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The Coddling of the American Mind

by SteveJohnson
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If you can wade through the whole thing, this is an interesting read.

How Trigger Warnings Are Hurting Mental Health on Campus - The Atlantic
  • Profile picture of the author yukon
    Banned
    If Red Forman was dean none of those cry babies would be in college.
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  • Profile picture of the author Dan Riffle
    Originally Posted by SteveJohnson View Post

    If you can wade through the whole thing
    You're right, Steve. I couldn't make it past this:
    The list of offensive statements included: “America is the land of opportunity” and “I believe the most qualified person should get the job.”
    Having lived through the PC climate of the collegiate environment of the early 90's, I can't imagine what it must be like to be a college student these days. So many of them have victim mentalities I don't know how there can be any perpetrators.
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  • Profile picture of the author SteveJohnson
    That's about where I stopped, too. I pretty much cherry-picked the rest.

    The worst part about all of this is that the adults put up with and encourage it.
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    • Profile picture of the author Cali16
      Interesting article, Steve.

      If these students can't deal with so-called "microaggressions" while attending college, they're going to have a very tough time once they graduate and get out in the real world.

      It would be better to teach them coping skills and how to develop greater emotional resilience than cater to this over-the-top PC nonsense. For those who have been legitimately traumatized in some way, better to get into therapy and work through it than attempt to create some sort of protective, artificial environment. The latter will do far more damage than good in the long run.
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  • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
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    I'm just glad I'm out of college and out of the workforce with these cry babies around. The article sort of made me want to throw up. I suppose that's a microaggression. lol.

    It's just a sick version of both and thought and speech policing and I'm deeply offended by it. lol. There should have been a trigger warning on the article.
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  • Profile picture of the author Zodiax
    This is why you should skip college and do Internet Marketing full-time.

    Failing that, join a network marketing or mlm company where you are your own boss.
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  • Profile picture of the author Synnuh
    Or drop out of college twice to do IM.

    Hey, us Americans need coddling OK. It's a scary world out there.
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    • Profile picture of the author Kay King
      What that article - and many more like it - misses is this:

      The kids going into higher education now are the first wave of "internet kids". This is the first generation of youth that has been "interacting" online for the majority of their educational years.

      They have been immersed in a "me me" and "my my" culture of MySpace and Facebook and Twitter. Their parents were impressed by technology and didn't think to limit online access beyond blocking porn sites.

      The result is a generation of hyper sensitive youth who are anxious if they become "disconnected" from internet access. I think many kids have not developed coping skills that come when you make mistakes - because they can always ask for advice before making any decision.

      Good news is - they aren't all like that. Schools aren't all like that. When people get tired of that self-centered, thin-skinned philosophy, we'll stop producing overly sensitive "children" and start raising young adults.

      We know the internet can provide an illuminating and wonderful view of the world and the people and animals in it - but children don't have the ability to filter the fluff and nonsense of social media and constant information. If their parents don't sort it out for them online - they are inundated with information that can leave them feeling anxious and vulnerable.
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      • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
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        Originally Posted by Kay King View Post

        What that article - and many more like it - misses is this:

        The kids going into higher education now are the first wave of "internet kids". This is the first generation of youth that has been "interacting" online for the majority of their educational years.
        The article didn't miss that. It went into the social media aspect of these "kids" fairly well.

        Social media makes it extraordinarily easy to join crusades, express solidarity and outrage, and shun traitors. Facebook was founded in 2004, and since 2006 it has allowed children as young as 13 to join. This means that the first wave of students who spent all their teen years using Facebook reached college in 2011, and graduated from college only this year.

        These first true "social-media natives" may be different from members of previous generations in how they go about sharing their moral judgments and supporting one another in moral campaigns and conflicts. We find much to like about these trends; young people today are engaged with one another, with news stories, and with prosocial endeavors to a greater degree than when the dominant technology was television. But social media has also fundamentally shifted the balance of power in relationships between students and faculty; the latter increasingly fear what students might do to their reputations and careers by stirring up online mobs against them.
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        • Profile picture of the author bizgrower
          Funny how close to the truth is "The Onion" article Joe Mobley posted a few weeks ago. The one where the parents donated funds for a room their daughter could go to escape "microagressions". (There really has to be a word for this crap?)

          At least the article did propose a cure (below). Just need to add a warning label to higher education.

          "Warning, college - as well as the real world - may expose you to ideas and words you don't like, or that trigger memories of past real or imagined (mostly imagined) traumas." Sheesh.

          I had a 20 year old desk clerk who asked, after about two months of employment, if she could bring her "emotional support" dog to work with her. It is a real category for pets that the FAA (airlines) and the Housing Authority have recognized. Not as strong as the ADA protections for service animals - but don't be surprised when you fly with somebody's Great Dane taking up your leg room (actually happened). It does involve being deemed by a licensed therapist to have an emotional need for such an animal. There is also a scam going on with emotional support animals - send $165.00 and get a therapist, without actually meeting, to sign the paperwork, get you a certificate, and the collar for the animal.

          My ex-employee suggested she could show that she is legally allowed to bring her emotional support animal. She flaked out anyway and stopped appearing for work soon afterwards, but I did look it up. As near as I can tell, the EEOC does not recognize "emotional support" animals. I don't know if they plan to soon. I could not get through to anyone on their 800 number and have stopped my research until the need arises again.


          The Thinking Cure

          For millennia, philosophers have understood that we don’t see life as it is; we see a version distorted by our hopes, fears, and other attachments. The Buddha said, “Our life is the creation of our mind.” Marcus Aurelius said, “Life itself is but what you deem it.” The quest for wisdom in many traditions begins with this insight. Early Buddhists and the Stoics, for example, developed practices for reducing attachments, thinking more clearly, and finding release from the emotional torments of normal mental life.


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          Cognitive behavioral therapy is a modern embodiment of this ancient wisdom. It is the most extensively studied nonpharmaceutical treatment of mental illness, and is used widely to treat depression, anxiety disorders, eating disorders, and addiction. It can even be of help to schizophrenics. No other form of psychotherapy has been shown to work for a broader range of problems. Studies have generally found that it is as effective as antidepressant drugs (such as Prozac) in the treatment of anxiety and depression. The therapy is relatively quick and easy to learn; after a few months of training, many patients can do it on their own. Unlike drugs, cognitive behavioral therapy keeps working long after treatment is stopped, because it teaches thinking skills that people can continue to use.

          The goal is to minimize distorted thinking and see the world more accurately. You start by learning the names of the dozen or so most common cognitive distortions (such as overgeneralizing, discounting positives, and emotional reasoning; see the list at the bottom of this article). Each time you notice yourself falling prey to one of them, you name it, describe the facts of the situation, consider alternative interpretations, and then choose an interpretation of events more in line with those facts. Your emotions follow your new interpretation. In time, this process becomes automatic. When people improve their mental hygiene in this way—when they free themselves from the repetitive irrational thoughts that had previously filled so much of their consciousness—they become less depressed, anxious, and angry.

          The parallel to formal education is clear: cognitive behavioral therapy teaches good critical-thinking skills, the sort that educators have striven for so long to impart. By almost any definition, critical thinking requires grounding one’s beliefs in evidence rather than in emotion or desire, and learning how to search for and evaluate evidence that might contradict one’s initial hypothesis. But does campus life today foster critical thinking? Or does it coax students to think in more-distorted ways?

          Let’s look at recent trends in higher education in light of the distortions that cognitive behavioral therapy identifies. We will draw the names and descriptions of these distortions from David D. Burns’s popular book Feeling Good, as well as from the second edition of Treatment Plans and Interventions for Depression and Anxiety Disorders, by Robert L. Leahy, Stephen J. F. Holland, and Lata K. McGinn.
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          • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
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            Originally Posted by bizgrower View Post

            Funny how close to the truth is "The Onion" article Joe Mobley posted a few weeks ago. The one where the parents donated funds for a room their daughter could go to escape "microagressions". (There really has to be a word for this crap?)
            I never even heard the term microagressions or trigger warning before I read that article.

            TRIGGER WARNING: I think all these idiots must have been dropped on their heads at birth.
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  • Profile picture of the author whateverpedia
    The article explains in depth why a lot of comedians are now refusing to do college gigs anymore.
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    • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
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      Originally Posted by whateverpedia View Post

      The article explains in depth why a lot of comedians are now refusing to do college gigs anymore.
      It won't be far behind before a lot of good college professors refuse to teach any longer. The risk of having their reputations smeared by these idiots is too great. If these are tomorrow's upcoming critical thinkers, we're in trouble.

      UCLA Professor Called Racist For What He Did To A Black Student | The Federalist Papers
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      • Profile picture of the author Kay King
        I think the term "trigger warning" should be reserved for use just before you fire the gun...but....

        There is also a scam going on with emotional support animals - send $165.00 and get a therapist, without actually meeting, to sign the paperwork, get you a certificate, and the collar for the animal.
        There are dog vests available online to make it appear your pet is a "therapy dog" so you can take him with you everywhere. Tacky.
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        • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
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          Originally Posted by Kay King View Post

          I think the term "trigger warning" should be reserved for use just before you fire the gun...but....

          There are dog vests available online to make it appear your pet is a "therapy dog" so you can take him with you everywhere. Tacky.
          I'm with you on the "trigger warning." This is all just so ridiculous to me. The notion that people need "trigger warnings" so they don't read words that might offend them or make them feel bad in some way or people who think that because they are such ninnies that they need emotional support animals at work with them .... how did a certain segment of society get to that point?
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      • Profile picture of the author bizgrower
        Originally Posted by sbucciarel View Post

        It won't be far behind before a lot of good college professors refuse to teach any longer. The risk of having their reputations smeared by these idiots is too great. If these are tomorrow's upcoming critical thinkers, we're in trouble.

        UCLA Professor Called Racist For What He Did To A Black Student | The Federalist Papers
        I wish such students all the luck in the world in grad school, or law school, and their professional careers.






        Dan
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        • Profile picture of the author Kay King
          how did a certain segment of society get to that point?
          ...and how long will other segments of society tolerate them?
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          • Profile picture of the author sbucciarel
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            Originally Posted by Kay King View Post

            ...and how long will other segments of society tolerate them?
            Honestly ... since this seems to be driven by students, I don't know why institutions and adults have put up with it at all. For the colleges to actually adopt this and institutionalize it is beyond belief to me. If someone suggested that I just committed a microagression against them, I'd be inclined to commit a macroagression against them and bitch slap them up side the head. lol (at least, that's what I'd feel like doing).
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            • Profile picture of the author seasoned
              Originally Posted by sbucciarel View Post

              Honestly ... since this seems to be driven by students, I don't know why institutions and adults have put up with it at all. For the colleges to actually adopt this and institutionalize it is beyond belief to me. If someone suggested that I just committed a microagression against them, I'd be inclined to commit a macroagression against them and bitch slap them up side the head. lol (at least, that's what I'd feel like doing).
              Well, the institutions are often run by children, and there aren't enough adults! Just look at the twaddle from congress, and "the supreme court", etc...

              Steve
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        • Profile picture of the author Zodiax
          Originally Posted by bizgrower View Post

          I wish such students all the luck in the world in grad school, or law school, and their professional careers.






          Dan
          Maybe if they are lucky they will work for you.

          Are you hiring?
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