Jonathan Haidt is the one who wrote The Righteous Mind which has been discussed here. That book has an interesting viewpoint that I find useful to remember in some Thanksgiving conversations, but Haidt doesn't do much useful with it in the book. In his about page: There's a number of places that statement could lead, but he skips over the "transformation of society" part as far as I can tell. His policy proposals are to change the "Must be 13+ to register" checkbox to 16 and he wants Congress to make Facebook give him access to data for research. I think he's found a real issue. I don't think he has a useful idea of what to do about it though. Also from his about page: University are so much rosier when we forget about the arms race of tuition and student loans and credentialism.But the transformation of society in the 2010s was not caused by anxious college students. They were simply the “canaries in the coal mine” — the first generation to have moved their social lives onto social media platforms. As soon as they did so, around 2012, an epidemic of mental illness began.
We showed how this anxious new generation arrived on campus and demanded new norms, procedures, and bureaucratic responses that are incompatible with the older truth-seeking culture of universities.
The thing about Haidt that sticks in the craw of the intelligentsia is that he argues that Western liberal thought is the outlier, not the norm. I have personally found that if I approach conservatives from the standpoint of "my holy tenets are blasphemy to them" I have an easier time making a convincing argument. Importantly, Haidt doesn't make any value judgements other than to point out that if you are dependent on rationality to win an emotional argument you will not only lose, you will deserve to. The "transformation of society" canard goes back to Bowling Alone, the Silent Spring of online anxiety. Worthy of note, Bowling Alone was written before Friendster so it misses a lot of the specifics but nails the generals. I dunno, man. On the one hand, there's a lot of bullshit associated with college these days. On the other hand, it's caused college students to double down on their bullshit. My two recent quarters were fucking grim from a quality-of-life standpoint - active shooter signs and food banks while paying fuckin' $3k a quarter for community college? Yeah that's some bullshit. On the other hand all the bullshit accomodations every student was stacking and the combative bitchy student life orgs? Fuck I can't make it to the Flat Earth Society because my Quiddich team is meeting and then we're going to pajama night! I think both sides have a legitimate beef and I think it's caused entirely by what a rapacious scam college has become.University are so much rosier when we forget about the arms race of tuition and student loans and credentialism.
This is exactly how I feel about it. In general, I agree with Quatrarius. I don't think it's a particularly good article, but I do think there's some decent articulation of the issue itself.I think he's found a real issue. I don't think he has a useful idea of what to do about it though.