The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt (Review)
Back in 2015, I read an Atlantic column that resonated with me. “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Greg Lukianoff & Jonathan Haidt. I thought often about the article and regularly circulated it when relevant ideas came up in conversation. Despite my affinity for the article, it was a number of years before I read the duo’s book on the subject. I’m sorry I waited so long, because the book provided even more opportunities to consider their arguments with more depth and analysis.
Coddling starts with an imaginary journey to visit a Greek oracle named, “Misoponos.” For those who know Greek, the name would be a hint that this oracle might not be a reliable source of wisdom. His name essentially means, “hater of painful toil and hardship,” which is likely a trait that most people share. Yet Lukianoff and Haidt make it abundantly clear why avoiding hardships is a foolish way to live.
Misoponos gave three principles of “wisdom” that are anything but:
What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker (presumed fragility);
Always trust your feelings; and
Life is a battle between good people and evil people.
Whereas The Atlantic article hinted at these points, the full book walked through the examples and reasons why these unwise principles are taking hold at colleges and universities across the country. More importantly, the authors discuss how to develop a mindset of wisdom and fortitude.
Books like The Coddling of the American Mind are helpful as I look to pursue wisdom in my own life. Similarly, as I increasingly prioritize promoting wisdom in my children, this book provides valuable insights into teaching and modeling how to think well. There are endless distractions in our screen-based society, so intentionality in thinking well is critical to living a worthwhile life.
I endorse Lukianoff and Haidt’s book for anyone—but particularly for those who are looking to pursue wisdom and parent well. There is plenty of content to unpack throughout Coddling, but I’ll highlight some of the ideas I found most interesting.
The Untruth of Fragility
Pain is not the same thing as trauma. In recent years, however, the formerly objective standard for PTSD (an event that would elicit an extreme reaction of distress in nearly everyone and outside the range of normal human experiences) have bled into a more subjective standard. The abnormal and extreme experiences include war, rape, or torture as benchmarks. Other experiences like death of a loved one or divorce may be painful and even a good reason for counseling but do not rise to the level of PTSD.
The authors fleshed out the origins of safe spaces that responded to belief that ideas can cause trauma. More specifically, Haidt and Lukianoff explored how we reached a collective mindset that exposure to ideas can place people in danger. This mindset runs counter to the virtue of resiliency and embraces an emotions-based approach toward reasoning. “Like the immune system, children must be exposed to challenges and stressors (within limits and in age-appropriate ways), or they will fail to mature into strong and capable adults, able to engage productively with people and ideas that challenge their beliefs and moral convictions.”[1]
The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning
One of the early excerpts in this section is wonderfully insightful: “Feelings are always compelling but not always reliable. Often they distort reality, deprive us of insight, and needlessly damage our relationships. Happiness, maturity, and even enlightenment require rejecting the Untruth of Emotional Reasoning and learning instead to question our feelings.”
This observation reminded me of Robert Heinlein’s observation in Assignment in Eternity: “Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.”
The authors provided a basic framework of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT)—not to encourage everyone to seek a therapist but to gain a basic understanding of the common distortions that often lead to negative thinking. They also noted that tools within the CBT framework can help everyone to think clearly through their feelings, rather than being consumed by them.
While there is no universal definition of critical thinking, the authors summarize the skill as “a commitment to connect to one’s claims to reliable evidence in a proper way.” There is a need to view contextual evidence and to consider alternative ideas in an intellectually honest manner. This approach to thinking is one that CBT helps develop.
This section also included a great point from Epictetus: “What really frightens and dismays us is not external events themselves, but the way in which we think about them. It is not things that disturb us, but our interpretation of their significance.”
Dr. Hanna Holborn Gray, former President at the University of Chicago, once made this point about schooling: “Education should not be intended to make people comfortable; it is meant to make them think.” The development of emotional reasoning undercuts this principle, because the emotional response of intellectual dissonance is inevitably uncomfortable. Learning to work through those emotions is essential for maturation.
The Untruth of Us Versus Them
The authors effectively explore how humans are wired for tribalism and joining groups. This tendency has both positive and negative elements. On one hand, groups give us a sense of belonging and purpose. On the other, fierce tribalism can blind us “to arguments and information that challenge our team’s narrative.” This side of the equation prepares people for conflict and quickly causes an us-versus-them mentality that hinders community.
In a publication with the Brookings Institute, Jonathan Rauch defines “Identity Politics” as “political mobilization organized around group characteristics such as race, gender, and sexuality as opposed to party, ideology, or pecuniary interest.” Forming groups is fundamental to American politics, yet the form of the groups is critical to our country’s stability.
“Identity can be mobilized in ways that emphasize an overarching common humanity while making the case that some fellow human beings are denied dignity and rights because they belong to a particular group, or it can be mobilized in ways that amplify our ancient tribalism and bind people together in shared hatred of a group that serves as the unifying common enemy.”
If we operate our politics by focusing on vilifying certain groups of Americans, the result is punishment politics rather than aspirational politics. Are we pursuing ideas to improve our country as a whole or pursuing ideas that attack those who aren’t in our tribe? The authors emphasize that the best course for a country is to focus on common-humanity politics rather than common-enemy politics.Coddling has a helpful explanation of intersectionality (“an analytic tool [that] examines how power relations are intertwined and mutually constructing.”). Put another way, intersectionality asserts that “members of groups [particularly those with power] sometimes act cruelly or unjustly to preserve their power, and people who are members of multiple identity groups can face various forms of disadvantage in ways that are often invisible to others.” The authors noted that they do not intend to critique the theory but note that “certain interpretations of intersectionality…have the potential to turn tribalism way up.” By focusing on identity with an us-versus-them framework, we lose the capacity for open discourse and ideas-based policies. It swallows up “free inquiry, dissent, evidence-based argument, and intellectual honesty.”
Bad Ideas in Action (Part II)
The section on Collective Effervescence (CE) was informative. It is a sociological concept by Émile Durkheim that describes the intense emotional state that a group can experience, almost a shred sense of emotion. This collective emotion binds a group together. The reason this idea dovetails with Coddling is that when a group is hyper-focused on safety—safety to the point that opposing viewpoints are viewed as equivalents to violence—then collective effervescence can occur and fury can swell just based on a person’s words and ideas. The example cited with Collective Effervescence is from Evergreen State College, where CE broke out in 2017.
How Did We Get Here (Part III)
Steven Horowitz studied liberal democracies and focused on how self-governing societies successfully resolve conflicts. A common theme is an ability for people with conflicting goals and desires to resolve their problems without appealing to the state. Horowitz ties this idea back to the Alexis de Tocqueville’s observation that America encompasses the “art of association” observed in the 1700s. A critical point in this chapter is how free play develops these skills of resolution to keep the game going.
In the same chapter on the negative effects of eliminating free-play time for kids, the authors included this excerpt from Chief Justice John Roberts’s commencement speech at his son’s graduation:
From time to time in the years to come, I hope you will be treated unfairly, so that you will come to know the value of justice. I hope that you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty. Sorry to say, but I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you don’t take friends for granted. I wish you bad luck, again, from time to time so that you will be conscious of the role of chance in life and understand that your success is not completely deserved and that the failure of others is not completely deserved either. And when you lose, as you will from time to time, I hope every now and then, your opponent will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship. I hope you’ll be ignored so you know the importance of listening to others, and I hope you will have just enough pain to learn compassion. Whether I wish these things or not, they’re going to happen. And whether you benefit from them or not will depend upon your ability to see the message in your misfortunes.
In Chapter 11, the authors focused on studies that show how humans favor proportionality or merit—even if that means fair inequality over unfair equality. That said, there are instances where there is generally consensus on equal distribution like equally dividing inheritances rather than trying to assess who did more for the parent or needs it more.
Coddling argues that people tend to intuit two forms of justice: “distributive justice (the perception that people are getting what is deserved) and procedural justice (the perception that the process by which things are distributed and rules are enforced is fair and trustworthy).”
Commonly, distributive justice focuses on “the ratio of outcomes to inputs” and whether it is fair and equal for all participants. Procedural justice look at our people make decisions in our system and “how people are treated along the way, as procedures unfold.”
The authors look at these forms of justice and argue for “Proportional-Procedural Social Justice.” The goal is to “remove barriers to equality of opportunity [emphasis added] and also to ensure that everyone is treated with dignity.” The main corollary to this point is that equality of opportunity is superior to the unachievable equality of outcomes.
Lukianoff and Haidt argue that most of the left-right debate on social justice centers around how much help governments should provide for children in poor socioeconomic situations. They focus on pursuing proportional-procedural justice to protect the rights of the minority.
It may be clear from my notes that there is plenty to unpack in The Coddling of the American Mind. Fortunately, Lukianoff and Haidt write with great clarity and accessibility, and they provide helpful tools to think well. As a concluding thought, Coddling prompted a thought that I have continued mulling since I read their book: the principle of charity is undervalued in our society. To treat people’s words and actions with graciousness is essential for a functioning society. While there is plenty to consider and discuss within Coddling, the authors make a compelling point that pursuing a wiser society will benefit us all.
[1] Haidt, Jonathan, and Greg Lukianoff. The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. New York: Penguin Press, 2018, 31.
