02 Jun 2019

Put on some boots, and learn how to deal with adversity.

– Van Jones

Executive Summary

In an analysis of contemporary culture, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff demonstrate how contradictions to ancient wisdom and modern research have prevailed in recent years and have produced dire consequences such as an increase in violence and cognitive distortions. These contradictions they call the three Great Untruths: ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’, ‘Always trust your feelings’, ‘Life is a battle between good people and evil people’. The rise of these Great Untruths stems from historical artefacts, ill-advised developmental norms and policies, as well as increased political engagement. To overcome these Great Untruths, we need to raise wiser kids, build wiser universities and become a wiser society.

Book Summary

The Coddling of the American Mind by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt and president of the Foundation for Individual Right in Education Greg Lukianoff is logically divided into four parts*.

The first part of the book deals with what the authors call the Great Untruths – The Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings; The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people. These ideas deserve their status as a Great Untruth as they contradict ancient wisdom, contemporary psychological research and are detrimental to individuals and communities which endorse them implicitly or explicitly. These Great Untruths also gives rise to what the authors call the culture of safetyism, that is a preoccupation with eliminating any potential threats – real or imagined. The Great Untruths are not novel – they exist to some degree in every individual, community or society. The problem is that currently they are mixed with other ideas, such as microaggression theory, intersectionality theory, identity politics, among others; and although these ideas have their useful place in the wider cultural dialogue, certain versions of them serve to amplify the Great Untruths.

In part two of the book, the authors look at how this dire combination of the Great Untruths and misused ideas and theories produces destructive consequences – especially on college campuses. For example, the combination results in a call-out culture in which anyone can be accused or shamed because of something they did – real or imagined. This stifles free speech and open inquiry, which are the heart of academic freedom. They liken such practices to a ‘witch hunt’, which is a sociological term denoting mobbing against a perceived (usually non-existent) threat against the collective. Another consequence is the emergent common-enemy identity politics (as opposed to common-humanity identity politics practised by Martin Luther King among others). Common-enemy identity politics is used by both the left and the right and divides people at unprecedented levels. The division produces negative consequences, the most staggering of which is the increase in violence and intimidation, which is mostly on-campus by the left and off-campus by the right. For that they give a number of recent examples, including the “Milo Riot” in Berkley in 2017, the ‘Unite The Right’ rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, campus protests at Yale, Claremont McKenna, Evergreen and many, many others. The authors cite some statistics as well: in two surveys, students said that it is ‘acceptable’ to use violence to prevent a speaker from speaking on campus (20% in one and 30% in the other). Once you pick up your jaw from the floor and have digested those events and statistics, you might be interested in how things got so bad so quickly.

In the third part of the book, the authors use six explanatory threads to unravel how those events and norms came to be. First on the line is the political spectrum where the left and the right move away from each other at an exponential speed. While the left dominates college campuses, the right responds with off-campus provocations. The second way to explain this developing culture of safetyism is by looking at the rising levels of anxiety and depression, especially in generation iGen (or Gen Z; born after 1995), who arrived on campus at the same time as the cultural shift began. Due to an array of generational difference (such as less unsupervised play, less autonomy etc), iGen experiences an unseen rise in anxiety and depression, which is especially prominent in adolescent girls, whose suicide rates have doubled since 2007. The third thing the authors turn their attention to is the rise of overprotective parents (or ‘helicopter parenting’) which deprives young children of the necessary challenges they need to face to develop as functional, resilient members of society. Overprotective parenting is especially prominent in iGen and those of higher socioeconomic status. The fourth explanatory thread is the decline of unsupervised play in children. Partly due to rise of social media, partly due to the over-emphasis on academic achievement even from the earliest ages, lack of unsupervised play prevents children from reaching key social and developmental milestones (e.g. no cooperation skills, no dispute resolution skills, no resilience). When kids grow without unsupervised play, they grow into fragile adults, which welcome the bureaucracy of safetyism, which is the fifth explanation. Specifically, in their attempts to protect students, college administrators come up with ‘better safe than sorry’ policies and norms that harm students by teaching them the Great Untruths. Some colleges even come up with regulations that restrict free speech. Others put together a ‘Bias Response Team’, which amplifies the call-out norm. The sixth and final explanatory thread is rooted in a misunderstood and misapplied idea for social justice on college campuses. Specifically, the equal-outcomes social justice orientation is the ultimate manifestation of the combination of the Great Untruths with a shallow level of analysis**.

In the final, fourth, part of the book, Haidt and Lukianoff give an array of recommendations and advice on how to overcome the Great Untruths and the ensuing culture of safetyism. First, we need to develop wiser kids by teaching them the Great Truths (the opposite of the Great Untruths) and by giving them the tools to deal with the adversities of life. Second, we need to build wiser schools and universities, which reject the Great Untruths, prioritize academic freedom, endorse viewpoint diversity and take a common-humanity approach to identity. Third, on a societal level, we need to embrace the Great Truths.

Book Review: Let’s look deeper!

The Great Untruths are indeed Great!

The book opens with an analysis of the three Great Untruths, as outlined in the summary above – The Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker; The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings; The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people. What is missing from this analysis, for the most part, is why these Untruths exist in the first place. Perhaps they could have delved into evolutionary explanations: 1) maybe it’s better to avoid challenges because even a step beyond your limit could be fatal hence the Untruth of Fragility; 2) the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning also seems quite adaptive: it’s much better to make a quick decision to run away from the bush when you hear a noise rather than deliberate on whether it was a snake or not; or in other words, much of our life is driven by quick, subconscious thinking as Daniel Kahneman’s work suggests; 3) when it comes to the Untruth of Us Versus Them the authors indeed give an evolutionary explanation: we evolved in tribes and protecting our own tribe was the key to propagation. An alternative explanation of the Great Untruths could be that they allow us to easily make sense of an otherwise vastly complex world: it’s much easier to live if you don’t face any dangers; it’s much easier to judge than to understand; it’s much easier to think in binary categories… Perhaps these Untruths allow us to bring order into this chaotic world.

One might wonder why an inquiry into how the Untruths came to exist is needed. Lest we want to fall into the trap of shallow analysis and superficial thinking, we need to understand before we judge. Perhaps the root of these Great Untruths is so deep that rectifying them might not be as simple as the authors suggest…

The Cure is Cognitive Behavioural Therapy! Or is it?

Throughout the book the authors return again and again to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) practices as a way to challenge and reject the Great Untruths. But perhaps one could call these Untruths Great for another reason – albeit in differing degrees, these Untruths are ever-present. Sometimes they possess only a handful of individuals, sometimes they take over communities or even societies. But they are there.

CBT, on the other hand, seems to me to be only a surface-level approach. CBT practices benefit conscious thoughts and alleviate momentary cognitive distortions. But if the Great Untruths are so deeply rooted in the very fabric of our being and society, will this superficial approach suffice? There is little doubt that CBT is effective, but to eliminate the Great Untruths once and for all, will CBT be enough?

I think not. Perhaps a deeper individual and collective introspection are needed. Maybe we need to turn to depth psychologists, such as Carl Jung, to guide as on a deeper inner journey. Jung’s concept of the Shadow provides a good starting point – the Shadow is an umbrella term for all our unlived lives, unfulfilled desires and split selves that lurk in our unconscious. Jung believed that Shadow work, that is engaging in a dialogue with the Shadow, is key to an integrated, wholesome life (for more on the Shadow and Shadow work see my book summary of Jung’s Hollis Why Good People Do Evil Things: Understanding Our Darker Selves). If everyone undertook Shadow work that could be equivalent to an archetypal level of intervention: maybe that’s how we, as a society, will slay the dragon.

Social Media: Understand Before You Judge

One point that finds its place in a few different chapters is around social media usage: social media is linked to the rise of anxiety and depression in iGen; social media facilitates the call-out culture and mobbing; social media replaces unsupervised play… In the final part of the book, the authors urge kids not to spend more than 2 hours on devices as this is the safe zone; they urge parents to monitor kids’ online presence or even schools and kindergartens to introduce a ‘no device’ policy during working hours.

Such precise and solemn advice must come from a sound theory and plenty of empirical evidence. Or so you would think. The authors base this advice on the work of Jean Twenge, an expert in generational differences. Twenge argues that one of the main differences between the Millenials, the generation before iGen, and iGen is the use of smartphone and electronic devices, which, in turn, is a contributing factor in the rise of anxiety and depression. However, a recent influential review of the relevant literature rejects such a conclusion. The authors of the review ‘found little evidence for substantial negative associations between digital-screen engagement—measured throughout the day or particularly before bedtime—and adolescent well-being’.

It is surprising that Haidt, an eminent social psychologist, and Lukianoff, a lawyer, would be so hasty to draw preliminary conclusions about social media based on such limited evidence especially considering the otherwise level-headed tone of the book with its dispassionate observations.

Notes

* This is a logical division I make as it makes a little bit more sense. The book itself pretty much follows the exact same pattern but some of the ideas that are in part one I prefer to include in part two, e.g. the consequences of the Great Untruths.

** For more on equal-outcomes social justice, see here.