![]() ![]() For all their self-conscious reasonableness, and their promises that CBT can master negative emotion, Lukianoff and Haidt often seem slightly hurt. Like Trump, the authors romanticise a past before 'identity' but get fuzzy and impatient when history itself comes up. The rhetorical appeal, here, shares a structure with the appeal that carried the enemy in chief of political correctness to the White House: 'That’s just common sense'. Who will fix the crisis? The people who are already in charge. The citations in this book draw a circle around a closed world. The style that does befit an expert, apparently, is the style of TED talks, thinktanks and fellow Atlantic writers and psychologists. ![]() ![]() The Coddling of the American Mind is less interesting for its anecdotes or arguments, which are familiar, than as an epitome of a contemporary liberal style. (This framing also explains how they can write hundreds of pages about what’s wrong with contemporary higher education and not mention debt or adjuncts). The framing leaves no room to consider how historical and social change might legitimately change institutions or individuals, or that individuals might want to change their world. ![]()
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