And here it is, the post that breaks the naming convention of posts heretofore written. Moving forward book report posts will feature the title and author of the book, while posts about whatever other random thoughts will continue to have the "Of ___" naming convention. Structure of book reports is likely to evolve with time, but for now I think I want to focus on things impactful to me or things I liked or disliked about the book or ways the book shaped the way I see the world around me rather than writing a summary of the book itself.
This book is one that has been on my list of books to read since before I realized that reading was an enjoyable hobby again (thank you high school and college reading assignments for warping my concept of reading as a form of entertainment). I've had various family members read and recommend this book, so I was excited to finally dive into it.
Premise
I loved this book! The premise of the book is that the rising generation of college students are soft: they have grown up in and have embraced a culture of safetyism, and thus are unable to navigate the world without safety guardrails. Three fundamental principles ("The Great Untruths") describe the new culture:
- Fragility: What doesn't kill you makes you weaker
- Emotional reasoning: Always trust your feelings
- Us vs them: life is a battle between good people and evil people
At first glance these "untruths" seemed reasonable and I was skeptical about their label of "untruth." The concept of antifragility (the opposite of fragility) is that opposition or stress is required for growth. For example, being exposed to peanuts is what helps many children develop an immunity for that allergy, and preventing children from being exposed at all to peanuts may result in them developing the allergy (because they were unable to develop the immunity through exposure). Likewise, exposure to different ideas or viewpoints is what strengthens our intellectual capacity. Removing any potential danger from a child leaves them woefully unprepared for real life. Creating safe spaces away from someone with a different set of opinions is more harmful than it is beneficial.
Emotional reasoning is letting your mind go to worst-case scenarios or be blinded by cognitive distortions. We see the rise of the culture of microaggressions, which is interpreting things in the worst way rather than giving the benefit of the doubt. The intended message has been replaced by the impact felt by the receiver, which was the way the receiver chose to interpret the message. Benefit of the doubt has been removed.
Us vs Them describes the culture of tribalism: if you are not one of us, you are the enemy. Example of this are mob culture of academics: a writing or saying of an academic (either taken out of context or not) is taken and used as a demand that the academic formally apologize or step down from a position. The mob grows as more people join the bandwagon, and other academics fear siding with the accused because then the mob will come after them as well.
Real Life Applications
Here are some ways I have seen the world differently already since reading this book:
- In teaching the reader CBT, I realized I often fell into those thought patterns as well, and have caught myself avoiding mental pitfalls since reading this book. My mind will often jump to worst case scenarios ("this client thinks I am too inexperienced and unhelpful" or "I'm sensing something is off in this relationship. I think the end is nigh", etc)
- BYU had a career fair last month where hundreds of employers come to recruit students for jobs. Many of these employers are present at this fair every year, including the US Department of Homeland Security. With recent events involving ICE, I saw several IG stories urging BYU to ban them from recruiting students and that their presence presented a threat to students.
- My brother has an undeveloped hill in his back yard. The last few weeks, the neighborhood boys have assembled on the hill each day to build "houses" from scraps of wood or sticks or whatever other materials they've somehow come in contact with. There is no adult present on the hill and the boys somehow obtained a full-sized sledgehammer to work with. I love this example of free play where yes, there is the potential risk for injury and no, there is no set of rules the boys have to play under or create under (just their imagination!) and no, there is no adult overseeing every act to make sure safety regulations are followed. These are boys who will grow up more resilient and capable of encountering real life events
Takeaways
I like how the authors used these truths as the background to describe recent events driving the culture of safetyism in iGen. These events (and honestly the premise of the book) certainly have political ties and this book certainly could have drifted towards a certain political stance quickly. I really appreciated the way the facts and research was presented in an objective, non-partisan way. I read the first half of the book thinking that the authors leaned right and that this book may be poorly received by left leaners, but then the authors revealed that they each leaned left.
I want to reread this book when I start having kids. The last third of the book is sort of the "ok now what" section where parenting strategies are discussed to teach kids to be antifragile. It was also useful for me to learn these skills. It was fascinating seeing facts on depression rates between screens and sports. Another reason to have kids play sports!
