The Coddling Of The American Mind (Trigger Warning Article In The Atlantic...)

But this is the problem, when you have a thread of dozens of people ~discussing an issue~ and only one person who has experienced that issue talking about it from the inside. Other people start assuming that one person speaking their experience on that issue is somehow speaking for all. Wow, oh boy, do I ever not want that responsibility. I am just trying to provide one perspective which had been missing from this debate here.

― Dröhn Rock (Branwell with an N), Thursday, October 8, 2015 3:30 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

What I was trying to suggest is that while you might be the only person in this thread who has experienced your specific set of circumstances, there might be others who have experienced traumatic events and who have a different perspective on whether trigger warnings would have been helpful in how they dealt with it. Which is not an attempt to diminsh the value of your own perspective at all.

THANK YOU CAPTAIN OBVIOUS! That idea had literally ~never~ crossed my mind! So glad you pointed it out to me.

Branwell over and out.

I have definitely dealt with a person or two who most definitely had some strong traumatic events in their past who was not aware they were triggering post-traumatic stress in others by talking about certain people and events.

But, you know, family is often difficult

The way Alfred, Lord Sotosyn described trigger warnings, in the context of a classroom, seemed pretty reasonable.

I will say that the name could be a little less violent...for people who don't like to evoke the imagery of guns.

Trigger warning:

http://www.horsenation.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/trigger-alive2.jpg

i actually think the use of the term trigger warning in that atlantic piece is kind of a red herring. but it's a buzzword and i guess that's why its there. really my interest was in the psychology of safeness and well-being and *kids today - are they more sensitive than in the past?*. but the more i think about it the more i think that they are probably not all that different than i was at that age. though my own defense mechanism way back when was to hide alone in my room and curl up with music in the dark and want to die in a hole. i have no idea what i would have been like with the internet.

in retrospect, i should have put this on the baby making board. don't know if people still go there though. just for a general discussion of kid/teen psych. since i am raising two future firebombing warriors.

for the record i am all for calling people out on their shit and people feeling safe and not feeling uncomfortable and i think it's probably really easy to give someone a top-notch rigorous education and even challenge their assumptions without ever upsetting them. maybe bore them a little. but a little boredom is good for kids.

Yes, it's good training for the soul-crushing boredom they will experience in post-collegiate life.

exactly!

tbf some of us find a way to be upset (although not traumatized! hopefully!) about just about anything

could use a little bit of that laid back firebombing warrior nature of the seward boys

oh man that was not meant as any sort of passive dig! I meant me. I've got my issues w/anxiety under control, though. all life was anxiety-causing when I was in college.

What is it about modern life that requires a hardened outer shell? Sitting in front of a computer all day answering emails? Obeying traffic laws on the way to/from work? Shopping for groceries? Going to the bank? Is there any instance here where a heightened sensitivity would not result in a better and safer experience for all?

the lurking horror of mortality?

it's not so much about having a hardened shell - though that really depends on where you live - and i think everyone is all for heightened sensitivity - i just like the idea of kids being open and engaged with people who are not like them or who have differing views/opinions. even the wrong views/opinions. i am all for curiosity. (where i live there is a lot of shielding...)

the multiple ways I can communicate with other humans, all within grasp in my office, each with different expectations and capabilities when it comes to nuance, tone, and communication style

there are a lot of parents where i live who don't want to let their kids walk around the main street here. in greenfield, massachusetts. not exactly the mean streets. and, thus, some kids around here become scared of the street. which is a shame. and why i like having a store on main street that my kids have grown up in kinda. it's not exactly the united nations around here, but the street attracts a varied populace. or varied for around here.

was talking to a friend of my father-in-law. very new age. very holistic and all that. lives somewhere in the hills around here. i mentioned greenfield and she said: oh, i HATE greenfield. and i was like why? and she paused and said...there are no GOOD people there!

and i tried not to scream, so i just laughed. this is who i don't want my kids to be when they grow up. this person - outwardly earth mother-y and beaming - is a major parenting fail. and i don't think they will be like that. they see me talking to a lot of different people who are not like them. or who don't appear to be. and new york city is their favorite place to be. just like it was for me when i was a kid. just say no to cloistering!

sure but idk what this has to do with trigger warnings?

scott started the thread and if he wants to talk about his kids I am game

trigger warning: skot rambles, deal with it.

Can't speak for scott (or anybody) but I see a clear line from a proposition like:

"Being an educated person includes includes being exposed to different ideas, which you may find challenging and upsetting"

(some form of which is sometimes forwarded in the anti-trigger warning, "CODDLING GONE MAD" articles) to a proposition like:

"Being an educated person includes includes being exposed to different ideas, INCLUDING the idea that it's just plain decent to be considerate toward people who may need/want a trigger warning (or whatever other form of respectful consideration they may need/want)."

Neurodiversity and diversity-of-experience being among the kinds of diversity that help make the world interesting and are worth communicating about to kids.

(okay, i rambled, but the kid thing IS tangential to the atlantic thing. you could run the same article in psychology today with the headline: Are we raising our kids to be TOO sensitive? if there still is a psychology today magazine. haven't seen one in years.)

It's an app now. "Are we raising our kids to be TOO sensitive? Point your phone at your kid, and we'll tell you!"

Maybe the parent asking that question are too sensitive to the sensitivity of their kids.

there are a lot of parents where i live who don't want to let their kids walk around the main street here.

these people are so annoying

but let's take it to the judging other people's parenting thread if necessary...

There's a fine line imo between "are we raising our kids to be TOO sensitive?" and "suck it up, buttercup." In my day we were beaten regularly with barbed wire then sent off to work in the mill at age six, etc. etc.

Messages that valorize perseverance and suck-it-upitude, when twisted just a few notches further, can easily sound like victim-blaming. Parents often have to work both sides of that street: you want to foster resilience, but you also want to acknowledge and appreciate sensitivity.

http://www.globaltimes.cn/Portals/0/attachment/2011/481f8458-269b-4fbe-8bef-629261ebc681.jpeg

AND WE LIKED IT

in our house we slept ten to a bed!

you had a bed!?

(a joke i think i originally heard on All In The Family when i was a kid...)

ftr the "creepy liberalism" of that other thread's title is the kind of liberalism that's disdainful of trigger warnings

Yes, it's good training for the soul-crushing boredom they will experience in post-collegiate life.

― forbidden fruitarian (Ye Mad Puffin), Thursday, October 8, 2015 11:18 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is how i excuse myself whenever i give a boring lecture.

fwiw i think a big problem is that the "conversation" around trigger warnings is often framed in reference to the most obviously egregious misuses of that concept -- and people mistakenly assume those are representative. the key word is "warning"--ideally, the concept doesn't expressly forbid the broaching of certain topics or themes but merely suggests that people should be given some kind of notification in advance.

i think that, in a lot of ways, this is good common-sense practice. without ever having heard the phrase "trigger warning," when i started teaching and was about to raise a sensitive subject or show a film clip that was unusually violent or upsetting in some way, i'd let people know.

however it gives me pause when this sort of thing becomes institutionalized, not least because the nature of many higher-ed administrations is to aggressively expand the scope of any and every thing that they worry might upset students (and by extension, their parents). that /does/ have a lot to do with some phenomena that seem to me to growing and which might be encompassed by the word "coddling." students at my (big state) university are offered an ever-increasing number of amenities that would have been rare when i was in school... and would have been unthinkable when my mom was in school. these include a lot of reasonable accomodations and services, and a lot of stuff that is... a little less so. there's actually kind of an "arms race" among colleges in terms of offering services and amenities to students, which necessarily inflates tuition rates. it's in that context that the concept and practice of "trigger warnings" can suffer institutional abuse. but at heart it's not a bad idea at all, so long as it isn't construed to exclude discussion of certain subjects.

The only decent piece I've seen Freddie deBoer write in recent months warns college students not to seek redress with administrators; this empowers the people who already have too much power.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/13/magazine/why-we-should-fear-university-inc.html

I'll reiterate that I went to two Scottish Universities (one very conservative) in the 90s, for English and then Philosophy, and we absolutely got heads up before certain content. For example, we were told that Beloved involved a whole lot of unpleasant stuff, and we were told that we would be discussing abortion. It had no effect on my freedom of speech.

ok, short-ish inadequate responses here because i can't keep up with rolling clusterfucks like i could when i was a kid, and i'll try to tone down the hostility as much as i can (macro-aggression is way more my scene; micro-aggression sounds like something you do on your cell phone):

if we're going to have the discussion on which side is the bigger asshole, i claim victory and retreat. i own my asshole nature.

"i react negatively even though the stuff they're demanding (mainly tolerance and respect) is quite reasonable

how on earth is this anyone's problem but yours though? maybe you're not saying it is, but don't you see why people would be impatient with that kind of attitude? why do old people always feel so entitled to a "get off my lawn" attitude?

― lex pretend, Thursday, October 8, 2015 8:51 AM (5 hours ago)"

it's a problem because old white male assholes more or less like me (though not, necessarily, me personally, hell, i don't even have a lawn) run this world. look, my capacity for personal insight is somewhat limited. i don't know why people like me are how we are. i can work to overcome my instinctive reactions, but i'm always going to have those instinctive reactions, humans are always going to make gut decisions based on instinct rather than on logic and reason. i'd love it if we lived in a just world, despite the fact that the world's blatant injustice redounds to my benefit most of the time, but fuck if i know how to get from here to there.

actually if i had a lawn i think i would probably let kids step on it. because my grandfather did have a lawn, and he would let the kids on it and none of the other people on the block did, and as a result he had nothing but dirt for most of his life. on the other hand maybe i'm not as good a person as my grandfather was. not really sure.

andrew, i'm sorry i am not current on the latest memes, but reading about memes gives me sciatica. i know i can google anything i want and get a distorted and inaccurate view of what the internet thinks it is along with some pictures of the dos equis guy.

as for if the youth had power, yes, people with power can demand stuff of me, and then i will pretend to comply to their face and then spend the rest of my time trying to sabotage whatever it was they demanded i do. because that's apparently what it means to be a professional adult. i just don't think demands are an effective form of communication.

branwell, i will do my best to take your congratulations as a compliment. i'm honored that you have concluded that i am the not-crazy sort of asshole. i'm not sure i agree with your conclusion, mind you, either the assumption that nobody and nothing is repeatedly hitting me in the face or the assumption that i am somehow capable of ignoring it and blissfully soaring over it all with zen aplomb.

i don't get to choose how i feel, but i do have some very small level of control over what i do about it. after spending some years yelling at people to quit hitting me in the face and getting, largely, a reaction of "wtf are you talking about, i wasn't hitting you in the face", i gave up on doing that.

sorry for going all hippie and shit, but i just want us to be able to talk to each other, even though i'm an asshole and you have ptsd or whatever. and what i see on the internet these days is a pretty profound lack of serious communication. if you want me to apologize for being an asshole, i'll gladly do it, but you know, i'm still going to be an asshole afterwards.

it's not about you, dude, go read the bottle opener thread or something

look, my capacity for personal insight is somewhat limited

then stfu or see a therapist who can help you with this

it's a problem because old white male assholes more or less like me (though not, necessarily, me personally, hell, i don't even have a lawn) run this world. look, my capacity for personal insight is somewhat limited. i don't know why people like me are how we are. i can work to overcome my instinctive reactions, but i'm always going to have those instinctive reactions

this is why ppl say things like #killallwhitemen

at the very least, their gut instinct and their supposed inability to change it can go fuck itself

btw you can change gut reactions, it just takes a while

"it's a problem because old white male assholes more or less like me (though not, necessarily, me personally, hell, i don't even have a lawn) run this world."

http://www.dementia13.net/film/features/bios/images/Wilford%20Brimley.jpg

mushorancy

btw you can change gut reactions, it just takes a while

just have to improve your microflora! (these are plants on your cell phone.)

k, thx for the death threats guys, lates

a grad level philosophy seminar i took screened the film "antichrist" and during the genital mutilation scene one of my classmates had a seizure

i think we were trigger warned too but it wasnt called that then

afaik stress doesn't really trigger seizures but I am not a neurologist

im going to go ahead and guess, not being a neurologist either, that stress can contribute to seizures in some people

Maybe it was a coincidence then. Afterward she told me she had had epilepsy as a child but this was the first recurrence in many years

high-blood pressure/dehydration/sleep deprivation can trigger seizures but again these are pretty different extenuating factors - it's not like people see something that shocks them and have a seizure, that isn't really how they work afaik (full disclosure I am only speaking from personal experience and having dealt with family members w seizure disorders for 20+ years)

http://www.epilepsysociety.org.uk/non-epileptic-seizures#.VhbzeFL3bCQ

Maybe she had this. Anyway, i dont think ppl should be made to watch shit like antichrist. Less visceral stuff like ovid (which has been trigger warned iirc) is harder for me to wrap my head around.

The notion that ppl have the right to live in their own bubble free of emotional distress from the social environment seems very idealistic and american and I like it for this reason. Look at most highly demanding people and you'll find an idealistic, even progressive core to their ridiculous demands - an expectation that life should be better