Uniquely Stupid and Incredibly Coddled: Jonathan Haidt On How We Lost Our Collective Minds (And Whether We'll Ever Find Them Again)

The Unspeakeasy With Meghan Daum

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.7 • 855 Ratings

🗓️ 30 May 2022

⏱️ 77 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

If you're familiar with the so-called "heterodox" space, this week's guest on The Unspeakable scarcely needs an introduction. In 2018, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, along with author and first amendment advocate Gregg Lukianoff, published The Coddling of The American Mind: How Good Intentions And Bad Ideas Are Setting Up A Generation For Failure. The book was central to a burgeoning public conversation that asked why young people, especially students on college campuses, were so unwilling to engage with ideas they perceived as dangerous—and in fact why they found so many ideas dangerous to begin with. Jon's research offered crucial datapoints as to why this was happening and suggested that a handful of intersecting cultural trends—fearful parenting, omnipresent social media and the corporatization of higher education, to name a few—had resulted in a generation marked by high anxiety and a low sense of autonomy. His more recent work, including his article last month in The Atlantic, "Why The Past Ten Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid," goes beyond what's happened with young people and looks at our collapsing institutions more broadly. Jon and Meghan talked about that article and covered lots of new territory, too, including a project of Meghan's that she has just begun to talk about, a heterodox women's community. Many of her observations about the male dominated "free think" space and women's reluctance to speak their minds map on to Jon's own research about girls' social development.

Relevant links:

https://www.thecoddling.com

https://heterodoxacademy.org

https://letgrow.org

https://openmindplatform.org

Guest Bio:

Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist at New York University's Stern School of Business. His research examines the intuitive foundations of morality and how morality varies across cultural and political divisions. He is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis (2006) and of The New York Times bestsellers The Righteous Mind (2012) and The Coddling of the American Mind (2018, with Greg Lukianoff.) Haidt has given four TED talks and is a co-founder of Heterodox Academy, a nonpartisan nonprofit that promotes open inquiry, viewpoint diversity, and constructive disagreement in institutions of higher learning. Since 2018, he has been studying the contributions of social media to the decline of teen mental health and the rise of political dysfunction and he is currently writing a new book, "Life After Babel: Adapting To A World We Can No Longer Share."

Transcript

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0:00.0	We're a biological species that has this incredibly complex social developmental pathway.
0:08.3	And when you had girls meeting in small groups and talking about other girls, yes, they were practicing social skills.
0:15.2	And they were trying to figure what are the limits and when do we show compassion?
0:19.0	And it plays out at a certain speed.
0:20.7	And I think there's
0:21.2	a speed limit. You know, maybe you can deal with five or ten different scenarios or conflicts in a day,
0:27.2	but I don't think you can deal with 500. I don't think you can deal with just a river of stupid
0:31.2	conflict over nothing every day, all day, day after day. So I think we put our kids, you know, it's almost as if we said,
0:39.2	hey, you know, I don't see any reason why kids couldn't develop in outer space. Let's just raise
0:43.4	kids in a zero gravity environment orbiting the moon. I bet they'll turn out okay. And my guess is
0:47.6	that their heart would be malformed, their eyes wouldn't work, right? Like, you can't grow up in an environment as radically different as the one we evolved in and come out okay.
0:56.9	And that's, I think, what changed around 2010 plus or minus.
1:00.9	We've been raising kids, the social equivalent of orbiting the moon.
1:08.6	Welcome to the unspeakable podcast.
1:10.8	I'm your host, Megan Down. If you're familiar with the so-called
1:14.4	heterodox space, and if you're a regular listener to this podcast, you almost certainly are,
1:20.0	my guest this week needs no introduction. In 2018, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, along with
1:27.3	author and First Amendment advocate
1:29.0	Greg Lukianoff, published The Coddling of the American Mind, how good intentions and bad
1:34.8	ideas are setting up a generation for failure. That book was part of a larger conversation that
1:41.0	was burbling up about why young people, especially students on college campuses,
1:46.1	were having such a hard time wrestling with ideas they perceived as dangerous. And in fact,
	...

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