I am reading The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, which speaks, in part, of the culture of “safetyism” that has taken hold in American discourse and higher education. The authors draw from ancient wisdom, psychological theory, and science to make the case that it is bad for human beings to be made too safe. Research has recently shown that diligently keeping young children away from peanut products—the norm since the 1990s in the US—has vastly raised the prevalence of peanut allergies. Similarly, it is psychologically harmful to protect students from ideas that challenge their worldview and that they may find offensive, the authors say. To put it succinctly: What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.
The book draws on theories of author and polymath Nassim Nicholas Taleb, who says that people are “anti-fragile”—which means that they thrive on a certain amount of conflict and challenge. People get stronger, for example, by going to the gym. Sitting on the couch too much will make you weaker and ultimately kill you.
Haidt and Lukianoff discuss many ways that safetyism has impacted our culture, including not letting children out to play without supervision, attitudes towards eating and health—but they don’t mention how we build communities. For me, it is not hard to see a parallel in community design.
[For more on this story by ROBERT STEUTEVILLE, go to https://www.cnu.org/publicsqua...and-community-design]
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