Are we inadvertently setting up a generation for failure through overprotection and poor critical thinking? "The Coddling of the American Mind" by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt dives into this pressing question, uncovering the paradox of good intentions breeding bad ideas. Unwrap the layers of safetyism in academia with us, and explore the unprecedented anxiety and depression rates plaguing Gen Z. Offering an unflinching look at the seismic shift in childhood development and education, where pivotal life experiences are delayed, and unsupervised play is becoming a relic of the past.
Dare to confront the outrage culture head-on as we revisit the UC Berkeley incident with Milo Yiannopoulos, revealing a culture of extreme reactions to controversial speakers. We also delve into the fascinating findings from neuroscientist David Eagleman on empathy and in-group bias, challenging the very fabric of our social interactions. This episode isn't just an analysis; it's a call to action for parents, educators, and anyone invested in the resilience of future generations. Join us for a rigorous examination of the ideas that have infiltrated our campuses and are quietly reshaping society.
Recorded: 3/9/24
Outro: Powerful Beat-Oleksandr Stepanov
Are we inadvertently setting up a generation for failure through overprotection and poor critical thinking? "The Coddling of the American Mind" by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt dives into this pressing question, uncovering the paradox of good intentions breeding bad ideas. Unwrap the layers of safetyism in academia with us, and explore the unprecedented anxiety and depression rates plaguing Gen Z. Offering an unflinching look at the seismic shift in childhood development and education, where pivotal life experiences are delayed, and unsupervised play is becoming a relic of the past.
Dare to confront the outrage culture head-on as we revisit the UC Berkeley incident with Milo Yiannopoulos, revealing a culture of extreme reactions to controversial speakers. We also delve into the fascinating findings from neuroscientist David Eagleman on empathy and in-group bias, challenging the very fabric of our social interactions. This episode isn't just an analysis; it's a call to action for parents, educators, and anyone invested in the resilience of future generations. Join us for a rigorous examination of the ideas that have infiltrated our campuses and are quietly reshaping society.
Recorded: 3/9/24
Outro: Powerful Beat-Oleksandr Stepanov
Today, I'm telling you why this book needs to be the very next thing you read in 2024. If you ever so often wonder why everything seems to be so insane today, when do people start demanding that colleges be bastions for emotional safety? And if the kids are actually alright, then you'll want to watch the rest of this video. Welcome to Overcoming the Divide, a platform dedicated to insightful political discourse and debate, and today we're discussing the coddling of the American mind how good intentions and bad ideas are setting up a generation for failure. Now I have the book right here. It was quite informative and we're going to break it down in the following video.
Speaker 1:This book was published in 2018 and authored by First Amendment expert Greg Lukianoff and American psychologist Jonathan Haight, and in their own words, they show how new problems on campus have arrived and are woven increasingly woven into childhood and education. These terrible ideas are one what doesn't kill you makes you weaker. Always trust your feelings and, lastly, life is a battle between good people and evil people. Only a sith deals in absolutes Foods, but is not limited to how current college students engage in mental habits that closely resemble anxiety disorders and are reacting to speakers they disagree with with fear and anger because they've been taught to 1. Amplify emotions, 2. Exaggerate dangers and 3. Use binary thinking, such as always labeling people evil or good, virtuous or terrible, and so on and so forth. So let's dive into some benefits of reading the book. This book explains why and how children are growing up slower. American psychologist Jean Twengey points out that 18 year olds are spending less time unsupervised and are obtaining jobs later in life, but also just obtaining their driver's license later in life. You also see how anxiety is rising among this generation and Gen Z. Adults at Harvard report found that they face double the rates of anxiety and depression than their younger teen counterparts. Another benefit of reading this book is understanding the cultural roots of safetyism and how safetyism was brought to campus and how that coincides with the arrival of Gen Z to American universities back in 2013.
Speaker 1:And a lot of people, I think, wrongly assume including myself, kind of prior to this that it's the administrators who are at fault, which they are too large like to a significant degree. But it's not the administrators who are exactly demanding this or creating this. The root cause behind this are these kids coming to campus who are demanding these safe spaces and are demanding more from administrators to take precautions to prevent people that they disagree with coming to campus altogether and people they disagree with from being able to speak altogether really. Lastly, the book provides a comprehensive breakdown of outreach culture and outreach politics on college campuses. Now this stands for 2013, as mentioned, but in 2017 there was a pivotal moment where Milo Yiannopoulos was invited to UC Berkeley to speak, but that event was interrupted by demonstrations that turned violent, and the worst part about this was obviously the violence and people were injured, but also the defense of that violence that it was necessary Through what appeared to be fireworks and smoke bombs then started fires. There have been no immediate reports of arrests, and it all kind ties together rather well, but key benefit of reading this is you understand how it ties together.
Speaker 1:Now I like to share five profound insights I had from the book, first one being is people have more empathy and a reaction to those they perceive as being part of their in-group. David Eagleman, a neuroscientist, conducted this pricked hand experiment, where people had their hands pricked and others were observing, but what this involved was a functional MRI, which is a type of MRI that scans which part of your brain is most active, and in this study. It showed that watching another person in pain activates areas in our own brain that resemble and have a sensation to pain itself, to our own pain that is. Now it's important to note that this neural mirroring is not constant but is rather modulated. It's produced by our own perception of who the person is, what their intentions are, their circumstances, but, lastly, their group allegiances, and it's saw that there was more of a reaction, more of a sensation in the brain to pain that we were like quote feeling if there was similar group allegiances. So, for example, it's a religion, and if I am a Catholic and I saw someone else whose hand was being pricked and I believe they were also a Catholic I would have more reaction. And what we can draw from this is that we kind of more empathy for people that we see in our in-group than others that we see as part of the quote out group, and I think it's just kind of important to note that that not only do we have, say, more empathy and that might be a little more speculative but we definitely have more of a pain reaction in our brain that mirrors no pain and we feel that. So I think that's kind of key to note when trying to understand how people can be so animated when they see certain videos of someone being hurt or injured and so on and so forth. So that's kind of key no key, profound insight I had from that. Another insight was compared to free play and socializing with friends.
Speaker 1:Homework and extracurriculars are being prioritized and pushed, which is having a negative and in some cases devastating effect. Between 1981 and 1997. Free play in children went down and time spent in school went up 18%. In time doing homework went up a resounding 145%. Duke psychologist Harrison Cooper states that this type of rigorous homework is actually harmful in early school years for a child's development.
Speaker 1:This isn't happening in a vacuum, however. This is being pushed due to the belief that is not wrong that college admissions are becoming more competitive and to make one's child or one's student have a higher chance of being admitted they have to take on these more, say strenuous classes and extracurriculars. And since the 80s college admissions to these prestigious universities more specifically have rapidly declined, but also in the past 20 years. A second order consequence of this is also quite devastating. There are suicide clusters in highly competitive high schools that in the areas host prestigious universities such as Palo Alto, california, and in the suburbs of Boston, cdc found that Palo Alto the teen suicide rate was four times four times the national average. This is awful and it needs to be brought to the forefront that this kind of rigorous work is quite detrimental and that college admissions are pretty much rapidly declining. And it's like why? Why is this happening in these prestigious universities? Maybe more applicants than that's necessary, but also it's you know, these issues need to be talked about and discussed, so there's kind of a clear understanding of what's going on and is this kind of necessary or not?
Speaker 1:The second insight I had was there's simply a prolific amount of absurdity occurring on college campuses, and I'll give you some examples of that. One example happened in 2017, when protesters at Millbury College, which is a small private institution in Vermont, interrupted and assaulted a speaker and professor who were partaking in an event. Now, the speaker was Dr Charles Murray and the professor was Professor Allison Stanger. Now, the controversy behind this and why this happened was that Murray wrote a book that involved and talked about eugenics some years in the past, but the event was attempted to be disrupted two times and when they were leaving the event to escape these demonstrators and protesters, they were assaulted. The professor, professor Stanger, was assaulted. Her hair was twisted, her neck was twisted and she needed hospital and medical care and also need physical therapy for the following six months or so. This is awful and obviously needs to be called out of this absurd event that has really no moral basis or rationale.
Speaker 1:So the next incident occurred at William Mary, a prestigious university in southeastern Virginia, when protesters associated with the Black Lives Matter local chapter shouted down a speaker who was there to discuss the First Amendment. Now, not only is that say wrong enough, but the speaker was the ACLU Executive Director, claire Gunthery-Gastanyaga. That's absurd. It's a name, it's the ACLU Executive Director. The ACLU played a pivotal part in the civil rights movement and so on and so forth, and for that to happen is absolutely absurd, no reasoning. So the next incident I actually don't think was mentioned in the book, but I did want to insert it nonetheless happened at Yale, when a New York psychiatrist was invited by the School of Medicine's Child Study Center and during her talk she mentioned vivid fancies that she had about killing white people and burying them. That just absolutely insane and that would not be a call to say not invite her, even though I do find what she said to be highly offensive, but more so that her talk, to my knowledge, went on perfectly okay, no disruption there. But someone from the ACLU Can't go to a prestigious college, college, university, say, similar to Yale, and speak about the first amendment. What? What is going on with that?
Speaker 1:The next insight comes from the 20th century moral and social philosopher, eric Hoffer, and he says it's a quick insight, but he says and mentioned the book that hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all unifying agents, that mass movements can arise and Spread without the belief of a god, but never without the belief in a devil. And we see this all the time in our, you know, placal landscape that one side never really puts themselves off to be something amazing, but rather puts the other side down to be this evil, terrible thing that you have to vote for us, not because we're offering some encouraging vision of the future, but to minimize the harm that will be done by the evil side. Last insight Winch hunts are not part of the past but are part of us. There's a French sociologist, a male, durkheim, who discusses social Electricity and basically that is when a group of people achieve a certain level of union. Examples of this include religious ceremonies, sporing events, both for, say, the team members and the fans, and I'm going to over simplify this theory Durkheim has, but an essence, is a theory that states that people you know live in between these two levels and planes, and that can fluctuate.
Speaker 1:And One is the level of the profane, which refers to, you know, the rather mundane, when nonni, of everyday life, and the other level is the level of the sacred, which refers to everything that transcends the humdrum of everyday life and puts you in a different state of thinking and being. And being in the level of the sacred can lead to witch hunts, and this literally can refers to the Salem witch hunts would be an example of this. That happened in the 17th century, but also males cultural revolution of the 1960s and 70s. There are three features unique to these witch hunts as well, first one being is that they arise rapidly and quickly. The second is that they involve offenses against the collective.
Speaker 1:And then, lastly, they, the charges that are associated with them, are usually trivial or fabricated, just made up altogether. And we see these on college campuses, from the examples I detailed, where you call someone a Nazi or something extreme, when that's obviously not the case. But also I like to pull from the summer 2020, when there was this aura in the air of like fear and this Disturbing nature of things that God forbid. You said something slightly offensive years ago that that could come back to haunt you, where you could lose your job, get kicked out school, lose friends, have family members not want to associate with you. This is all a very real thing. I think plays well into some of the other examples I provided, as that Durkheim really characterizes as the level of the sacred, what people aren't thinking clearly, and it becomes very Odd and uncomfortable for a time period.
Speaker 1:Now, to wrap things up, I would love to hear your experience of going to college in the comments below. What were things like for you? For me, personally, I'm with the Penn State, graduated a couple years ago, in 2021. Things were rather even keel, had great professors who are open to different opinions and fostered that environment as such, but also the campus all together had a climate that was rather, I would say, neutral, almost things, but I know that's not the case for everyone, so feel free to put your examples and your experiences in the comments below. I would love to see them. Lastly, if you enjoyed this recording. Enjoy this video. Please feel free to share with a friend, subscribe to the channel and also like it goes a long way. So until next time, take care.