Chats & Laughs - The Coddling of the American Mind

Time/Place: Let's meet inside of The Laughing Goat coffee shop on Pearl Street at 6pm.

General: This is a group to get together to chat and laugh while engaging in sprawling conversation with topics centered on A Life Well Lived. This is a group for the intrinsically curious and does not require homework or anything more than that curiosity and your lived experience. We ask that you leave your job title, degrees earned and even last name at the door and jump into topics unabashedly without fear of judgement.

We use a moderated large group format, we won’t be breaking out into smaller groups, and will look for raised hands and mouths beginning to move to create space for all voices.

This Meetup's Topic: The Coddling of the American Mind

In his book, The Coddling of the American Mind, Jonathan Haidt and his coauthor present an idea that today's college kids a) believe in an antithesis to Stoicism & Nietzsche in the form of 'what doesn't kill me makes me weaker', b) always trust their feelings, and c) believe life is a battle between good people and evil people. Referencing cognitive behavior therapy, they correctly identify these falsehoods as cognitive distortions, and claim these pathological beliefs are the difference we see on college campuses today compared to the late 1960s, where differing views could be debated and engaged with dialectically.

Some thoughts to google, wiki, ponder, leave comments prior to our meetup, and to bring with you to the meetup!

• Naive realism is the tendency to believe our perception of the world reflects it exactly as it is, unbiased and unfiltered. We don't think our emotions, somatic sensations, past experiences, or cultural identity affect the way we perceive the world and thus believe others see it in the same way as we do.
• Some will say that wanting others to see and react to us differently because of our identities stems out of naive realism. Others will point out that white men have dictated that their naive realism be adhered to, trusted, and be enshrined into policy and law for millennia. It is probably most correct that both forms of naive realism are counter productive.
• Haidt’s focus is generational, but haven't leaders and policy makers much older in age given in to naive realism for millennia?

Here's a counter argument to Haidt, where it is not student naive realism that is ultimately the problem, but decades of neglect and apathy that created a machine that now devours non self-censoring faculty:

• If a student experiences discomfort in class, the professor could challenge the student and make discomfort a pedagogical tool.
• But the current reality is that students report professors to university administration and then that student's discomfort can lead to a professor being ousted, despite the illusion that tenure was all-protecting. A professor can write a book on sex and gender and lose their job if the university administration feels the professor caused students and peers discomfort.
• So, is it the naive realist student or is it university administration that is causing faculty to self-censor and operate in fear? student discomfort = antecedent. university administration = mechanism.
• So how did bureaucratic university administrations become an extralegal force to fear?
• One thought is that for decades, there has been an epidemic of sexual assault, harassment and discrimination on college campuses, and faculty have turned a blind eye while pursuing status and membership into The Academy, while leaving students to fend for themselves.
• During this time, students have turned to Title IX, internal university investigations, and ombudspersons for justice. Universities have barred outside investigations and legitimate police involvement. The internal systems limit the university's liability, put students through kangaroo courts, and often oust and silence students.
• The teeth of the bureaucratic administrative machine have been sharpened on the bodies of students, and faculty sat by for decades and did nothing - except for occasionally flexing their very real power to protect faculty peers from the machine while feeding students to that machine (example).
• And now, the sharpened teeth of that machine are devouring faculty - putting them through the same extralegal kangaroo courts and university-liability-reducing internal investigations - yet Haidt & his Heterdox Academy kin claim faculty are victims of students’ cognitive distortions.
• Had faculty prevented the teeth of that administrative machinery from being sharpened on the students they now blame, then the professor could, in fact, challenge the naive realist student and use students’ discomfort as a pedagogical tool.

Let's discuss!