that would otherwise be unacceptable in the current political climate. Not sure how that can translate beyond a football stadium though.

I thought he was good on Rogan, but you can see how much more Bret was able to get out of him. Their discussion was just more focused and allowed Murray to get to the crux of what he actually means. It's because Bret's a teacher, he wants to take every person with him through his thought process. I think it brought out the best in Murray. Bret's wife Heather is also a teacher and phd in evolutionary biology, and their podcast together is great. The most recent one (51) talking about facebook and twitter was really excellent.

I've heard Murray talk quite a bit about how he can say what he likes because he's successful and self-employed. But none of the men who do that seem to realise that there is a way scarier level of misogyny directed at women who speak up that they don't experience. I guess that's to be expected to some extent, really. I got very annoyed at one point when he was talking about it's not just men who are evil and he gave examples of terrible women - and they were ALL fictional. It was really fucking annoying. Can't remember if that was on Rogan or something else.

Very late to the party but I'd like to thank whoever recommended this book. I found it really interesting and it helped me to clarify a lot of my own thoughts (and also educated me in some rather alarming ways).

I agree 100% with their critique of helicopter parenting, and the dangers of SM. I have seen it play out with my own DC.

I work in a school where there is a massive focus on 'resilience' and the staff will grumble to each other about parents who constantly intervene in their DCs' disputes and problems rather than teaching them to deal with issues themselves. We do a lot around encouraging independence and a lot of the DC do need it.

I also found the discussion of emotional reasoning really helpful. I see it so much in so many fields and its great to have a name to put to it. When doing my own research I was urged to consider how what I was saying might make other people feel (and to reconsider and rephrase) and I was stunned, because I never expected that sort of consideration to be extended to me. The whole point of academic discourse is lay all the ideas out on the table, otherwise it's worthless.

If you have loads of time there is a brilliant talk between Eric Weinstein and Douglas Murrey, it's about 5 hours I think (Extreamly clean house as a result of that ). One I'm going to listen to again, as they went into the nitty gritty things of everything. On a sidenote I've heard DM and few of the guys talk about how it is women who get the worst of it. I believe it was Gaad Sad who compared the cult to ISIS as they go harder for the ones closer to their ideology. Jk Rawling, Rosie Duffield ect. They are not true believers in the ideology so we must crush them mentality happening.
I might be oversimplifiing the attacks on women but I'm looking at the difference in how James Lindsay and Helen Pluckrose are attacked, he doesn't care, she does, they keep going for her.
It seems like the those bullys find a perceived weaker, caring individual and do their bullying job.
We all need to strengthening our inner honey badger. And just say no to all of this bs being thrown at us.
The latest darkhorsepodcast (52) is brilliant btw.
Research showing how people keep finding issues where there might be none and what that does to a society like Portland.

Has anyone listened to the most recent episode of the Dark Horse podcast (Bret Weinstein)?

He was discussing the recent article in the Guardian about Portland (it was really bad) and why it would be that arguably the most liberal city in the USA would be singled out as a hotbed of white supremacy.

He discussed some research that had been carried out (can’t remember the author) that found that human beings have a tendency to become over-sensitive to allocating something into a category the rarer the incidence of it becomes. One example was categorising coloured ‘dots’. As blue dots because more scarce, the participants were more likely to specify that purple dots were blue. Other examples were given. This could go a long way to explaining why micro-aggressions are now seen everywhere and how the least racist societies on the planet and in history are now seen as the most racist.

He also discussed the new ‘Karen’s law’ (no joke), which strikes me as absolutely terrifying.

Just finished this podcast - it was very interesting. This is the study abstract they referred to:

"Perceptual and judgment creep
Do we think that a problem persists even when it has become less frequent? Levari et al. show experimentally that when the “signal” a person is searching for becomes rare, the person naturally responds by broadening his or her definition of the signal—and therefore continues to find it even when it is not there. From low-level perception of color to higher-level judgments of ethics, there is a robust tendency for perceptual and judgmental standards to “creep” when they ought not to. For example, when blue dots become rare, participants start calling purple dots blue, and when threatening faces become rare, participants start calling neutral faces threatening. This phenomenon has broad implications that may help explain why people whose job is to find and eliminate problems in the world often cannot tell when their work is done."

I think we can definitely see this happening today, in a Western society increasingly saturated in CRT, micro-aggression-hunting; this makes for particular difficulties in the US, where trigger-happy litigation is ubiquitous.

Another tangent to that is a comment (possibly made in the Douglas Murray interview?) that the younger generation is searching for a Just Cause to fight, having missed the two world wars, the Civil Rights struggle, even feminism's biggest 'moment'... the world today is better than it ever has been, for more people than ever before, which leaves less and less for young activists to get angry about - hence seeing bigotry and oppression absolutely everywhere.

I think we can definitely see this happening today, in a Western society increasingly saturated in CRT, micro-aggression-hunting; this makes for particular difficulties in the US, where trigger-happy litigation is ubiquitous.

Here is an absolutely textbook example. The wealthy, highly paid college president literally threw the blue-collar domestic staff under the bus in the name of ‘diversity’. It’s like Evergreen only worse. Those people don’t even have a large social media platform to use to clear their name.

quillette.com/2020/11/03/podcast-119-jodi-shaw-on-a-climate-of-fear-at-smith-college-following-unproven-racism-accusations/

schweizermonat.ch/how-woke-activism-took-over-universities-and-descended-into-street-riots/#

Heather's article, quoted in the podcast. Bringing us nicely back to The Coddling of the American Mind, she points out that the helicopter-parenting, 'everyone's a winner', anti-meritocratic mindset that's become widespread in parenting tropes of the early 21st century, comes back to bite when those children reach 'adulthood':

"Many of the adults who should be stopping the chaos are exactly the same people who helicoptered their children into permanent infantilization. These are the adults who caved to temper tantrums when it was their own children throwing them. Of course they cave now, when the tantrums come wrapped in pretty slogans like “Black Lives Matter.” The fact that the pretty slogans hide agendas that are far different—like the disruptionn_ of the “Western-prescribed nuclear family structure”—is not noticed by most who shout them in the streets, or put signs in their windows and yards."

(Don't know where that strike-through came from 🤔)