[Tanada]

Related and in support, I was going to post this today but saw your thread beat me too it.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... nd/399356/

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')omething strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her. In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline said. A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke.

[onlooker]

Most certainly we are. We are also spoiled which I guess is the same. In our haste to cheat the constraints on Nature, to develop and grow, we have carelessly refused to acknowledge limits to growth. The motivations to careen towards this moment in time are in keeping with our fundamental human nature. The wish to conquer, to achieve , to consume and bathe in the amenities of the modern world is understandable and predictable, I mean look at China and India where so many are eager to live like Americans. So to speak of consequences honing is to address the inevitable "end of the party". How will we react, how will be address this upcoming stage in our evolution. Nobody I think here knows for sure but one thing is certain our spoiled failure deprived world is set to reconfigure to the "more" normal set of circumstances for living beings meaning Entropy.

[ritter]

Some have termed it "pussification." I suppose the liberal students wouldn't like that term either.

[dolanbaker]

Isn't this simply a method of control, by "training out" the desire to take risks, you end up with a more compliant population. A population that is less likely to question anything that "the authorities" preach.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('dolanbaker', 'I')sn't this simply a method of control, by "training out" the desire to take risks, you end up with a more compliant population. A population that is less likely to question anything that "the authorities" preach.

[onlooker]

Totally agree we have during the 20th and 21st century been cultured to avoid hardships and failure rather then to overcome them. It would I am sure seem counter-intuitive to many nowdays to suggest to them that they train themselves to deal with hardships and challenges, sort of like martial artists train their body and mind. To maintain one's body and mind in the highest optimal level. Instead we have people driving back and forth to work without any exercise involved, sitting on their couches hypnotized by visual imagery on a screen. We also have chronic medicine taking believing the delusion of a 'magic pill" to cures us. Discipline and a strong work ethic are not natural to a human they need to have the will and strong desire for this. All these conveniences have made humans soft in the same way that TV has made them uninformed. Yet a person will match their behavior to a certain level of perceived threat. Most to not fathom any immediate threat to make them change their ways. Failures of character can easily translate into failures of judgement in so much as masses of people are wholly unprepared for consequences soon to arrive.

[hvacman]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') rather believe that this trend of avoidance of hardships and consequences is a cultural trait a couple of generations in the making as technology and abundant energy and lately the digital age all contributed to a "softening" in our culture. Also to an illusion that we can avoid hardships and limits. It manifests in many ways. Mother nature hasn't thrown any real significant curve balls at us either.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('hvacman', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I') rather believe that this trend of avoidance of hardships and consequences is a cultural trait a couple of generations in the making as technology and abundant energy and lately the digital age all contributed to a "softening" in our culture. Also to an illusion that we can avoid hardships and limits. It manifests in many ways. Mother nature hasn't thrown any real significant curve balls at us either.

[Ibon]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', 'R')elated and in support, I was going to post this today but saw your thread beat me too it.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arc ... nd/399356/

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'S')omething strange is happening at America’s colleges and universities. A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense. Last December, Jeannie Suk wrote in an online article for The New Yorker about law students asking her fellow professors at Harvard not to teach rape law—or, in one case, even use the word violate (as in “that violates the law”) lest it cause students distress. In February, Laura Kipnis, a professor at Northwestern University, wrote an essay in The Chronicle of Higher Education describing a new campus politics of sexual paranoia—and was then subjected to a long investigation after students who were offended by the article and by a tweet she’d sent filed Title IX complaints against her. In June, a professor protecting himself with a pseudonym wrote an essay for Vox describing how gingerly he now has to teach. “I’m a Liberal Professor, and My Liberal Students Terrify Me,” the headline said. A number of popular comedians, including Chris Rock, have stopped performing on college campuses (see Caitlin Flanagan’s article in this month’s issue). Jerry Seinfeld and Bill Maher have publicly condemned the oversensitivity of college students, saying too many of them can’t take a joke.

[GHung]

It's clear that our (US) educational system is guilty of feeding the reality that, not only do kids not suffer consequences, but often aren't even able to conceive (map, intellectually) what the consequences of their actions may be, on a personal level and collectively. Both of my parents were educators; my father was dean of educational administration and law at a major university, and lamented later in his life that schools no longer teach students HOW to think, but generally dictate pre-conception; WHAT to think. Understanding consequences requires both experience and critical thinking.

George Mobus over at the Question Everything blog has been writing about his views of the general decline of education (in the US, especially) posted his latest yesterday:

http://questioneverything.typepad.com/q ... rning.html

In his conclusion:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'T')he Sad Reality

Unhappily our society is locked into mass production of know-nothing education. We will not reform schools in any meaningful way. It would be too costly. We would have to sacrifice a lot of consumption of luxury to support such an endeavor. And with the attitudes expressed by the majority of people in this country (and many abroad) that is not going to happen.

So we will continue to force kids to sit in dull classes memorizing just enough facts from dull subjects to pass tests (and then promptly forget what they memorized). We will stunt their development. We will erect barriers to progress for those kids who are exceptional. We will drive our future generations into the depths of ignorance as we tell ourselves that with just the right amount of testing we will have a perfected education system. And a decade from now we will be complaining even more.

[Ibon]

How we are educating our youth is critical as this contributes to defining a generation. I have to pose a question. Is this trend in education a symptom of our culture at large being denied the honing skills and "toughness" that is learned when suffering cyclical corrections whether they be man made as in great depressions or wars or whether they be natural consequences like pandemics, climate change, hurricanes, earthquakes. etc.

We can clearly see the limitation of the education trends but I think they are symptomatic. Which puts the focus on the bigger picture not just the specific failures of our academic institutions. That is what I am suggesting.

[GHung]

Definitely a symptom of what may be the dumbing-down effects of the democratic process; sucking up to the lowest common denominator. I see folks totally rejecting ideas they can't/don't understand. We tend to invalidate things we don't grok; too lazy and ill-equipped to make the effort. Other factors such as increasing complexity, distractions, the economic (profitability) trend towards quantity over quality (goods, services, ideas, art/music), and possibly a growing subliminal awareness that things aren't what they seem. As Kunstler points out, our society has become a clusterfuck of deluded non-thinkers who only challenge themselves in terms of gain and the acquisition of stuff, never asking themselves why. We, collectively, can't be honest with ourselves and expect anything productive to come of it.

Top this off with an overall lack (and rejection) of quality leadership = decline of whatever remains of reason. That age had a good run, though it seems we're bound to reject the wisdom required to survive our technological infancy. Me? I'm going to the garden where all things make sense. No idiots allowed.

[Newfie]

That article on college students sounds like my daughter!

But, in reality, are we really that different? Or is the flavor just different?

Not advocating a point so much as thinking out loud. Colleges in the U.S. have always advocated some particular point of view, often with some religious bent. Is it just than we now have this particular flavor?

Don't know, asking.

[onlooker]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('GHung', 'D')efinitely a symptom of what may be the dumbing-down effects of the democratic process; sucking up to the lowest common denominator. I see folks totally rejecting ideas they can't/don't understand. We tend to invalidate things we don't grok; too lazy and ill-equipped to make the effort. Other factors such as increasing complexity, distractions, the economic (profitability) trend towards quantity over quality (goods, services, ideas, art/music), and possibly a growing subliminal awareness that things aren't what they seem. As Kunstler points out, our society has become a clusterfuck of deluded non-thinkers who only challenge themselves in terms of gain and the acquisition of stuff, never asking themselves why. We, collectively, can't be honest with ourselves and expect anything productive to come of it.

Top this off with an overall lack (and rejection) of quality leadership = decline of whatever remains of reason. That age had a good run, though it seems we're bound to reject the wisdom required to survive our technological infancy. Me? I'm going to the garden where all things make sense. No idiots allowed.

[Sixstrings]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Tanada', 'R')elated and in support, I was going to post this today but saw your thread beat me too it.

[Sixstrings]

Another way to look at it --

Young people, in general, have always been prone to very black / white, up or down, left or right thinking.

Complexity is much harder, and requires maturity and experience and critical thinking and wisdom -- none of which come naturally to young people.

These liberal universities are doing a bit of a disservice to the students if they are just teaching one thing -- they should be teaching critical thinking, they should be teaching the students to see all sides of issues and analyze them that way.

The same would be true for a "Bob Jones University," too -- if it's just all one set of conservative thinking and just one set of views.

Life is a lot of gray, not so much black and white.

The "seeing all sides" skill is very important in something like law school -- that's the very definition of an advocate, a lawyer. They have to be capable of actually taking ANY side, and empathy and putting themselves in someone else's shoes, and making an equally convincing argument either way, irrespective of their personal conclusion on the matter.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', 'R')ead through the long article. Interesting. The millennials seem to be a sensitive lot with a strong sense of fairness. I see them disproportionately compassionate toward homeless cats and dogs for example and doing everything to have them adopted. It's a strange kind of displaced compassion.

If they are so concerned with "micro agressions" and "trigger warnings" how are these millennials going to handle macro systemic failures and consequences as they mature later this century?

[Outcast_Searcher]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ibon', '
')Read through the long article. Interesting. The millennials seem to be a sensitive lot with a strong sense of fairness. I see them disproportionately compassionate toward homeless cats and dogs for example and doing everything to have them adopted. It's a strange kind of displaced compassion.

If they are so concerned with "micro agressions" and "trigger warnings" how are these millennials going to handle macro systemic failures and consequences as they mature later this century?

[onlooker]

Well, I am making this post as a post which can articulate where we stand here on this site and where we stand as a species. I know we have already talked so much about all this already. However, watching the movie Disobedience highlighted for me this uneasy inquiry. Ibon in his thoughtful and articulate manner has stated that it appears that only consequences can move the needle forward, that we as a species must truly begin to suffer in order to mobilize to change dramatically the System and mitigate some of the worse to come from all these limits to growth. Yet watching the mentioned movie I saw and heard inspired people mobilizing to confront Big Oil and to change their communities to be less reliant on Oil. I saw a passion that appears now to be in the nascent stages of sweeping the world. Even in the US, I sense a profound desire for real change. So, can us jaded souls here agree that perhaps the world is answering the bell even if our leaders are not? And that is because perhaps people finally are reluctant to wait for the devastating consequences to arrive and are trying to head off future disaster. In my opinion it probably will not make a difference. The Earth is already too distressed and the momentum of our population and desire for a comfortable, pleasurable and easy life too widespread now to avert the worse. Nevertheless, I think we all have the responsibility to act in our own little way to try and soften the landing so to speak for ourselves and future generations. Thoughts?

[Ibon]

My daughter recently went out on bulk trash pick up day and collected scrap wood that was thrown out. She and her friend then went to the tool library and checked out circular saws and miter saws and made a desk and benches out of the wood that they are using in their apartment. They posted their handiwork on Facebook and got hundreds of likes and comments.

It would appear her generation is now finding this kind of recycling and resiliency as cool, as a marker of status.

So I asked her, " How much of the reason this frugality and resourcefulness is now cool is because many of your peers are graduating from college and not finding jobs and how much of the reason this is cool has to do with a new value system and orientation around sustainability knowing the stresses we are putting on the biosphere?".

Her answer was ..."Yes the fact that many of my peers are underemployed earning minimum wage with college debt certainly gives a sense of gravity to these actions but there is a deeper sense that we know that the consumption dream is dying".

This is very relevant to your thread. What she said is that yes, there are inherent new values emerging around recycling and resourcefulness and honoring craft skills and sharing economy etc., but that a big part of what makes this real is the very economic contraction that has helped drive this shift of values.

So Onlooker, Consequences and actions together work in tandem. Without the consequences of a contracting economy or resource depletion or climate change hiccups these cultural shifts would not have the gravity required to embed themselves in culture.

So I then asked my daughter, " If by some miracle the good times came back with a thriving economy and hi paying jobs and access to high consumption would your generation still value this frugality and resourcefulness"?

She said she believes that this runs deeper than just the temporary contraction of the economy. That there is a deeper sense in her generation that there are instabilities out there in our environment that are long term and warrant this new stewardship toward our planet.

She is of course the daughter of Ibon and through her teens she had to put up with my rants about peak oil etc. but I think there is a widespread opinion among the Millennial generation that there is a crowded planet out there and that the dynamics are shifting toward long term contraction of the economy and increasing environmental instabilities.

Consequences do not have to reach draconian events to start new orientation in our culture but without them they wont embed.

At one minute before midnight we may still see some surprising shifts in our cultural values and willingness for increased sacrifice toward stewardship of our planet.

But as I have mentioned many times without the consequences we are putting the cart before the horse.