Although…sometimes I wonder if we have actually stood ourselves a new standard. I remember as a child, when Protestants called the Pope the antichrist (maybe before John Paul, more so); even reading “The Chosen,” the Orthodox baseball team called the kids of the opposing team, from a more liberal group, “apikorsim,” (heretic, someone who does not have a share in the world to come). We’d be horrified by that now.
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That’s basically the description of “dignity culture,” which is the flipside of “victimhood culture.” The problem shows up when you try to apply it to anyone besides “normal” white males. When a woman is sexually harassed at work, does it show a lack of self-worth to report it to a supervisor? Has she succumbed to victimhood culture? If a child is afraid to go to school because they are being bullied, are they seeking personal validation if they say something to a teacher they trust, or are they seeking simply to stop feeling afraid every day? I haven’t even touched the racial issues or power imbalances.
I’m not pretending anything. I’m just telling you the history of the concept and the events that unfolded afterward in the Trump Era, once the right held the reins of power.
This is just wrong. I remember Jerry Falwell boycotting the Teletubbies, for God’s sake.
I’m not sure what brought up this digression.
Okay, let’s review the genealogy of the term “victimhood culture.” It first appeared in an academic paper in 2011 by two conservative scholars, Bradley Campbell and Jason Manning, who followed up with a book in 2014. Conservative pundits picked up on it because it fed into their long-standing claim that universities were bastions of liberalism. By 2018, Campbell and Manning came out with a follow-up book mirrored by Haidt’s book. Simply regarding the timing of the publishing industry, all those works would’ve been written in 2016 prior to (or at the beginning of) the Trump Era. Subsequent events have shown that it was the political right, not the academic left, that was inclined to authoritarianism and suppressing free speech on campuses. Has Kansas State ever been run by far-left administrators? Multiply that by 500 state schools. All of these things are historical facts.
The idea is of recent vintage. Haidt entirely mischaracterized “honor culture” in what you quoted. The slightest provocation doesn’t provoke violence. The majority of the world lives in an honor culture (minus Northern Europe, the US, Canada and any other nation with a Protestant majority, which is an individualistic “guilt” culture). Are you telling me men in Japan are ready to fight at any moment and can’t conduct themselves with dignity? Please. It gives me no confidence in what he says afterward. Show me a single nation where “dignity culture” dominates. There are none.
Everything I’ve said so far is factual, not partisan. Their proposed social/education priorities seemed to be to train the kids to handle everything themselves and not to involve the authorities. I see all sorts of problems with that approach, some of which I detailed above.
Couldn’t agree more.
Of course it’s wrong! That’s the whole point, Jay! It’s just as wrong as you would be if you want to insist that such things are only happening on the right. I agree with you that right now in the U.S. it’s the right that has taken authoritarianism the furthest (by far even!). Getting into the middle of the pissing contest of who all was evil first is just a fool’s errand. Jerry Falwell and his Teletubbies would not have been the first to do any such things. Nor those before them or those before that! It matters not to me who was the first to come up with this or that term for specific injustices or phrases for who suffers them. Injustice has always been here. There is nothing new under the sun. We need to fight it now just as prior generations needed to then.
The book had several big themes, which it did a better job tying together than I did just here and now. My bad. Those three big themes were this:
- Young people are anti-fragile.
- We are all prone to emotional reasoning and confirmation bias. (…”always trust your feelings”)
- We are all prone to dichotomous thinking (tribalism) … (‘us’ vs. ‘them’; ‘good’ vs. ‘evil’)
They think that educational policies have done much that helps push students in the wrong directions on all three of those points rather than helping students emerge from underneath these things. But apart from that - they may indeed be entirely separate categories.
I think they’re probably referring to the perceived honor culture of the U.S. and how that started a couple centuries ago when things like duels were more common. If they were making claims about the wider world, then I’m in no position to argue with you (or them). I don’t know enough of the history. Even here in the U.S. - maybe duels were a lot more rare than what storybook lore would have us believing. I won’t be dying on this hill. But if you are right that there are presently no nations where “dignity culture” predominates, then that is an extremely bleak and sad world you live in, Jay. So you’re saying that even in civilized nations today there is a feeling that dignity is only the birthright of those to whom it is given by those in power? So the Bible and the founding U.S. documents are wrong then? And dignity must be given and can be taken away by the whims of whatever autocrat happens to be in power? What a hell hole! And even now in our politically bleak moments I have enough optimism to think that we still do have a dignity culture, even here still despite the threatening shadow of our present administration! And the belief that human rights are inherent and owned by all is one I pray for the courage to fight for to my last breath. As one recent meme put it: “If your rights could be taken away by one bad president or leader, then you don’t have any rights.” And while our present leadership may be working its hardest to force you to think otherwise, I believe at a moral (and biblical, and humanist) level those rights and that dignity always exist, even if an evil leader denies them. That cat is out of the bag, and I don’t see any authoritarians today being able to truly stuff it back in. And when they try then they reveal their ideas and their fruit as being the evil that it is.
We’ll probably just disagree on that one. I’m seeing a lot of ‘safetyism’ run amok, which is not the same as just throwing kids to the wind and denying all need for safety. There is a balance. Of course we want our classrooms to be safe, and where all parties are respected. Any of us work for that ideal in some form. And we can also even go so far as to deprive them of needed opportunities to stretch their wings of responsibility for themselves. I’ve seen that in my own settings and I’m certain I am not unique.
That’s a straw man caricature. Neither of these authors, nor any bits of them that I’ve here quoted suggest anything like this. Sorry that I raised the temperature here so much that this is all you’re able to take away. Maybe others here can resume discussion over the points the authors actually make.
Something comparable seems to happen in many countries, not just USA. One crucial difference between USA and many other western cultures is the number of political parties. Having only two parties divides the society in a way that is not common in multiparty systems. In multiparty systems, there are strong dislikes but the diversity of the opinions and parties spreads and softens the fronts.
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I am saying it, if Jay isn’t. The ideals we see on paper are mixed (3/5 Compromise, Chinese Exclusion Act, Trail of Tears, Japanese “Internment” Camps, Jim Crow, forced institutionalization of women, U. S. Eugenics Movement, for example), and institutions of all kinds function in opposition to “dignity culture” (schools, prisons (top to bottom), many work places). The racism, sexism, xenophobia, etc that are part of every day American culture demonstrate that we do not live in a dignity culture.
And you actually understand the lack of dignity culture here better than you think.
Often, the young people who seem to be addressing unfair or wrong treatment are the ones who understand their own and their fellow students’ dignity. “This is wrong treatment, and it needs to stop.” “This institution needs to do better by its students.”
It takes a lot of guts to confront an authority figure. I’ve done it, and I’ve been on the receiving end. I didn’t take it well at the time. I hope would do better now.
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Yes, there are kids who will fuss over accurate grades, claiming they’re unfair. I think there always have been.
And there are helicopter parents, truly coddling their adult children. Unfortunately, this seems to be growing, but I don’t think it’s normal. There are, I think, many mechanisms involved with this phenomenon, including what is currently known as “prolonged adolescence” which is, in itself, a mixed bag of concerns and explanatory problems.
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Perhaps it would be valuable to take the book you mentioned as a springboard. Love the book or hate it, no matter. They identify an issue. They have some ideas about it. What do we see going on in our world, and how do we understand it? What different or additional explanations do we have.
As the authors point out, we are inclined to dichotomies, which I think they demonstrate themselves to be (left/right, conservative/liberal) in their focus on political thinking. I wonder what cultural, familial and individual features are at play here that defy such simple categorization.
Sorry, Merv. It’s not a straw man, but I was not interacting with the book you’re reading, rather experience in my life.
Discussing the book seems to be the focus you want to take. I will leave you to it, then. There’s just not time for me to tak on another.
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I agree with everything you said there - yes, we have always (and still are) falling short of expressed ideals. My main sticking point is that I think I’m appealing primarily to the perceived ideals whereas you seem to me to be addressing only the realities you see on the ground. If somebody like a Frederick Douglass (himself a slave and living while slavery was still the official practice) - if he could appeal to, rather than reject, nation-founding documents written by slave owners-no-less, as illuminating an existing ideal that those very same people could then be challenged to live up to, then I am just proposing that it is he and not the present defenders of slavery who see the higher moral reality (even as they and we now still all fail to live up to it to varying degrees). What I’m refusing to get on board with is (what seems to me) to look like an admission that the southern pro-slavery owners were right: No real rights or dignity really exist at all except at the pleasure of the "present authority in the room” so-to-speak. I don’t think that’s what you or Jay are claiming - and I must be misreading you. Because to do so would be to repudiate everything Douglass stood for - and so many others who (even as slaves) adopted the white man’s religion because they saw something (someone) in it beyond what the white slave owner himself was able to grasp, except as a mascot only.
Understood. At the same time, you (or anyone else here), feel free to bring up all such tangents that your own experiences or other readings do bring to this. If they are tangential to this particular book’s theses, that’s just fine. The thread need not orbit only this particular work.
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So, if students challenge authorities or go up the chain of authority to report misconduct, are they more like Douglass, or more like the slave-holder’s perception of Douglass?
Of course, every (student’s) case is different. And some students really are unable to grasp the insufficiency of their work, effort or character. But this is not always the case.
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My own “tangent” is a look at the Table of Contents:
Here is the complete structure of The Coddling of the American Mind.
Introduction
- The Search for Wisdom
Part I — Three Bad Ideas
- The Untruth of Fragility: What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Weaker
- The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always Trust Your Feelings
- The Untruth of Us Versus Them: Life Is a Battle Between Good People and Evil People
Part II — Bad Ideas in Action
- Intimidation and Violence
- Witch Hunts
Part III — How Did We Get Here?
- The Polarization Cycle
- Anxiety and Depression
- Paranoid Parenting
- The Decline of Play
- The Bureaucracy of Safetyism
- The Quest for Justice
Part IV — Wising Up
- Wiser Kids
- Wiser Universities
Conclusion
- Wiser Societies
Appendices
- Appendix 1: How to Do CBT
- Appendix 2: The Chicago Statement on Principles of Free Expression
Chapter 10 (“The Bureaucracy of Safetyism”) is only one chapter in a much larger argument. The book’s thesis isn’t primarily about university administrators. It’s built around four broad movements:
- Three psychological errors (“Three Bad Ideas”)
- How those ideas manifest on campuses (“Bad Ideas in Action”)
- Six interacting causes (“How Did We Get Here?”)
- Recommendations for children, universities, and society (“Wising Up”)
In other words, Chapter 10 is one explanatory thread among six in Part III. The authors’ central claim is cumulative: they argue that today’s campus climate emerged from the interaction of political polarization, rising anxiety, parenting changes, the decline of free play, expanding administrative structures, and evolving conceptions of justice—not from administrative bureaucracy alone.
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1. The Untruth of Fragility
“What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.”
What it teaches:
People become psychologically damaged by ordinary adversity, discomfort, disagreement, or emotional pain.
What the authors argue instead:
Within limits, people become stronger through manageable challenges. Like muscles, immune systems, and emotional resilience, we develop by being exercised rather than protected from every difficulty.
Their concern:
Overprotection produces greater fragility.
Excuse me? What the heck are “manageable challenges”? Is there a referee or a judge who decides?
Lukianoff and Haidt deliberately avoid giving a formula because they know the answer depends on the individual and the context. Instead, they rely on ideas borrowed from developmental psychology, exposure therapy, and education. For example:
- Learning to ride a bicycle is a manageable challenge for a seven-year-old but not for a two-year-old.
- Reading The Iliad may be a manageable challenge for most college students but not for a third grader.
- Public debate might strengthen one student while overwhelming another suffering from acute PTSD.
So “manageable” is necessarily contextual. Although they never provide a precise definition, they seem to mean something like:
A challenge difficult enough to promote growth but not so overwhelming that it causes lasting harm or prevents learning.
That’s essentially the “Goldilocks principle”:
- too easy → no growth
- too difficult → failure or trauma
- just difficult enough → development
This idea appears throughout psychology. But who’s going to fine-tune the challenges that any one of us has to face going forward … outside of this forum?
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This is all good and well and these sentiments have been articulated several times here despite caricatures to the contrary. There is no one size fits all.
The issue for me is when I first read what was presented I assumed we all understood something so tautological going in. But sometimes people are frustrated and they don’t always read with grace and charity and want to immediately jump to divisive political mudslinging.
It’s no secret to many of us in America that society has gone far too sensitive to an unhealthy degree in certain parts. It’s also no secret that the opposite extreme is wrong as well and that despite the pendulum swinging too far, it wasn’t all bad. People love “either or” but there is a lot of gray in the real world.
Vinnie
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Some may ask: “What would Jesus say or do?” Others, probably Americans, might ask, instead: “What would Mr. Rogers say or do?” https://www.facebook.com/reel/975862783766158
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I think a lot of people would have Jesus say what they think or do which is to reduce the Creator, Sustainer and Redeemer of universe to a personal rhetorical puppet or idol constructed in one’s own image.
Vinnie
Then the definition of “dignity culture” is only a half-definition because it misses obligations.
Roman Catholic countries also have a dash of guilt culture.
Divine right of . . . plutocrats? 
I am curious what you would think of tihs.
The victim always has the right to bring this up. However, I wonder–I don’t think that the winner or even the bully, fully understands what they do. It seems that Jesus pointed that out on the cross.
Thanks.
To which I ask, "Which Jesus?’ For example . . .
My current most obnoxious version has been called “Jesus is my boyfriend”.
Randy, I’m not sure what you are getting at.
I’ve had students who really didn’t understand why they didn’t get an A on work, even though they didn’t make recommended improvements, even after having met with me to go over the suggestions,
And a student who wanted me to “review” his grades in my records because he was trying to get into Harvard on a sports scholarship. “Well, J. It would have been better to have considered that plan earlier in the year. You’re lucky to be getting a B.”
These were not bad kids, and they weren’t bullies. They simply overestimated the quality of their work and thought I was mean for evaluating their work as not that great.
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Sorry, I guess I was getting at another angle. I do agree with you there.
Maybe I need to read the interchange better. I was thinking that I remember being bullied in middle school; yet my father suggested for me to pray for those, as they were hurting so much they felt they had to hurt me to take their mind off their pain. I did learn that some of the students were going through awful times (one ran away from home, another’s father would not allow them to live with them).
I agree with your examples, for sure.
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If one advises a victim to pray for the bully, advise the victim also to tell the principal.
A kid can pray for the bully to learn something good from the principal and also get the help s/he needs regarding other life situations.
The bully cannot be allowed to continue to harm others.
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Of course. It’s a mercy to the bully not to be allowed to wallow in their selfishness and fear, isn’t it? –at least in many ways.
It reminds me of a quote from “The Silver Chair” by Lewis–something about the Experiment House, where if you played your cards right as a bully, you became rather a favorite with the heads, with extensive talks, rather than getting your just desserts. :).
It is hard to keep in mind both justice and pity, though. I struggle with that.