Uncanceling the American Mind
This week on the podcast I interview Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott on their new book, “The Canceling of the American Mind: Cancel Culture Undermines Trust, Destroys Institutions, and Threatens Us All – But There is a Solution.” Greg Lukianoff co-wrote “The Coddling of the American Mind” with Jonathan Haidt and leads a foundation while Rikki Schlott is a columnist for the New York Post.
“The Coddling of the American Mind” described three great untruths that have been plaguing young people in recent times:
1. The Untruth of Fragility: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.
2. The Untruth of Emotional Reasoning: Always trust your feelings.
3. The Untruth of Us Vs. Them: Life is a battle between good people and evil people.
To this, Greg and Rikki have added a new great untruth:
4. The Untruth of Ad Hominem: Bad People Only Have Bad Opinions. If you can show someone to be ‘bad’ by any measure, you don’t have to listen to them anymore.
This has become an – unfortunately – popular way to attack arguments you might not like, by categorizing the speaker as representing the political opposition (e.g. “conservative” or “woke.”) Associated to this are sometimes adverse professional and personal consequences to the undermined and canceled.
Attempts to cancel individuals on college campuses have surged in recent years. In 2020 the number of speaker disinvitations, attempts to fire professors, and other on-campus responses shot up to 1,500 from 500 in 2013. There have been 946 attempts to get professors punished during the last 8 years, which have completely shifted the culture of being a professor.
This isn’t restricted to campuses. 84% of Americans think it’s a problem that some Americans don’t speak freely in everyday situations due to fear of retaliation. And 62% of Americans did not personally feel comfortable expressing their opinions in public. The media, non-profits, corporations and even public health authorities are all subject to pressures to conform. “Cancel Culture is happening at such a scale that historians will be studying it in fifty to a hundred years, much like we study the Red Scare and the Alien and Sedition Acts,” Greg and Rikki write.
They go on, “In our all-consuming culture war, fighters have two methods of attack. The first is going through the process of engagement and persuasion – and accepting the possibility that you might not succeed in convincing most people. It’s a long and arduous road.”
“The second tactic is attacking your opponents on an ad hominem personal level – digging up things to discredit them, making them fear for their jobs, and ‘winning’ arguments simply by making too scared to say what they really think. This latter route is much quicker. Although it won’t actually change minds, you can surely intimidate enough people into pretending they agree with you.”
So what can be done? Greg and Rikki delve into solutions, from raising kids to be more nuanced in their thinking and treatment of others to reforming schools to reflect intellectual diversity and curiosity to keeping companies from becoming political environments. But the essential message is to treat each other like human beings. Indeed, Greg and Rikki detail some of the stories of people who had their lives upended by an accusation who suffer from it for years afterwards, well after most of the online mob have long since moved on. On the other end of the social media avatar is a living, breathing human being with a family and a livelihood, which itself is a lesson worth remembering.
For my interview of Greg and Rikki click here. For their book “The Canceling of the American Mind” click here. To get beyond political polarization check out Forward Party.
