Coddling of the American Mind

[Pamela Galli]

I have often asked myself if I am imagining that there seem to be an awful lot of people in this forum and in SL who are extremely thin skinned, and for whom even the tiniest of transgressions against them is grounds for reporting. 

They give impression that they expect to be treated with the utmost care and consideration at all times, and are shocked when they are not.

I am thinking now, after reading this article, it must be mostly (but not exclusively) Americans, mostly Millenials: 

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

Excerpt:

"What are we doing to our students if we encourage them to develop extra-thin skin in the years just before they leave the cocoon of adult protection and enter the workforce? Would they not be better prepared to flourish if we taught them to question their own emotional reactions, and to give people the benefit of the doubt?"

[mikka Luik]

Not solely a US thing by any means. Best bet? Training a generation or two to be totally dependant on externalities  (medical/entertainment/distraction/your choice) in order to have any semblance of 'functionng'.

I blame the iPhone (ducks)

[Griffin Ceawlin]

You should put in a trigger warning! :smileyvery-happy:

[Pamela Galli]

And I would like to add that I appreciate how most of the regulars here, tho a diverse group, seem to tolerate differences of perspective quite well. Not much demonizing of the Other Side. Most seem to prefer wearing their big girl/ boy underpants and encourage others to give them a try.

[Alwin Alcott]

 

i don't agree it's just the iphone generation.. its on all ages and levels...

and yes... ( not meant to step on toes) at the other side of the ocean it seems to be wide spread ....

[Theresa Tennyson]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

I have often asked myself if I am imagining that there seem to be an awful lot of people in this forum and in SL who are extremely thin skinned, and for whom even the tiniest of transgressions against them is grounds for reporting. 

They give impression that they expect to be treated with the utmost care and consideration at all times, and are shocked when they are not.

I am thinking now, after reading this article, it must be mostly (but not exclusively) Americans, mostly Millenials: 

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/09/the-coddling-of-the-american-mind/399356/

Excerpt:

"What are we doing to our students if we encourage them to develop extra-thin skin in the years just before they leave the cocoon of adult protection and enter the workforce? Would they not be better prepared to flourish if we taught them to question their own emotional reactions, and to give people the benefit of the doubt?"

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Millenials?

On an internet forum?

About Second Life?

[Sephina Frostbite]

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Alwin Alcott wrote:

 

i don't agree it's just the iphone generation.. its on all ages and levels...

and yes... ( not meant to step on toes) at the other side of the ocean it seems to be wide spread ....

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Agreed

[wherorangi]

i will put the counter-argument

bc seems theres whole bunches of old people currently writing articles whining about young people

 +

todays parent generation have raised their millenial children from birth to be caring and sharing, to be understanding and considerate of others, and also to speak their minds when others are inconsiderate

in my country we have taken this to a level that few other countries have yet. Is a crime here to physically discipline a child, including your own. bc of this, what a parent must do is to teach their children how to live without correctional violence

a consequence of this teaching from infancy, is that children learn that not only is not right for them to be subjected to physical violence, it is also not right for them to be subjected to verbal violence. And when they are then they will speak their minds as they have been raised and taught to do. And they are also taught from infancy to articulate their points and wants, and to not cry to get their own way

some of the older generation often dont know how to deal with a very young person looking them straight in the eye, and telling them that they (the young person) are not going to accept or put up with the older persons verbal nonsense

often these older people then start whining themselves, about these young people doing this to them (the old person) today. Not like in their day when as once young people themselves, they were constantly told to stfu and only speak when spoken to, to show some respect for their elders, etc etc

this can be quite difficult for some older people to deal with. The children and young people are not thin-skinned. These older people are. They cant handle the level of rational argument and debate coming out of the mouths of what to them are babies. Particularly when the old person is being brought to task over their verbal violence

like a old person (like a professor for example) makes some jokey misogynist comment as their way of correcting another person

the young person will then just straight out say to them: Why would you say that ? And the old person goes: It was just a joke !! And the young person goes: Nobody is laughing, and its quite hurtful to say chit like that to that other person, and then proceeds to give the old person, chapter and verse

and then the old person goes off and whines to other old people about thinskinned young people

[Alwin Alcott]

i dont agree that your post is a counter argument, it think it's a totally different subject, and not even true...

[wherorangi]

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Alwin Alcott wrote:

i dont agree that your post is a counter argument, it think it's a totally different subject, and not even true...

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can start here

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10440080

 

[Pamela Galli]

The problem, or rather one problem, is the Orwellian effect that people being super sensitive has. People are losing their jobs. 

The millemials I know personally are not bratty special snowflakes, but then no one else is either, as I avoid running into them. The article identifies the locus as college students, tho. There is no way to know how old these ppl are on the Internet, but I just have a hard time imagining people experiencing many years of adulthood without growing a little thicker hide -- cause in the real world, no one gives a **** about your petty grievances but your mom.

Excerpt:

 

 

The term microaggression originated in the 1970s and referred to subtle, often unconscious racist affronts. The definition has expanded in recent years to include anything that can be perceived as discriminatory on virtually any basis. For example, in 2013, a student group at UCLA staged a sit-in during a class taught by Val Rust, an education professor. The group read a letter aloud expressing their concerns about the campus’s hostility toward students of color. Although Rust was not explicitly named, the group quite clearly criticized his teaching as microaggressive.

In the course of correcting his students’ grammar and spelling, Rust had noted that a student had wrongly capitalized the first letter of the word indigenous. Lowercasing the capital I was an insult to the student and her ideology, the group claimed.

Even joking about microaggressions can be seen as an aggression, warranting punishment. Last fall, Omar Mahmood, a student at the University of Michigan, wrote a satirical column for a conservative student publication, The Michigan Review, poking fun at what he saw as a campus tendency to perceive microaggressions in just about anything.

Mahmood was also employed at the campus newspaper, The Michigan Daily. The Daily’s editors said that the way Mahmood had “satirically mocked the experiences of fellow Daily contributors and minority communities on campus … created a conflict of interest.”

 

The Daily terminated Mahmood after he described the incident to two Web sites, The College Fix and The Daily Caller. A group of women later vandalized Mahmood’s doorway with eggs, hot dogs, gum, and notes with messages such as “Everyone hates you, you violent **bleep**.” When speech comes to be seen as a form of violence, vindictive protectiveness can justify a hostile, and perhaps even violent, response.

In March, the student government at Ithaca College, in upstate New York, went so far as to propose the creation of an anonymous microaggression-reporting system. Student sponsors envisioned some form of disciplinary action against “oppressors” engaged in belittling speech.

One of the sponsors of the program said that while “not … every instance will require trial or some kind of harsh punishment,” she wanted the program to be “record-keeping but with impact.”

[BilliJo Aldrin]

Its political correctness run amok.

People try and tell me political correctness is about being polite and respectful, whereas its actually about stifling critical debate and unpopular opinions.

 

[Pamela Galli]

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BilliJo Aldrin wrote:

Its political correctness run amok.

People try and tell me political correctness is about being polite and respectful, whereas its actually about stifling critical debate and unpopular opinions.

 

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The article makes a distinction:

 

The press has typically described these developments as a resurgence of political correctness. That’s partly right, although there are important differences between what’s happening now and what happened in the 1980s and ’90s. That movement sought to restrict speech (specifically hate speech aimed at marginalized groups), but it also challenged the literary, philosophical, and historical canon, seeking to widen it by including more-diverse perspectives.

The current movement is largely about emotional well-being. More than the last, it presumes an extraordinary fragility of the collegiate psyche, and therefore elevates the goal of protecting students from psychological harm.

 

The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable. And more than the last, this movement seeks to punish anyone who interferes with that aim, even accidentally. You might call this impulse vindictive protectiveness. It is creating a culture in which everyone must think twice before speaking up, lest they face charges of insensitivity, aggression, or worse.

[Rhonda Huntress]

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BilliJo Aldrin wrote:

Its political correctness run amok.

People try and tell me political correctness is about being polite and respectful, whereas its actually about stifling critical debate and unpopular opinions.

 

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Political correctness is Orwellian Newspeak.  Plain and simple.

[wherorangi]

is that the young people, these students and many others of the same age, are talking back far more so than any previous generations

is not enough anymore for them to take what they are told to do without question, or accept it even. They will articulate their concerns. And if/when their elders are unable or unwilling to explain themselves, thats an issue for the elders to address in themselves

+

i just touch on the elder thing. Respect for our elders

back in the day we respected our elders bc our elders had earned the right to be old. Only the wise got to be old. All the silly people never got old. They never made it to old. They got killed bc silly, or stupid, or unlucky or just plain unfortunate. Was quite a feat to actual end up as a old person back in the day. Well-earned even

we didnt respect them bc they were old. We respected them bc they were wise

today we dont get killed anywhere near the same rate. So lots of people who are silly and/or stupid end up old. Silly/stupid gets zero respect, no matter how old the person is

+

i was at a hui one time with my great grandmother. A old man got up and start rabbit on and on. And on and on and on. About nothing

after a long while my great grandmother rise and cut him down. She said: I have known you all your life. You were stupid as a young man and you are still stupid now in your dotage. We all here have cows to milk in 2 hours time. Except for you. So sit down now, you are done

[Rhonda Huntress]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

The article makes a distinction:

{snip}

The ultimate aim, it seems, is to turn campuses into “safe spaces” where young adults are shielded from words and ideas that make some uncomfortable.

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Yep.  Still newspeak.  We can't have any ideas being shared that Big Brother did not aprove after all.

[wherorangi]

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BilliJo Aldrin wrote:

Its political correctness run amok.

People try and tell me political correctness is about being polite and respectful, whereas its actually about stifling critical debate and unpopular opinions.

 

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this statement is nonsense

saying this is just no-think passive-aggressive rubbish

like: "I can say whatever I like bc is my right to do so". And then complain when the other person says: well I heard what said and I am telling you, that you full of chit

[Prokofy Neva]

It's mainly Americans, but I've seen it with Europeans and even Russians, too.

The phenomenon is worse in SL because of the mode of communication involving mainly not voice, but typed phrases that are sent and often not read while the other person is typing his or her own phrase. 

The Lindens exacerbate all this with their "G" and "M" and "Adult" ratings that are so crazy-quilt and poorly defined or enforced (those last two go together).

They should convert every "G" mainland sim to an "M" and create a "G" region if they absolutely have to just out of the old teen grid sims which are contiguous. 

Another good idea would be to require that membership in SL is for 18 and older only and enforce with collection of ID. 

But the Lindens need to maximize the population, and they still have notions about SL for use by educators on the Mainland (which they should jettison) so this patchwork remains, whereby a 16-year-old only allowed on a "G" sim in theory can merely walk to the edge of the sim and peer into the "M" sim next door where racy activity may be going on.

I think the Atlantic analysis is all wrong tho (like 100 other pieces on this topic that think the problem is over-sensitive kids). I think it's about hardened, seasoned cadre adults in extremist movements, such as the BDS movement jerking the strings of people on campus in various ways to ill end, and that's why it needs to be repelled.

My comment at Atlantic:

 

There's another name for "vindictive protectiveness" -- Bolshevism, other kinds of extremist sectarianism. It's become customary to explain the phenomenon on campuses -- which has seeped into life more broadly -- as somehow related to fragile, wilting under-experienced types who have not "developed a thick skin" and are finding it "overwhelming" to deal with different ideas that challenge their own.

When I first heard my daughter bringing home from college this term "micro-aggression," I was baffled but then as the years progressed I figured it out.

There is nothing fragile or wilting AT ALL about this organized, trained, cadre movement affecting campuses. It's not about weak youth but seasoned, sectarian adults who have found that the PERFECT cover for extremist, militant ideologies is "protection of the vulnerable." What's really at work here are Marxist-style identity politics and virulent sectarianism disguised as "concern". The cadres have figured out that the easiest way to disrupt a campus or the larger society is to inject these false controversies and antagonisms that somehow we must all accommodate.

It reaches such insanity that right now, a girl on my daughter's Facebook feed is screaming about a notice put out by the NYC Department of Health warning women who are pregnant or planning on becoming pregnant not to go to the countries where there is Zika virus. She finds this paternalist and sexist. It's outrageous, she even believes that by changing just a few words in their notice, the NYC department will convert from its misogynous statement to a statement that respects women's bodies and selves.

What's really going on with something like that? Zealous, militant, determined, aggressive CONTROL or at least attempt at control. Far from being about the clueless or the weak, it's about the very conniving and strong who want the kind of totalitarian control over other people that Stalin or Mao had.

This is why these sorts of things don't need compassion, understanding, various accommodations of "protection" but the strongest possible pushback that we can muster against totalitarian, rigid thinking and a battle -- because that is what it takes -- for the freedom of the mind. Extremists have taken their battle to language because they know that is the easiest thing to get nervous professors and administrators worried about losing funding or ruining their reputations to change.

The professor who said that people would have to tolerate all kinds of Halloween costumes, even things they didn't like, such as parodies of Obama, was exactly right. This is the norm and the desired standard for an open society -- tolerance of expression. The idea that people who have to face such openness in fact are dealing with the patriarch's oppressiveness under the guise of liberalism is part of the whole Bolshevik scam. Nothing of the sort is going on, and the student who doesn't like certain Halloween costumes is just as free as the costume-wearer to put on another costume or start a petition-signing table.

Unfortunately, with this kind of analysis about the "vulnerable" intruding on every debate of the subject, few are pushing back hard in the way we all need to be doing strenuously, especially so that this insanity doesn't spread from campuses.

And the result is Trump. The result is Trump. Just keep realizing that: the result is Trump, and you asked for it by your inaction.

[Pamela Galli]

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wherorangi wrote:

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BilliJo Aldrin wrote:

Its political correctness run amok.

People try and tell me political correctness is about being polite and respectful, whereas its actually about stifling critical debate and unpopular opinions.

 

---

this statement is nonsense

saying this is just no-think passive-aggressive rubbish

like: "I can say whatever I like bc is my right to do so". And then complain when the other person says: well I heard what said and I am telling you, that you full of chit

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The problem is when the other person says You are full of chit and need to be punished. 

[wherorangi]

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Pamela Galli wrote:

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wherorangi wrote:

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BilliJo Aldrin wrote:

Its political correctness run amok.

People try and tell me political correctness is about being polite and respectful, whereas its actually about stifling critical debate and unpopular opinions.

 

---

this statement is nonsense

saying this is just no-think passive-aggressive rubbish

like: "I can say whatever I like bc is my right to do so". And then complain when the other person says: well I heard what said and I am telling you, that you full of chit

---

The problem is when the other person says You are full of chit and need to be punished. 

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yes agree

what we need be careful of is that we dont conflate the two. They are not mutually inclusive

+

is another article I read maybe 2 weeks ago now. I will try find it again and link if is worth any further discussion

was article about the author's involvement in work that has been ongoing since about the 1970s. Cultural Awareness and Diversity in the Workplace. Culture also encompassing gender, sexual orientation as well as race

what happened was that large employers, by and large, embraced this as an ideal for their companies. So all good

then what happened was that the author and others involved in helping companies create programmes and environments noticed something quite interesting

language, and how it was being used to shield people from reality. Like they noticed that HR would say stuff like: We need to get a Culturally Diverse person for this role. Instead of saying we need to hire a black person, or a woman, or whichever

and then they noticed that this kinda way of language shielding was right across the workforces of quite a number of companies, at all kinds of levels top to bottom

so what they did was to change their approach. They now just call the programmes what they actually are. Anti-Racism In The Workplace, Anti-Sexism in The Workplace, etc. A spade is a spade

what they have since found thru this spade is a spade approach that people are actually now confronting the actual issues as it relates to them personally

meaning that previously being seen as somewhat casually insensitive to cultural awareness and diversity, doesnt necessarily make me a bad person

however, being somewhat insensitive to racist tendencies and sexist tendencies is not something a person can easily excuse. Thats the reality now, for lots of people who do work for these companies, and have to deal with. Their own casual insensitivities toward racism, sexism, etc. And lots of people go: faaaa.ch ! really ! I have to actually deal with this myself

 

 

 

[Derek Torvalar]

Lest we forget.

[Pamela Galli]

What I am talking about goes way beyond expecting/ demanding cultural sensitivity. It's not even really about that. It is about extreme intolerance for hearing or seeing anything that is in any way unpleasant, and the desire to punish those who present it.  IOW, about the repression of ideas and diversity. 

This was widely circulated, very alarming:

 

http://www.vox.com/2015/6/3/8706323/college-professor-afraid

 

[Pamela Galli]

The relevance to this forum is that people come here after some slight they have experienced, and expect strangers on a forum to rise up in umbrage with them. They are insulted at the idea that it is just one of the minor nuisances that everyone has to endure at one time or another.  If they were offended or insulted in someway, they feel that it should be a very great concern to everyone and involve the punishment of the evil doers by LL.

[Sahra Beresford]

In reply to wherorangi.

 

                                          I realise this is getting off topic but would like to point out the passing of this bill has made no difference what so ever to our countrys dark history of child abuse. Children are still being badly injured and murdered by their own families. The bill I believed passed by a narrow margin.

[wherorangi]

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Sahra Beresford wrote:

In reply to wherorangi.

 

                                          I realise this is getting off topic but would like to point out the passing of this bill has made no difference what so ever to our countrys dark history of child abuse. Children are still being badly injured and murdered by their own families. The bill I believed passed by a narrow margin.

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it passed 113 to 7, after as you are aware we had a massive nationwide debate about adults using physical violence on children, and defending the violence they were enacting on children as reasonable force. Kiwi children are now protected by law from adults using this as a defence for their actions

we also have laws against murder. The law in itself doesnt stop people from murdering others. There are legal consequences tho when we do murder someone else