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You should read the book “The Coddling of The American Mind”. It’s largely about the cancel culture, over protection, and how the voice on college campuses has

You should read the book “The Coddling of The American Mind”. It’s largely about the cancel culture, over protection, and how the voice on college campuses has been changing. How we went from college being a safe place for open debate and discussion to an environment which is becoming less welcoming of differing opinions and perspectives. The authors try to identify the origins of the change and use data and statistics to back up their claims. I thought it was an interesting read.

RangerScience 6y ago
IMHO, there's something to the push to change how we go about discourse. As an example - it's slight, but feel the difference between "You should read...", "You'd like reading...", "I think you'd really like...", "I got a lot out of reading...". I see it as pretty similar to how some people see removal of spanking your kids as being coddling, versus making sure your kids are wearing pads when they're learning to rollerblade, versus wearing a helmet everywhere.
- sieabahlpark 6y ago
  Kind of proving his point. I guess regional or environmental dialect is somehow offensive and abrasive?
- RonanTheGrey 6y ago
  > it's slight, but feel the difference between "You should read...", "You'd like reading...", "I think you'd really like...", "I got a lot out of reading...". I used to obsess about things like this and then someone pointed out to me, "You'll never, ever get it right. You will word something some way, attempting to be gentle, and they will still be offended. You will NEVER win. So the only thing you can do is be sincere, without intention to harm, and you can sleep soundly knowing that how someone CHOSE to receive what you said is their own business, not yours." Obviously we have a responsibility for the message we send. But how it is ultimately received is not up to us, and attempts to micro-manage language, like the above, will never result in the intended outcome.
  - necovek 6y ago
    Well put! Another thing that I am not a fan of is when people ask to always mention that it's only one's opinion. Well duh, unless obviously supported by verifiable evidence, it is only my opinion. In my opinion!
    - RonanTheGrey 6y ago
      Agreed, another statement I don't find fulfilling is "oh well it's always been this way". Well I mean yes, it has... but we're discussing it because we're considering the option that maybe there's another way, right? Same with "it's just an opinion". Well, yes, that's kinda the point. Let's discuss the idea, not where in my head it came from.
  - RangerScience 6y ago
    It's true that you can't control the outcome. I do lean towards certain language in general, but more so I try to use each of the many options artistically, based on the circumstances. Who am I talking to? What are we talking about? You're correct that ultimately, I'm not responsible for how someone takes things that I say when I'm being sincere... but I'm still one of the people that lives with the outcome. Might as well try for positives. Personally? I do get pretty solid results with these kinds of micro-adjustments. Or, rather, since these are toy examples, what these kinds of micro-adjustments do when they're applied in larger situations. One mechanism for this is that I'm making an internal choice in how I'm thinking and framing something in my own mind, and that "vibe" impacts body language, conversational flow, attentiveness, how I understand and receive what they're saying, etc. I find that the starkest and simplest is whether I start sentences with "I", "you", or neither. Flat statements have one impact. You don't sound like you've had much experience with these variations and their impacts. Am I putting the conversational pivot in myself, in your self, or between/outside of us? How do you find yourself responding to the various options?
    - RonanTheGrey 6y ago
      > You don't sound like you've had much experience with these variations and their impacts. Lol... I have had tons. In more than one language. My point was, that despite your best efforts, you will still offend someone eventually and that that's the point at which you can't take responsibility for how they feel. For a time I did competitive speech and one of the precepts I operated on (and still do to this day) is "know your audience". It's always beneficial to frame your message to the intended recipients. But what happens when an unintended recipient receives it? Or, due to local differences (and this specifically happened to me), the use of a word was received differently than you intended - than it was elsewhere in the same language? There's only so much control you have. Thus, what you truly control is your intentions, and people must make an effort to expect you are acting in good faith. So much of good communication simply comes down to that simple point. An expectation of good faith. I expect that in the modern world this is where much of the breakdown in communication is coming from, really: everyone seems to be expecting "HAHA GOTCHA!" rather than a good faith conversation, and more worryingly, are more recently probably right.
donw 6y ago
Added to my reading list, thanks! I'd wager that the "self esteem" movement, or more accurately, whatever caused it to gain traction in the American psyche, kicked off the downward spiral to where-we-are-now. In a nutshell, several generations of American children were taught, systematically, to ignore social signals that conflicted with their self-image, and were thus deprived of a very critical part of their childhood: in where they learn to moderate their behavior in order to get along with other people. Self-esteem education was based on the (correct!) observation that people with high self-esteem are healthier and more successful. Given my extensive experience with educators, I am not in any way surprised that the conclusion they reached was that high self-esteem must cause health and success, rather than health and success resulting in high self-esteem. Educators seem to have this anti-Newtonian view on the world, in which reactions cause actions. But I digress. I was subjected to this as a child, and it took something on the order of a decade of living abroad -- mostly in Japan, a country which, lacking any concept of "self", offers no affordance for "self-esteem" -- to fully realize the sheer horror of what I had been steeped in as a child. As to why this has come to a head since the advent of social media, well, we're at the point where an entire generation which socializes primarily through virtual means has come of age. When your social interactions are driven by proximity -- e.g., you are limited to people that physically exist near you -- then you are forced to learn some degree of moderation. Because if you can't get along with others, you find yourself rather in deficit of friends. But now, it doesn't matter how crazy you are. If you worship Mao or Hitler or Stalin or whatever, there is a community for people like you. No amount of ostracism will remedy this. That worked when your ability to make friendships had real, physical constraints. In the fully-connected schizophrenic hivemind world of 2020, casting people out of your tribe will, at best, only deprive them of a moderating influence. Still not sure where this goes, but I am fairly certain it's got at least thirty-one flavors of ugly.
- taneq 6y ago
  The core problem with the self-esteem movement is that they try to promote high self-esteem disconnected from any true achievement or worth. High self-esteem certainly correlates with healthy, successful people (of course healthy successful people have good self esteem!) but trying to artificially inflate peoples' self esteem to create health and success is driving the causation backwards. Self esteem devoid of any underlying achievement is hollow. In the end you're basically manufacturing narcissists, with a fragile falsely inflated self image covering a chasm of insecurity.
hintymad 6y ago
In a word, our education system produced a generation of pussies, who think all truths and justices have to flow from their feelings?

RangerScience 6y ago

IMHO, there's something to the push to change how we go about discourse. As an example - it's slight, but feel the difference between "You should read...", "You'd like reading...", "I think you'd really like...", "I got a lot out of reading...". I see it as pretty similar to how some people see removal of spanking your kids as being coddling, versus making sure your kids are wearing pads when they're learning to rollerblade, versus wearing a helmet everywhere.

sieabahlpark 6y ago
Kind of proving his point. I guess regional or environmental dialect is somehow offensive and abrasive?
RonanTheGrey 6y ago
> it's slight, but feel the difference between "You should read...", "You'd like reading...", "I think you'd really like...", "I got a lot out of reading...". I used to obsess about things like this and then someone pointed out to me, "You'll never, ever get it right. You will word something some way, attempting to be gentle, and they will still be offended. You will NEVER win. So the only thing you can do is be sincere, without intention to harm, and you can sleep soundly knowing that how someone CHOSE to receive what you said is their own business, not yours." Obviously we have a responsibility for the message we send. But how it is ultimately received is not up to us, and attempts to micro-manage language, like the above, will never result in the intended outcome.
- necovek 6y ago
  Well put! Another thing that I am not a fan of is when people ask to always mention that it's only one's opinion. Well duh, unless obviously supported by verifiable evidence, it is only my opinion. In my opinion!
  - RonanTheGrey 6y ago
    Agreed, another statement I don't find fulfilling is "oh well it's always been this way". Well I mean yes, it has... but we're discussing it because we're considering the option that maybe there's another way, right? Same with "it's just an opinion". Well, yes, that's kinda the point. Let's discuss the idea, not where in my head it came from.
- RangerScience 6y ago
  It's true that you can't control the outcome. I do lean towards certain language in general, but more so I try to use each of the many options artistically, based on the circumstances. Who am I talking to? What are we talking about? You're correct that ultimately, I'm not responsible for how someone takes things that I say when I'm being sincere... but I'm still one of the people that lives with the outcome. Might as well try for positives. Personally? I do get pretty solid results with these kinds of micro-adjustments. Or, rather, since these are toy examples, what these kinds of micro-adjustments do when they're applied in larger situations. One mechanism for this is that I'm making an internal choice in how I'm thinking and framing something in my own mind, and that "vibe" impacts body language, conversational flow, attentiveness, how I understand and receive what they're saying, etc. I find that the starkest and simplest is whether I start sentences with "I", "you", or neither. Flat statements have one impact. You don't sound like you've had much experience with these variations and their impacts. Am I putting the conversational pivot in myself, in your self, or between/outside of us? How do you find yourself responding to the various options?
  - RonanTheGrey 6y ago
    > You don't sound like you've had much experience with these variations and their impacts. Lol... I have had tons. In more than one language. My point was, that despite your best efforts, you will still offend someone eventually and that that's the point at which you can't take responsibility for how they feel. For a time I did competitive speech and one of the precepts I operated on (and still do to this day) is "know your audience". It's always beneficial to frame your message to the intended recipients. But what happens when an unintended recipient receives it? Or, due to local differences (and this specifically happened to me), the use of a word was received differently than you intended - than it was elsewhere in the same language? There's only so much control you have. Thus, what you truly control is your intentions, and people must make an effort to expect you are acting in good faith. So much of good communication simply comes down to that simple point. An expectation of good faith. I expect that in the modern world this is where much of the breakdown in communication is coming from, really: everyone seems to be expecting "HAHA GOTCHA!" rather than a good faith conversation, and more worryingly, are more recently probably right.

donw 6y ago

Added to my reading list, thanks! I'd wager that the "self esteem" movement, or more accurately, whatever caused it to gain traction in the American psyche, kicked off the downward spiral to where-we-are-now. In a nutshell, several generations of American children were taught, systematically, to ignore social signals that conflicted with their self-image, and were thus deprived of a very critical part of their childhood: in where they learn to moderate their behavior in order to get along with other people. Self-esteem education was based on the (correct!) observation that people with high self-esteem are healthier and more successful. Given my extensive experience with educators, I am not in any way surprised that the conclusion they reached was that high self-esteem must cause health and success, rather than health and success resulting in high self-esteem. Educators seem to have this anti-Newtonian view on the world, in which reactions cause actions. But I digress. I was subjected to this as a child, and it took something on the order of a decade of living abroad -- mostly in Japan, a country which, lacking any concept of "self", offers no affordance for "self-esteem" -- to fully realize the sheer horror of what I had been steeped in as a child. As to why this has come to a head since the advent of social media, well, we're at the point where an entire generation which socializes primarily through virtual means has come of age. When your social interactions are driven by proximity -- e.g., you are limited to people that physically exist near you -- then you are forced to learn some degree of moderation. Because if you can't get along with others, you find yourself rather in deficit of friends. But now, it doesn't matter how crazy you are. If you worship Mao or Hitler or Stalin or whatever, there is a community for people like you. No amount of ostracism will remedy this. That worked when your ability to make friendships had real, physical constraints. In the fully-connected schizophrenic hivemind world of 2020, casting people out of your tribe will, at best, only deprive them of a moderating influence. Still not sure where this goes, but I am fairly certain it's got at least thirty-one flavors of ugly.

taneq 6y ago
The core problem with the self-esteem movement is that they try to promote high self-esteem disconnected from any true achievement or worth. High self-esteem certainly correlates with healthy, successful people (of course healthy successful people have good self esteem!) but trying to artificially inflate peoples' self esteem to create health and success is driving the causation backwards. Self esteem devoid of any underlying achievement is hollow. In the end you're basically manufacturing narcissists, with a fragile falsely inflated self image covering a chasm of insecurity.

hintymad 6y ago

In a word, our education system produced a generation of pussies, who think all truths and justices have to flow from their feelings?