And yet I read Haidt's piece the same day I saw all the reports and clips of what Barbara Walters had to put up with, as well as the deeply unsettling clip of her interview with Sean Connery (about slapping women -- google it). Toughness and dignity yes, but can you blame Gen Z for saying why should anyone put up with that in the first place, to achieve toughness? I do wonder.
I think you are painting with too broad a brush with "left of center" or even "progressives" on this topic. Your issue is with a very online white uber educated subset of the left. "Elizabeth Warren Democrats" maybe.
I agree with you, partly. Yes, "resilience" can sound like a smug "suck it up, buttercup". Until we realise how expansive this (lack of) resilience seems to be. It's not just making it through challenges, or suffering. I read this fascinating piece https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60624/young-adults-are-struggling-with-their-mental-health-is-more-childhood-independence-the-answer and for some young people it's an inability to even face things that most of us wouldn't even register as "challenging". Going to the store alone, driving to an errand.
I'm not sure "resilience" is even the right term, given that it does imply some kind of strength in adversity. Rather than a complete refocusing of what adversity is. I don't say this to criticise young people who have been raised in a worldview that was very different to that of their parents and grandparents.
100% on the therapy thing. I think that plays into this a lot. We've therapized essentially every aspect of life. "Trauma" and "healing" are words used in connection with everyday events like having an angry driver yell at you from his car rather than the brutal kinds of abuse and suffering that those words used to refer to.
I hear a lot of people say "Everybody should be in therapy!" This to me feels very stupid. It's like saying, "Everybody should have their arm in a cast!" Yeah, if your arm's broken, you should. And if you have a reason to be in therapy, you should be in therapy. But we don't have to act like everyone has to use this very specific tool at all points in their life. A good therapist is fantastic for processing difficult, sticky, enduring psychological problems in your life. You don't need to go to therapy because you had an argument with a friend or because your job is kinda lame. Convincing young people that they need this amount of psychospecialist counseling in their lives is I think one of the biggest contributors to the resilience deficit.
Your last paragraph poses the essential question: Why is Jonathan Haidt almost alone in putting forward ANY nuanced argument about the problem (and the stakes) of a generation raised without opportunities to acquire resilience? As you note, you don't need to agree with him on every point to appreciate the fact that he is speaking up, intelligently and urgently.
Great piece. Stuff like this makes me proud to be a subscriber.
Funny thing though, and this goes back to the Voldemort problem you once wrote about, is that it really doesn't matter what word we use to describe what's going on; it'll eventually become right-wing-coded and unspeakable anyway.
Okay, so "snowflake" and "victimhood" are out. Fair enough. But now "resilience" is on its way there too. And then the next term after that, etc.
How can we name a problem if we're not allowed a word to describe it?
>Of course, Haidt isn’t helping himself any. The term “culture of victimhood” reminds many people of the “snowflake” insult, the idea than anyone from a marginalized background who complains about injustice is really just self-involved and weak.
I think this is worth picking a little quibble with, mainly because I'm interested in everyone's experiences with how the derogatory term "snowflake" is used. In my experience, "culture of victimhood" is a classic conservative term used over several decades for anyone marginalized complaining about injustice, and so in my opinion Freddie should have stopped here without relating it to "snowflake". My interpretation of how "snowflake" is used is slightly different: I understand it to refer *both* to fragility (snowflakes melt and fall apart easily) *and* to uniqueness (no two snowflakes are exactly alike). The point with the "snowflake" insult is that the "speshul snowflake" person is making a point both of being fragile and of belonging to a very specific combination of demographic categories and is playing up both, not even necessarily in a context of protesting against injustice. This is a criticism of many very online millennials-and-younger which to my point of view is often valid if unkind; I would not say it's an all-around conservative talking point. And I am emphatically not conservative but tend to agree with Haidt that the rise in "snowflakeyness" among very online youth comes *partly* from a norm of valorizing victimhood in a particular way while there is also a norm that plays a crucial role of generally enjoying identity markers quite apart from claiming victimhood. (Apparently this platform doesn't recognize "valorize" as a word? :P)
I'm curious about what others think: is "snowflake" just a more recent rendition of the classic right-wing term "culture of victimhood"?
As a suggestion for a possible future post, if I am recalling your book correctly you were fairly skeptical of "grit" as a quality that could address inequality in education outcomes.
I'd be curious if your research had found that grit, resilience, waiting for the second Oreo or anything in that basket of concepts is easier to teach. As you cover here, even if it won't change achievement gaps, it may have other life benefits.
I think it pretty indisputable that contemporary culture valorizes victimhood. Otherwise, humans would not seek it, or constantly refer to their victim status.
One of the myriad and innumerable ways in which cats are superior to humans is that, while cats may ask for help, we don't feel sorry for ourselves.
I have young kids and it sure is a balance finding the right amount of autonomy with the right amount of protection I need to provide.
On one end you can become “bean dad” — to be clear, I thought that was just tedious but not abusive. The extreme is obviously something like those kids that raise kids or fend for themselves.
Great article Freddie. I’m always amazed when I talk to Gen X parents who thoroughly enjoyed the level of personal freedom they had growing up and also wouldn’t dream of giving it to their own children.
Great piece. At some point we have to just stop giving a shit what motives the bad-faith online prog left tries to impute on anyone pursuing rational, reasoned thought. These are the same people who’ve made Jordan Peterson a villain of toxic masculinity for telling young men to stand up straight and make their beds. Surely he’s no hero, but he’s not a villain either.
Also, The Coddling of the American Mind is mandatory reading, especially for parents.
EDIT: I would like to also point out that Haidt has shown, fairly convincingly, that the “culture of victimhood” is a SYMPTOM of declining resilience in young children that began about 30 years ago, not a cause. Social trends have been heading in that direction for a few decades but the institutional focus on safetyism in universities and companies with a younger workforce is only there by popular demand. Those kids are lost, or maybe they’ll age out of it eventually, but truly the only course correction starts with young children being raised today to develop better coping skills and self-reliance. It’s going to take a sustained effort for 15 years to reverse where we are today.
That is a wonderful and thoughtful paper. Yes, we need nuance, yes we need resilience,. My only disagreement with you is that progressive politics, as you rightly point out, are all about harm reduction. Big daddy-state has mad it its one task to reduce harm, and atha will not promote resilience. But I guess I start to tread thin ice, so I better leave it at that.
I think a real challenge is that as society becomes wealthier and living standards improve people have to go through less adversity. I have never gone 24 hours without food, never had to had to work manual labor beyond stocking shelves, never gotten badly beat up. And all these things are signs of progress, but also mean that I'm softer than some of my ancestors, and in many ways less resilient. How do we think of these tradeoffs? Less adversity is good, but adversity can build resilience. I have spent money on primitive camping gear and Crossfit classes to simulate the adversity I don't face in my life, which is pretty silly when I actually think about it, but also better than not doing it.
I think I might agree with Haidt about social media being the biggest problem for the young, because *multiple* avenues of pathology meander out of it. There’s the “culture of victimhood” and snowflakeyness (which I think are related but not necessarily the same, as another commenter pointed out), but there’s also hypersexualization of kids/teens (just saw a great video by 21yo Toni Bryanne lamenting this; viewer beware, there are multiple TikToks of young teen girls looking and behaving very much not like young teen girls), depression/isolation, body dysmorphia encouraged by the Instagram aesthetic, and other identity-based issues.
And yet I read Haidt's piece the same day I saw all the reports and clips of what Barbara Walters had to put up with, as well as the deeply unsettling clip of her interview with Sean Connery (about slapping women -- google it). Toughness and dignity yes, but can you blame Gen Z for saying why should anyone put up with that in the first place, to achieve toughness? I do wonder.
I think you are painting with too broad a brush with "left of center" or even "progressives" on this topic. Your issue is with a very online white uber educated subset of the left. "Elizabeth Warren Democrats" maybe.
I agree with you, partly. Yes, "resilience" can sound like a smug "suck it up, buttercup". Until we realise how expansive this (lack of) resilience seems to be. It's not just making it through challenges, or suffering. I read this fascinating piece https://www.kqed.org/mindshift/60624/young-adults-are-struggling-with-their-mental-health-is-more-childhood-independence-the-answer and for some young people it's an inability to even face things that most of us wouldn't even register as "challenging". Going to the store alone, driving to an errand.
I'm not sure "resilience" is even the right term, given that it does imply some kind of strength in adversity. Rather than a complete refocusing of what adversity is. I don't say this to criticise young people who have been raised in a worldview that was very different to that of their parents and grandparents.
100% on the therapy thing. I think that plays into this a lot. We've therapized essentially every aspect of life. "Trauma" and "healing" are words used in connection with everyday events like having an angry driver yell at you from his car rather than the brutal kinds of abuse and suffering that those words used to refer to.
I hear a lot of people say "Everybody should be in therapy!" This to me feels very stupid. It's like saying, "Everybody should have their arm in a cast!" Yeah, if your arm's broken, you should. And if you have a reason to be in therapy, you should be in therapy. But we don't have to act like everyone has to use this very specific tool at all points in their life. A good therapist is fantastic for processing difficult, sticky, enduring psychological problems in your life. You don't need to go to therapy because you had an argument with a friend or because your job is kinda lame. Convincing young people that they need this amount of psychospecialist counseling in their lives is I think one of the biggest contributors to the resilience deficit.
Your last paragraph poses the essential question: Why is Jonathan Haidt almost alone in putting forward ANY nuanced argument about the problem (and the stakes) of a generation raised without opportunities to acquire resilience? As you note, you don't need to agree with him on every point to appreciate the fact that he is speaking up, intelligently and urgently.
"“snowflake” insult, the idea than anyone from a marginalized background who complains about injustice is really just self-involved and weak. "
This surprises me. I've only heard this term used to refer to whiny privileged kids of helicopter parents.
Great piece. Stuff like this makes me proud to be a subscriber.
Funny thing though, and this goes back to the Voldemort problem you once wrote about, is that it really doesn't matter what word we use to describe what's going on; it'll eventually become right-wing-coded and unspeakable anyway.
Okay, so "snowflake" and "victimhood" are out. Fair enough. But now "resilience" is on its way there too. And then the next term after that, etc.
How can we name a problem if we're not allowed a word to describe it?
>Of course, Haidt isn’t helping himself any. The term “culture of victimhood” reminds many people of the “snowflake” insult, the idea than anyone from a marginalized background who complains about injustice is really just self-involved and weak.
I think this is worth picking a little quibble with, mainly because I'm interested in everyone's experiences with how the derogatory term "snowflake" is used. In my experience, "culture of victimhood" is a classic conservative term used over several decades for anyone marginalized complaining about injustice, and so in my opinion Freddie should have stopped here without relating it to "snowflake". My interpretation of how "snowflake" is used is slightly different: I understand it to refer *both* to fragility (snowflakes melt and fall apart easily) *and* to uniqueness (no two snowflakes are exactly alike). The point with the "snowflake" insult is that the "speshul snowflake" person is making a point both of being fragile and of belonging to a very specific combination of demographic categories and is playing up both, not even necessarily in a context of protesting against injustice. This is a criticism of many very online millennials-and-younger which to my point of view is often valid if unkind; I would not say it's an all-around conservative talking point. And I am emphatically not conservative but tend to agree with Haidt that the rise in "snowflakeyness" among very online youth comes *partly* from a norm of valorizing victimhood in a particular way while there is also a norm that plays a crucial role of generally enjoying identity markers quite apart from claiming victimhood. (Apparently this platform doesn't recognize "valorize" as a word? :P)
I'm curious about what others think: is "snowflake" just a more recent rendition of the classic right-wing term "culture of victimhood"?
As a suggestion for a possible future post, if I am recalling your book correctly you were fairly skeptical of "grit" as a quality that could address inequality in education outcomes.
I'd be curious if your research had found that grit, resilience, waiting for the second Oreo or anything in that basket of concepts is easier to teach. As you cover here, even if it won't change achievement gaps, it may have other life benefits.
I think it pretty indisputable that contemporary culture valorizes victimhood. Otherwise, humans would not seek it, or constantly refer to their victim status.
One of the myriad and innumerable ways in which cats are superior to humans is that, while cats may ask for help, we don't feel sorry for ourselves.
I have young kids and it sure is a balance finding the right amount of autonomy with the right amount of protection I need to provide.
On one end you can become “bean dad” — to be clear, I thought that was just tedious but not abusive. The extreme is obviously something like those kids that raise kids or fend for themselves.
The other end is a bunch of useless pod people.
Great article Freddie. I’m always amazed when I talk to Gen X parents who thoroughly enjoyed the level of personal freedom they had growing up and also wouldn’t dream of giving it to their own children.
Great piece. At some point we have to just stop giving a shit what motives the bad-faith online prog left tries to impute on anyone pursuing rational, reasoned thought. These are the same people who’ve made Jordan Peterson a villain of toxic masculinity for telling young men to stand up straight and make their beds. Surely he’s no hero, but he’s not a villain either.
Also, The Coddling of the American Mind is mandatory reading, especially for parents.
EDIT: I would like to also point out that Haidt has shown, fairly convincingly, that the “culture of victimhood” is a SYMPTOM of declining resilience in young children that began about 30 years ago, not a cause. Social trends have been heading in that direction for a few decades but the institutional focus on safetyism in universities and companies with a younger workforce is only there by popular demand. Those kids are lost, or maybe they’ll age out of it eventually, but truly the only course correction starts with young children being raised today to develop better coping skills and self-reliance. It’s going to take a sustained effort for 15 years to reverse where we are today.
That is a wonderful and thoughtful paper. Yes, we need nuance, yes we need resilience,. My only disagreement with you is that progressive politics, as you rightly point out, are all about harm reduction. Big daddy-state has mad it its one task to reduce harm, and atha will not promote resilience. But I guess I start to tread thin ice, so I better leave it at that.
I think a real challenge is that as society becomes wealthier and living standards improve people have to go through less adversity. I have never gone 24 hours without food, never had to had to work manual labor beyond stocking shelves, never gotten badly beat up. And all these things are signs of progress, but also mean that I'm softer than some of my ancestors, and in many ways less resilient. How do we think of these tradeoffs? Less adversity is good, but adversity can build resilience. I have spent money on primitive camping gear and Crossfit classes to simulate the adversity I don't face in my life, which is pretty silly when I actually think about it, but also better than not doing it.
I think I might agree with Haidt about social media being the biggest problem for the young, because *multiple* avenues of pathology meander out of it. There’s the “culture of victimhood” and snowflakeyness (which I think are related but not necessarily the same, as another commenter pointed out), but there’s also hypersexualization of kids/teens (just saw a great video by 21yo Toni Bryanne lamenting this; viewer beware, there are multiple TikToks of young teen girls looking and behaving very much not like young teen girls), depression/isolation, body dysmorphia encouraged by the Instagram aesthetic, and other identity-based issues.