Lukianoff & Haidt - The Coddling of the American Mind

Before going into what could be useful to consider from The Coddling of the American Mind (Lukianoff & Haidt, 2018), it’s important to acknowledge three important issues that I would assert are shortcomings of the book. First, nothing about privilege and whose voices are typically heard in academic and public life is addressed. Second, cognitive behavioral therapy is advocated as a lens through which to understand contemporary students; broad application of a therapeutic method to students in general is likely to lead to faulty assumptions and flawed implementation. Third, the authors characterized youth from diverse cultural/experiential backgrounds and first generation students as less prepared for the realities of the world. They implied that this lack of preparedness was similar to the fragility of students from sheltered and privileged middle and upper class backgrounds, a pejorative assumption that defies logic. These three points are problematic and must be recognized if other points made in the book are to be seriously considered.

The major premise of the book is that the iGen (internet generation) cohort (those born after 1995) has been sheltered from life experiences and therefore coddled in ways that has slowed their progress toward maturity and self-sufficiency. The authors assert that three “Great Untruths” (p. 4) have been fostered in young peoples’ thinking:

1.    The Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.

2.    The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings.

3.    The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people.

The authors recommend examining these untruths through the lens of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), a type of therapy used with counseling clients exhibiting anxiety and depression. CBT trains clients to challenge cognitive distortions (i.e. catastrophizing) and limit or control the tendency toward negative filtering (paying more attention to negative rather than balanced or positive feedback). The authors believe that parents, early school encounters, and the growing “safetyism” of school and university environments are perpetuating belief in the untruths, causing young people to be more fragile in ways that will not serve them as fully functioning adults.

The “safetyism” that the authors assert is prevalent in families, schools, social organizations, and universities includes the characteristics of; overprotectionism, lower interpersonal skills resulting from the decline of free play with peers, the rise of social media isolation, and concern for physical safety expanding to emotional spaces as well. The authors assert that responding to these conditions by creating safer physical and emotional environments does little more than deny young people the chance to learn to cope as well as possibly engendering “feelings of victimization, anger, and hopelessness” (p. 46).

The particular problem that we now face as a country (and select other countries as well) is that increased partisanship, sharpness of rhetoric, and an emerging “call out” culture set the stage for very contentious interactions in media, at school and on campus, and in public discourse. The tendency has been to protect against this rise in adversarialism by avoiding controversial speakers and attempting to control hateful acts through policy positions and discipline. The attempts to protect have fired up the opposition, which in turn has increased the number of incidents (hate crimes have soared since 2015), and have ultimately made it nearly impossible to achieve the safety that most communities hope to offer. Instead of helping prepare young people for the reality of the world they will face, overprotection has not cultivated the resilience necessary to cope with these difficult circumstances.

The failure of attempts to create physically and emotionally safe environments coupled with adversarial political and class dynamics is complicated by a significant rise in university students experiencing anxiety and depression. Striving to provide support and safety is then complicated for educational administrators who try to assist their students with counseling, all the time fighting the pervasive use of smart-phones that create unrealistic expectations of life – beautiful people with no problems and whose posts on FACEBOOK receive hundreds of likes within hours.

As I indicated at the beginning of this review, the authors of The Coddling of the American Mind missed important points in their analyses – most notably the impact of privilege and acknowledgement of strengths in the cultural backgrounds of young people from diverse socioeconomic and other backgrounds. Chapter 12 (pp. 235-251) offers a number of general recommendations (each with finer points) that are worth considering with a more critical eye:

1.    Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child

2.    Your worst enemy cannot harm you as much as your own thoughts, unguarded

3.    The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being

4.    Help schools to oppose the great untruths

5.    Limit and refine device time

6.    Support a new national norm: service or work before college (the unacknowledged privilege of middle and upper class students is particularly evident here)

Chapter 13 (pp. 253-262) offers recommendations to universities:

1.    Entwine your identify with freedom of inquiry

2.    Pick the best mix of people for the mission

3.    Orient and educate for productive disagreement

4.    Draw a larger circle around the community

Other reviews call out the link between the authors and conservative writers who have protested identity politics that has emerged on U.S. campuses. I have previously reviewed Haidt’s The Righteous Mind and found it insightful; indeed, it proposed ways for people of liberal and conservative political perspectives to relate to one another. Haidt’s collaboration with Lukianoff has a different focus than The Righteous Mind but the context of his previous writing should be considered.

Gaillard - A Hard Rain

Picking up A Hard Rain: America in the 1960s, Our Decade of Hope, Possibility, and Innocence Lost (Gaillard, 2018) was a natural for me, having come of age as a young adult during these years. I expected a lot of nostalgia, particularly because the book recounts important history and the art that served as its backdrop. What I didn’t expect was a book full of the most collectable inspirational quotes of that era. This post highlights moments in history, along with the art/culture and quotes that reflect them.

1960 – The beginning of the civil rights movement and non-violent protest. James Lawson and Martin Luther King advocated that “Nonviolence nurtures an atmosphere in which reconciliation and justice become actual possibilities” (p. 11).  Peter Seeger’s lyrics as sung by Joan Baez “If I had a hammer,” “Turn, turn, turn,” and “Where have all the flowers gone?” set the stage for asking questions that had previously never been considered.

1961 – John F. Kennedy is elected, one of the youngest and most charismatic in history, the first Catholic to serve as President of the U.S.A. In his inaugural address he said, “And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you – ask what you can do for your country” (p. 48). The Ugly American, by Lederer and Burdick inspired Kennedy to redefine the role the U.S.A. would play in the world through the creation of the Peace Corps.

1962 – Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) formed by Hayden and others to support racial equality, economic justice, and pursuit of peace. James Meredith entered ‘Ole Miss’ and Reverend Duncan Gray from his pulpit in Mississippi preached, “The seeds of anger and hatred, bitterness and prejudice are already widely sown, and as Christians, we need to do our utmost to uproot and cast them out” (p. 107).  Carson’s Silent Spring called for activism to save the environment and Harington pushed poverty into the public conscience in The Other America.

1963 – George Wallace activated the “collective resentment” in the south and John F. Kennedy countered with the introduction of the civil rights bill. Martin Luther King wrote in Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an air-tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society... when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of ‘nobodiness’; then you will understand why we find it difficulty to wait” (p. 136).

August 28 ‘March on Washington’ drew 250,000 to hear Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream..” speech. Bob Dylan sang “Blowin’ in the Wind” and Joan Baez sang “We Shall Overcome” with Dylan joining in, Mahalia Jackson sang “I been ‘Buked and I Been  Scorned.” Betty Freidan published The Feminine Mystique and Gloria Steinem exposed sexism in the Playboy Club.

November 22, 12:30 p.m., shots rang out as the Kennedy motorcade moved through a Dallas open plaza – Kennedy was assassinated and the entire nation sunk into an extended period of mourning.

1964 – Lyndon Johnson acted on his conscience and pursued one of most productive periods in U.S.A. legislative history, including passage of the Civil Rights Act. ‘Freedom Summer’ sent student volunteers into the south to register Black voters. Mario Savio led the Free Speech Movement, starting at Berkeley and quickly spreading throughout colleges and universities coast to coast. The Beatles came to America, creating a frenzied youth following with “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and other hits. Motown captured others through multiple hits from the Four Tops, Martha and the Vandellas, the Supremes, and the Temptations.

1965 – Malcolm X, initially a charismatic figure of the Nation of Islam, declared, “the worst crime the white man has committed has been to teach us to hate ourselves” and was murdered at age 39. Martin Luther King orchestrated the Birmingham and Selma, Alabama, marches including pronouncement that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice” (p. 258). Lyndon Johnson proposed the voting rights act. Cesar Chavez championed the cause of farm workers in California through nonviolent protest and appeal to media. Alex Haley conducted extensive interviews and published Autobiography of Malcolm X. Pete Seeger’s “Turn, turn, turn” and “If I Had a Hammer” became protest staples as the U.S.A. sunk deeper into the Viet Nam War.

1966 – Robert F. Kennedy denied the risks of public visibility and responded to the call to public service; recognized the plight of California migrant workers. Declared “It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope… ” (p. 311) in Cape Town, South Africa. Stokely Carmichael and others coined “Black Power” as a contrasting philosophy to Martin Luther King and John Lewis’ nonviolent demonstrations. W.C. Handy (the “father of blues”) provided recording opportunities for both black and white southern musicians such as Elvis Presley, Percy Sledge, and Wilson Pickett while west coast groups The Righteous Brothers (You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’), The Beach Boys (Surfin Safari, Surfin’ USA, and Good Vibrations), Everly Brothers, Four Freshmen, and Sergeant Barry Sadler’s patriotic anthem “The Ballad of the Green Beret” grabbed hit status.

1967 – Civil rights protestors advocated confrontation after little progress had been achieved through nonviolence (Black Power: The Politics of Liberation, Carmichael and Hamilton, Soul on Ice, Cleaver). Israel attacked three Arab neighbors to seize control of Sinai Peninsula, Golan Heights, and West Bank of Jordan River to open new threats of war. Yet, the year came to be known as the ‘Summer of Love.” As a young lawyer willing to take on the most difficult cases of discrimination, Thurgood Marshall became the first black justice on the Supreme Court. Sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll were glorified in places such as San Francisco where ‘hippies’ practiced free sex, took LSD, and grooved to the music of McKenzie (If You’re Going to San Francisco), Country Joe and the Fish, the Grateful Dead, Grace Slick, and Jefferson Airplane; the first rock musical, Hair, was a runaway success. Perhaps more than any other artists, Janis Joplin (Take Another Little Piece of My Heart, Me and Bobby McGhee) and Jimmy Hendricks would forever set the standard for hard rock that would embrace loving by baring the pains of the heart and soul. The Graduate became a classic film depicting the angst of the day – the journey of discovering purpose, following love instead of lust, and being true to oneself.

1968 – The nation slipped into deeper conflict over Viet Nam with McCarthy and Robert Kennedy challenging Johnson in the Presidential primaries. Kennedy pushed forward, criticizing the continued U.S.A. role in Viet Nam by pronouncing, “Can we ordain to ourselves the awful majesty of God – to decide which cities and villages are to be destroyed, who will live and who will die, and who will join refugees wandering in a desert of our own creation” (p. 477)? Martin Luther King joined the chorus of voices opposing the war but he added the ‘Poor People’s Campaign’ coalition of blacks, whites, Latinos, and American Indians, and he began to acknowledge that “we just have to admit that the day of violence is here” (p. 486). King’s ‘mountain top’ speech during which he said “I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the promised land” (p. 487) would be the prelude to his assassination the next day on April 4. The horror of those who saw the assassination as the end of King’s work mourned and demonstrated throughout the country, many protests occurring on university campuses where optimism had previously been so strong. Robert Kennedy, speaking poignantly about King, was perhaps driven more deeply into his crusade and willingness to risk all in the fight against the wrongs he felt so deeply. The depth of his conviction and the risks he took to express them ultimately led to his own assassination only two months later (June 4). The cultural commentary on this darkest of years included the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” and the Apollo 8 photo “Earthrise,” one of the most influential environmental awareness icons of all time.

1969 –Richard Nixon won the 1968 election by purposely sabotaging the potential resolution of the Viet Nam War, which he feared would benefit his Democratic rival, Hubert Humphrey. Only Franklin Pierce’s 1853 inauguration would rival the number of demonstrations seen on Nixon’s first day in office, a clear indication that he would be a polarizing President. Nixon “sympathized with the growing alienation of whites toward blacks” (p. 552). Kevin Phillips, a young campaign advisor and subsequent staffer, advocated particularly negative views of minority group members. Phillips’ political strategy was based on exploiting the dynamics of hatred between different groups and stirring up fear. Nixon and his aids used Phillips’ book, The Emerging Republican Party, as the new playbook, one that transformed the party and provided a new strategy for conservatives to activate their electoral constituents. Abortion emerged front and center in political discourse. The Boston Women’s Health Collective published Our Bodies, Ourselvesas a statement on women’s rights to make their own decisions about pregnancy. The Cuyahoga River caught fire in Cleveland, fulfilling the worst nightmares of environmental degradation. The abuses of police scrutiny and violence erupted at the Stonewall Inn in New York City, catapulting gay rights into the public consciousness. Numerous musicians offered new forms and messages in music to demonstrate that cooperation across cultures could work and could even add to the value of American life. Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan bonded in this effort and Woodstock, with 400,000+ fans, torrential rains, and not one incident of violence, proved it. The list of performers drawn together for the three day celebration of music and culture included Creedence Clearwater Revival, Rich Havens, Arlo Gutherie, Joan Baez, The Who, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Jimi Hendrix, and more. Both Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin died of drug overdoses within a year, sending a ‘danger’ signal about the excesses of the life that was so unabashedly celebrated at Woodstock. One step forward, one step back, and “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” as Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon. Although the Viet Nam War would linger, resulting in significant loss of life and American credibility, Woodstock and the moon landing rekindled the hope and commitment of the era.

Bob Dylan’s lyrics that inspired Gaillard’s title were:

I heard the sound of a thunder that roared out a warning…

It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

Reflecting back on the 1960s, I can’t help but see the corollary to our present times. The prosperity of the 1950s and the naïve opening to the 1960s brought hope, exuberance, and a commitment to change. The gains made through the progressivism of Kennedy and Johnson found reactionary and dissenting voice in Goldwater, Wallace and Nixon in the late 1960s.

Barack Obama’s election brought economic recovery, broadened access to health care, and ushered in a period of striving for greater economic equity. The progress of the Obama years rang well for many but found dissenting voice in the rhetoric of Donald Trump in ways eerily similar to Wallace and Nixon. The 1960s ended with the assassination of three prominent leaders and the Viet Nam war that increasingly divided the country and demanded more funding and lives to maintain it. The big question is if we can look back to see the patterns, recognizing the same words and dynamics that led to such a difficult close to the 1960s. Can we avoid a similar outcome in the current day?