the atlantic coddling of the american mind

This movement has become of large interest on the internet among podcasters like Joe Rogan and Sam Harris, and is widely considered part of the “social justice” movement on the left that has proliferated in recent years. It’s an analogue to the rise of Jordan Peterson, and the ousting of Bret Weinstein at Evergreen State College the deplatforming of conservative figures like Ben Shapiro, the furore involving Nicholas and Erika Christakis at Yale over offensive Halloween costumes, and many more. This is a book that has grown out of the wider conversation about free speech and deplatforming on campuses.

They argue that the untruths are tied to a sharp increase in mental health issues among young people, increasing polarisation in political views, ideologically uniformity on campuses, “callout culture” on social media, and echo chambers of political thought.

Harm the individuals and communities that embrace.

Contradict modern psychological research on well-being.

These untruths, they argue, summarise the current wisdom that is proliferating on university campuses in America and has begun to inveigle its way into political policy and wider discourse.

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

The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: always trust your feelings.

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

They summarise these as the following “three Great Untruths”: In The Coddling of the American Mind, social psychologist, Haidt, and First Amendment lawyer, Lukianoff, tackle the (to paraphrase the subtitle) good intentions and bad ideas that are setting up a generation for failure. So when it emerged that he was coauthoring a book on the whole campus free speech that has flooded a portion of the social media conversation of late, I was onboard from the very start. The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read.

The atlantic coddling of the american mind