My first thoughts after reading this book were, “I am glad I am no longer an active college professor: I never could walk on eggshells!”
And as Lukianoff and Haidt well present, college professors, today, are walking on eggshells. Many are afraid to live up to their university goals of teaching the truth as they see it. Furthermore, they are afraid to support their fellow professors who do try to teach honestly for fear of retribution.
But let’s back up: this book is not really about professors: instead, this book started as a serious observation that there is a rising rate of teen depression, anxiety, and suicides. But in the investigation of this problem, Lukianoff and Haidt discovered that this is but one of the outcomes. Among the other outcomes were the polarization of American politics, social injustices, and suppression of free speech, particularly on college campuses. And while Lukianoff and Haidt posit that these situations started in 2013 and continue today, I saw evidence of what is in the book as early as 2008 and perhaps even earlier at a state university. In other words, these didn’t just start with the “iGen” children coming of age at this time.
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt are well qualified to make such observations. Greg Lukianoff is the President of FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. He has served in this position for more than a decade. Thus, he has been a keen observer of the challenges that people have had to face in American education. Jonathan Haidt is a Social Psychologist and a Professor at New York University. As a professor and social psychologist, he has first-hand experience with students as well the ability to understand the dynamics within these populations.
Lukianoff and Haidt present the case that there are three great “Untruths” that are underlying our treatment of youth today:
1) What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.
2) Always trust your feelings.
3) Life is a battle between good people and evil people.
Note that the first is a perversion of Nietzsche’s famous dictum: “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” The second is favorite advice of many pop psychologists today. And the third is a simplistic view originating from religion: “us vs. them.” The authors present convincing evidence that these “Untruths” are active and lead to bad ideas of how to treat children.
One of the predominant themes, in this book, is that Cognitive Behavioral Psychology, CBT, presents valid tools by which to evaluate and rectify the situations which create harm from these Untruths in American society. I very much agree with the authors here. If I were to evaluate today’s political situations, the very distortions that CBT points out are active and frontmost in American polarization.
Then Lukianoff and Haidt examine how intimidation and violence originate. A very quick synopsis is the quote they use from Nelson Mandela: “When we dehumanize and demonize our opponents, we abandon the possibility of peacefully resolving our differences, and seek to justify violence against them.” Here, the authors show how words have become defined as violence and the misguided concept that people need protection for their safety against speech that challenges their previously held conceptions. This then makes it possible for “witch hunts” to occur.
The features of witch hunts are they arise quickly, there are alleged crimes against society, the crimes are often fabricated, and the proponents of the witch hunts invoke fear into anyone trying to defend the accused. Witch hunts are used to generate mob cohesion and to create a “common enemy” to destroy.
As Lukianoff and Haidt show, witch hunts are occurring on US Campuses today in a “call out” mob mentality where the prevailing beliefs are challenged. Internally, it appears that the “call outs” are being made from the left while externally, the “call outs” are being made from the right. It is important to note here that 60% of the professorate is identified as being Far Left or Liberal while only 20% of the professorate is identified as Far Right or Conservative.
Some of the witch hunts have been created by the professorate, themselves, in asking for condemnation of a professor who challenges their ideologies. Thus, it suppresses free speech as well as suppresses critical thinking. The witch hunts, particularly at universities where the leadership has been weak, has resulted in both harm to the employment of professors as well in some cases, direct violence to the professors. Other professors who might agree with an “outcast professor” stay silent as they fear the same thing might occur to them.
The authors observe a cycle of polarization. A typical “polarization cycle” looks something like this: First, a professor says or writes something that is interpreted as provocative or inflammatory, regardless of what the intent was. Then, an activist retells the story to amplify the outrage. Next, a multitude of people writes angry posts on social media and threatening emails to the professor involved. The college or university administration fails to defend the professor and may take steps to sanction the professor regardless of the rights of the professor. Lastly, people that hear the story distort it to fit their views as confirmation bias. Things are out of control, and each side views the other side as evil, thus negating any chance for de-escalation.
“How did we get here?” Lukianoff and Haidt ask this very question. There appear to be six explanatory threads, but the threads do not affect everybody, and even amongst the people affected, the effects are different. The six identified threads are 1) rising political polarization, 2) rising teen anxiety and depression, 3) changes in parenting practices, 4) the decline of free play and the restricted opportunities for childhood independence, 5) the growth of a corporate campus bureaucracy, and 6) a rising passion for “social justice” for major events where the concepts of “justice” have been perverted. These deserve more treatment in this already long review.
First, there has been a growing shift towards the left in the college professorate. With the controversial election of President Trump, the campuses have become hotbeds of resistive political activity, and this activity is inflicted on the student bodies. Thus, there is and continues to be “witch hunt” activity in the long practice of universities to bring to campus a diverse set of provocative speakers. The major reason for doing this is to expose the student body to diverse views and to create discussions leading to the use of critical thinking. Conservatives speakers invited on many campuses resulted in violent displays of resistance and then either harassed on campus to prevent them from speaking or disinvited to prevent further violence.
Second, the rising trend in teen depression and suicides has fostered an atmosphere of expectancy of depression amongst the student bodies on campuses. This trend is more significant with females than males, although very recent statistics show a sharp upturn for males as well. Much of this is attributed to the use of social media, which projects a distorted view of appearances and reality as well as creates in people the feeling of being left out of various activities. There also is a feedback mechanism at work here: students are more likely today than in the past to seek out mental health counselors for anxiety. As the mental health bureaucracy processes these visits, it may well suggest symptoms of mental unhealth. This is expanded on in the fifth thread.
Third, parents have developed a fear of letting their children have unsupervised play. In part, some of this was caused by the highly publicized child abductions. Another factor in this has been the passage of child protection laws and the arrests of parents under those laws for letting their children be unsupervised. A culture of “safetyism” (that is, the child must be totally safe at all times,) has been built up and reinforced. There has been the observation that children seem to be growing up slower than in past years with regards to maturity. There are class distinctions: parents of the upper middle classes have the resources to involve their children in sophisticated activities such as music and art lessons. In the meantime, parents of generally the lower classes have subjected their children to adversity and possibly uncaring relationships as the parent struggle in their daily lives.
Fourth, the decline of free and unsupervised play has resulted in children less competent to face the world as they age. Children are not able to take small risks and learn from them. Children spend more time on mobile devices than in engaging in physical and social experiences. The socialization of children has suffered. Children no longer have the opportunity to solve small disputes without parents or other adults being involved. They now rely on “third parties” to take over when a situation arises where they may be disagreements.
Fifth, the bureaucracies of universities and colleges have greatly expanded the enforcement of the culture of safetyism. As an example, presented by Lukianoff and Haidt, a student visits a counselor for anxiety. During the visit, the counselor makes a leading statement, “Oh wow. People feel very anxious when they are in great danger.” The student now is being led to perceive danger. But this is not the end of it. The counselor then doing their required diligence under the campus rules reports to the Dean of Students that there was a cause for a visit. The Dean then sends a note to the student “I received a report that others are worried about your well being. … you are to refrain from discussing these issues with other students and use the appropriate resources listed below. If you involve other students … you will face disciplinary action. …“ A fictional example? No, it happened on a campus (references to it are given in the book.)
Universities are big business today, generating over a half trillion dollars annually. To support this revenue, they have created bureaucracies to perform research, education, fundraising, (who here hasn’t received a fundraising letter from their alma mater?) branding, marketing, and legal compliance. Students are considered to be “customers” with all of which that connotes. They are sold a product. “The customer is always right,” so that students are invited by the university to author their educational experiences according to their desires rather than towards the need of the education purportedly being received. As a result, the university overreacts as in the example above. In demands to reduce dissension on campus, (under the thread of movement towards the left,) universities have tried to restrict free speech on their campuses.
Sixth and lastly, the concept of social justice has been distorted. There is no widely accepted definition of “social justice,” but it would involve people getting what they deserve (distributive justice) and that the rules are applied fairly (procedural justice.) Social justice when it is consistent with these precepts is beneficial. Such social justice would remove artificial barriers and treat all people fairly. Today, under the various laws created with good intents, such as Title IX requiring universities and colleges to divide universities resources between female and male participants fairly, there are unintended consequences. Social justice is now being applied to the outcomes of groups rather than looking at justice for individuals. It is now considered acceptable to harm people for the desired outcomes. Thus, the distributive and procedural precepts of justice are being violated while reducing the fairness to individuals.
Lukianoff and Haidt propose a large number of fixes to these problems under the title, “Wising Up.” Most of these are direct and logical consequences of the six threads discussed. The universities and colleges have a lot to do to clean up their cultures. Lukianoff and Haidt are optimistic that they can do the work needed. Probably the best recommendations are, 1) reduce child access to social media in both time and type, 2) Allow children the freedom to play and develop their socialization skills, and 3) get rid of identity politics in the nation as this is fueling extremism towards both the left and right.
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Reviews with images
Brilliant Synthesis of Systemic Issues - Required Reading for Parents & Educators
Lukianoff and Haidt have greatly expanded their popular Sept 2015 Atlantic article into a more detailed and nuanced book of the same title. Haidt is a social psychologist and Lukianoff is a First Amendment Lawyer - a perfect pairing for this project. Haidt is also author of the highly relevant and absolutely brilliant 2012 book, "The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion." A major reference and parallel running throughout the book is Nassim Taleb's seminal book, "Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder."Key Coddling conclusion: Parents and educators are unwittingly, and paradoxically, harming today's students by trying so hard to protect them. This is from perceived physical dangers as well as from ideas that might prove uncomfortable. The net is that "helicopter" parenting and increasingly ideologically uniform college campuses aren't allowing children to develop natural resilience (identical in concept to children being susceptible to diseases if not properly immunized). Kids are not receiving the proper stress-testing to the issues they will undoubtedly encounter in the real world and "the growing tendency to cultivate vulnerabilities in students carries unacknowledged costs" (Erika Christakis).An important and highly unsettling second derivative of the cited trends are the "consequences for the future of liberal democracies." The book references "the coarsening of social interaction," and desire to "invoke coercion by other parties to solve problems" as one of the "vulnerabilities of democracies." A wonderful speech excerpt from Chief Justice John Roberts highlights his grasp of the importance of antifragility and ability to "see the message in your misfortunes." Parents need to let children fall, fail and skin their knees more, while colleges need to make sure students are exposed to diverse ideologies and ideas that make them uncomfortable. In the end, "safe spaces" are anything but.There is a great chapter on "The Bureaucracy of Safetyism" that opens with a prescient Alexis de Tocqueville quote from Democracy in America: "The Sovereign power [or soft despot] extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute and uniform rules...it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd." Safety, conformity and resume wars breed "Excellent Sheep."Lastly, Haidt and Lukianoff's chapter "The Quest for Justice" demonstrates their ability to parse polarizing issues, like "social justice," and disaggregate them into the component parts. In this instance, the important distinction between "distributive justice" (the perception that people are getting what is deserved) and "procedural justice" (the perception that the process by which things are distributed and rules are enforced is fair and trustworthy).Do your brain a favor - buy The Righteous Mind, Antifragile and Coddling and then steal away for a weekend to read them all.
Top reviews from other countries
Narciso González
Por fin algo muy bueno que leer para corregir nuestra sociedad
Reviewed in Mexico on July 2, 2022
Narciso González
Reviewed in Mexico on July 2, 2022
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