In a 2020 article for Inside Higher Ed, John Warner writes: "As we witness the essential fragility of our food supply, our health-care system ... our economic system, even potentially our electoral system, I will suggest that precarity has always been a far greater threat than safetyism."
He's reacting in part to Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt's bestselling The Coddling of the American Mind, in which the authors argue that since the 1990s, we've been raising an "anxious generation": a cohort of kids overprotected physically, intellectually, and emotionally, leaving them unable to suck up even the most minor of psychic discomforts. Safetyism, they say, has rendered young Millennials and most of Gen Z mentally delicate, even ill.
Warner says no: It's the precarity, stupid.
You won't be surprised to hear we think there's truth on both sides. But if you are one of the cohort, where does that leave you? How do you face precarity while protecting your sanity? Is there a way to uncoddle your brain, to unfragilize your ego? Can you suck it up while staying safe?
Find out in this week's issue of Mindfalls.
by Jocelyn Davis
Darcy (28) and Evan (31) are my favorite Zoomer-Millennial-cusp couple. Married last May, they live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and are pursuing careers in academia. I sat down with them to ask about mental health in their generation: what’s helping, what’s hurting, and what parents can do to build kid resilience in a culture of safetyism.
JD: What was something your parents did, or an attitude they took, that helped your mental health and resilience as an adult?
Darcy: The biggest thing my parents did was to keep me away from screens, social media, and the internet. Their “no screens as a toddler” policy made a big difference. I watched my first movie at age three; before that, they read to me or just talked to me. I actually had no phone at all until my senior year in high school, and no smartphone until grad school. Honestly, they could have let me have a dumb phone earlier; that would have been fine, but having a smartphone would have been bad.
Jocelyn Davis writes books about leadership, history and literature, and mental health. Learn more at JocelynRDavis.com.
COURAGE MEANS FACING YOUR MONSTERS
As I was reflecting on safetyism and resilience, chapter 17 of The Greats on Leadership (John Murray Business, 2016) came to mind. It’s about courage: specifically, mustering the courage to face your personal monsters. I wasn’t thinking about mental illness when I wrote it … or was I?
Featured in the chapter is one of my favorite godawful leaders, Dr. Victor Frankenstein. If you want to know what I think about him (and many other leaders of literature, awful and wonderful), please buy the book! To learn why courage is the backbone of leadership, read on. –Jocelyn
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Courage, in short, is the backbone of a leader’s character, bracing each virtue, holding it straight and true (see figure: Five Character Traits of Effective Leaders). Cowardice is the opposite: the enfeebler of character, the vice that makes every virtue flabby and unreliable. Since courage and cowardice sit at the heart (or spine) of character, leaders need an especially good understanding of both.
Note that timidity, the trait at the far left side of the courage continuum, is not the same as cowardice. Timidity is a reluctance to engage; as we saw in Chapter 14, it’s a trait to which introverts, with their tendency to turn inward and away from the world, are especially prone. Timidity isn’t desirable in a leader, but it isn’t the same as cowardice, which is a much farther-reaching vice with much worse effects. Cowardice is the absolute determination to protect the self: from fear, pain, ridicule, rejection, failure, uncertainty, and any other injury, physical or emotional. Depending on the leader and the situation, cowardice can manifest as any one of the extremes on the character continuums. For example, an extraverted leader subjected to ridicule might seek to protect his ego by loudly belittling his antagonist (offensiveness). An introverted leader facing a professional failure might adopt a “don’t care” attitude (indifference). Cowardice takes many forms, not all of them timid.
A quarter of Americans now experience burnout before age 30, with Gen Z and millennials reporting peak stress around age 25, much earlier than previous generations. Financial worries, politics, and work pressures are the top stressors, highlighting how modern life’s demands are compressing stress into younger adulthood.
Generation Anxious: Why Ordinary Ups and Downs Are Turning the Young Into ‘Can’t Cope’ Workers
This article examines evidence suggesting we may be over-medicalising life’s everyday challenges, and explores whether this helps explain why so many young workers took time off last year due to poor mental health.
Article: The Stranger You Can Trust, by Larissa Phillips. "When I was stranded in a snowstorm 30 years ago, I had to rely on someone I’d never met. This was before Apple Pay and Google Maps. It wasn’t safe, but maybe it was something better."
Video interview: Kids Need Daily Exposure to the 4 D's. Dr. Camilo Ortiz goes on the Dad Saves America podcast to talk about why modern parenting is making kids more anxious, not less, and how we can rebuild real-world independence. Whether you love or hate the "feminized therapy culture" takes in the media lately, you'll find this an enlightening conversation.
Advice column: My Employee Calls in Sick after Negative Feedback. A manager asks: "What do I do about Craig, a backsliding employee who calls in sick the day after receiving even the mildest negative feedback?"
The seminal book on safetyism: The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. "Something is going wrong on many college campuses in the last few years. Rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide are rising. Speakers are shouted down. Students and professors say they are walking on eggshells and are afraid to speak honestly. How did this happen?"
... and if you want to get even more seminal: The Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom's brilliant and controversial critique of postmodernist culture, doctrinaire universities, and enfeebled young people. “Hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy," said The New York Times. Time to reread!
The Mindfalls newsletter is for informational purposes and is not a substitute for professional help. If you are having a mental health crisis, call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline, reach out to your doctor, or go to the nearest emergency room.