Seyftizm: Do I need to deprive a person of information for the sake of security
Dmitry Kurkin
Ideas and sayings can be controversial., controversial, provocative and transgressive - but can they really be dangerous? And if so, is it necessary to deal with the threat, resorting to a system of prohibitions and the creation of safe spaces? Do we need to protect the human psyche with warnings about possible triggers (trigger warnings) or, conversely, should it be taught to react to conflict situations and uncomfortable opinions, just as we teach the body to resist viruses and bacteria?
Jonathan Heidt and Greg Lucianoff, the authors of the book “Pampering the American Mind: How good intentions and bad ideas create a generation of losers,” written in explanation of their eponymous three-year-old article, claim that the policy of “sephitism” in a university environment leads to aggressive censorship. And that, in turn, deprives students and teachers of one of the fundamental rights - the right to a dispute and an equal discussion. As examples, they cite speeches by radical speakers (from political analyst Charles Murray to former editor of the conservative Breitbart website Milo Jannopoulos), who were canceled under pressure from student activists, and attempts to tailor the curriculum to a "safe environment". The latter include calls to prohibit Harvard professors from teaching the law of rape, because the discussion of this topic itself can injure listeners who have had relevant experience and make voluntary the study of literary works that describe racial violence or oppression (the authors specify fall into "And the destruction came" of the Booker laureate Chinua Achebe, and the "Great Gatsby" by Francis Scott Fitzgerald).
Heidt and Lucianoff mainly describe the American university environment (which is close and understandable to them: the first is a professor of social psychology, the second is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), noting that the bias of safety in it has appeared relatively recently: before that, at least least since the sixties, on the contrary, was considered the battlefield and clashes of the most irreconcilable opinions. However, this does not prevent them from extrapolating conclusions about the harm of seignetism to man as a whole.
A society that diligently bends around sharp corners, Heidt compares with hypercapital parents: “I would suggest that readers introduce a magic cloak that would protect their children under eighteen years of age: they would not fall into a situation when society rejects them, they would never fall and wouldn't scratch my knee, nobody would insult them and nobody would tease. And then, after eighteen years of complete protection from physical and emotional suffering, they take off the cape, and your child goes to college. Would you agree to that? Most people immediately I understand that such an approach cripple their children and not allow them to grow. " The academician insists that the psyche needs to be tempered just like the body: “The immune system, like the nervous one, comes into the world that is not fully formed. And in order to complete the process, experience is required.”
What does not kill can make a person stronger - and can “reward” him with neuroses and PTSD for the rest of his life. Getting out of the comfort zone is useful, but it would be nice to be able to return to it from time to time.
Although the rhetoric of the book and its authors as a whole boils down to the maxim “What does not kill, makes us stronger” and echoes those who criticize the modern “cult of injury” and “snowflakes” (they nicknamed defenders of political correctness and people who disagree with their point of view perceived as a personal insult), the question of the harm of privacy in general is legitimate. How far should the struggle with "dangerous" ideas and their distributors go? Should racism be erased from the books of Mark Twain, or - turning to Russian realities - delete Bunin from the Dark Alley school program? Where does the opposition to the humiliation of human dignity end and the censorship that burns out dissent with napalm begins? Finally, is it necessary for the psyche to constantly temper and does this tempering imply cognitive dissonance?
In recent years, the "psychological immune system" has indeed been regularly written, although it is not so much a strict scientific term as a fashionable collective name that unites concepts that are already described in psychology and psychiatry: mechanisms of adaptation and psychological adaptation, stress response, the ability to rebuild a personal picture of the world, based on new data that do not fit into the old picture. Since they are still not well studied, the methods of dealing with stress offered by popular psychologists vary greatly: from advice to dealing with “thought viruses” that poison everyday life (in the book by Hanne Brurson, translated into Russian in 2015), to recommendations in any case not to use any mechanisms of adaptation (only in this case, according to Garrett Kramer, psychological immunity can be activated).
Seidfizmu Heydt and Lucianoff oppose the "anti-fragility" (essentially the same psychological immunity), and in this dichotomy, it seems, lies the main trick. The experience gained in the tests, and safety precautions do not contradict each other, but complement each other. Immunity is a useful tool that needs to be used, but it would be presumptuous to overestimate its possibilities: you can’t heal yourself from serious illnesses by severe illnesses. A child who learns to walk sometimes has to break his knees in the blood - but his legs should not be broken for learning purposes, it definitely will not make you good parents.
The same can be said about psychological immunity and sanitation of public opinion. What does not kill can make a person stronger - and can “reward” him with neuroses and PTSD for the rest of his life. Leaving the comfort zone is useful, but it would be nice to be able to return to it from time to time. The ability to respond to "negative information" becomes absolutely necessary for a person living in conditions of constant information bombardment. But there is a difference between criticism and mass harassment. To prohibit the literary classics is an obvious brute force, but this does not negate the need to rethink it from time to time and provide it with relevant explanations. Unpopular and outrageous ideas are certainly needed to challenge conformity and the establishment from time to time. But exactly as long as flirting with them does not turn into hate crimes.
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