"You can’t expect those around you to constantly accommodate your need for safety. That is asking too much of people."
Asserts Peggy Noonan, in her essay titled "The Trigger-Happy Generation/If reading great literature traumatizes you, wait until you get a taste of adult life," which is about telling these kids today to toughen up.
Why, when I was a child, oldies lectured the youngsters about how many miles they had to walk to school in the snow after milking cows in the dark. These old people today! They lecture the kids about how they read Shakespeare without flinching. They've gone soft, I tell you.
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The dark? Luxury. We were privileged to live inside a volcano, and milked the cows by the orange light of the lava. And the cows were actually rabbits, biting rabbits.
I find the way these people are using the word "unsafe" to be deeply troubling. Safety has to do with a person's physical well-being, not their right to be free from the emotional response to ideas or words that are upsetting.
When people click on the link to read Peggy Noonan, I assume they get pop up ads for things like ostomy supplies and those walk-in bathtubs, like the TV channel that shows the reruns of Star Trek TOS.
Not so much telling them to 'toughen up' but rather 'grow up.' All that 'trigger warning' and fake 'safety' stuff is an effort to control and dominate what can be said, but in the silly, easily mocked way that little kids might give the same thing a go. Peggy's best line in that piece as at the end, noting that the American penchant for satire and mockery will ultimately win the day. Indeed it will, even if this target is an exceptionally easy kill.
Connected is the rejection or harassment of commencement and other campus speakers who are not politically correct. I hate that phrase, but it just won’t stop being current.
Just recently, a broohaha swirled up over the very use of the term "politically correct". I forget which liberal blogger/writer's article started it, but he/she basically said, "Look, enough is enough. This is starting to get ridiculous."
During the left-eating-left furball that ensued, I saw many comments from people claiming that there's no such thing as political correctness. I remember marveling at the wanton insularity required to make such a statement, let alone defend it as truth.
"I find the way these people are using the word "unsafe" to be deeply troubling."
Deeply troubling?! You sound like you need a trigger warning... a trigger warning for trigger warnings. This is the ultimate in softness.
Can you call out a microagression without committing a microagression?
Great tag: these kids today
Link
As long as universities hire "Diversity staffers", there will be jobs for social justice warriors. If higher ed collapses, as it seems to be doing, these people will be in deep trouble.
A volcano?!?! We would have killed for a volcano.
One of the comments: What do you expect from a generation who have been told since birth that climate change will destroy the planet. No wonder they are traumatized.
The response was exactly what I would have said to that. I grew up and my father, a boomer, grew up in a world where EVERYONE knew that we could die at ANY time with a scant twenty minutes notice. Nuclear extinction was omnipresent. People coped. Against that, the very idea of these idiots demanding safe spaces is almost insulting in and of itself.
To make things worse, there's absolutely no guarantee that there won't be another Cold War. Will we have the stones to see it through next time?
Original Mike, that was before the landlord evicted us. We had to move to a sulfur bog. Mosquitoes were always fighting us for space. And the grackles! Don't ask about the grackles.
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words...well, words are just too terrifying to contemplate!
This microaggression stuff is a form of stolen valor.
In SJW circles, the coolest of the cool are survivors of traumatic events, people with war stories.
Of course its not very cool to experience a violent sexual assault or racial hatred being acted out. Nobody wants to go through that.
But people do envy the cred.
Voila! The microaggression. Now you can be a "survivor" on the cheap.
In related news, a writer at National Review observed that it's against policy for boys to have water gun fights at Scout activities and everyone's flipping out.
Mind you, I'm not (see my blog post ) but it's a knee-jerk reaction; everyone's frustrated by this whole obsession with safety -- though in the Scouts' case, they are letting boys handle actual guns, so have particular grounds for all-inclusive safety rules.
Well, to be honest, I did flinch when I read Shakespeare in high school. And my dad did milk the cows before daylight and walked to school and fought Rommel in North Africa.
First time I ever handled a gun was in Boy Scouts. I spent all of my money on ammo that summer.
My dad's story was always that the bedrooms were unheated, so if you were sick you got to sleep on the living room couch, and he remembers one such incident, watching the Christmas tree lights and worrying all night long that the burnt out one would spark a fire.
Or something like that.
Oh, and they could take the city bus to school, or walk the X miles (forget how many) and keep the fare as allowance.
I read this earlier on the WSJ. Somehow I don't see Althouse as being one to accommodate, much less kowtow to these special little snowflakes that might go through law school.
My daughters are being raised to eat the "snowflakes" for lunch.
I'm assuming people (i.e., actual adults) aren't overly concerned about this phenomenon because we all know once these tender-nippled idiots hit the real world, the comeuppances will be brutal, swift and comprehensive. But maybe I'm wrong. Could this bullshit seep into "real" life? Hasn't it in some ways already?
Hmmm...
Ann Althouse said...
"I find the way these people are using the word "unsafe" to be deeply troubling."
Deeply troubling?! You sound like you need a trigger warning... a trigger warning for trigger warnings. This is the ultimate in softness.
Yep, just checking to see if you actually read the comments.
@Dolan: "All that 'trigger warning' and fake 'safety' stuff is an effort to control and dominate what can be said"
Exactly. Aided and abetted by plenty of adult Progs with a voted interest in keeping the racket going -- not just a bunch of misguided kids who will wilt under satire. Progs are immune to humor.
I think most college students see this crap for what it is.
My son just completed his freshman year. He told me about a girl in one of his seminars who jumped up and ran out of the room as the professor discussed one of the circles of hell in Dante's Inferno. She said she didn't feel safe. My son said the professor looked befuddled and the other kids in the class looked at each other and rolled their eyes. They found it particularly amusing because she did it with 5 minutes left to go in the class.
Hah! Our upstairs was unheated and we used to carve pictures with our fingernails into the ice that formed on the *inside* of the windows!
And here I was thinking this "I feel unsafe" blather was just just a means to trigger Title IX "hostile environment" precedent; that is, aggressive use of lawfare to shut up opposition voices.
And now Peggy Noonan tells me the poor dears really do feel "unsafe" in the presence of speech that does not conform to PC norms?
"I find the way these people are using the word "unsafe" to be deeply troubling."
As long as your trauma doesn't have a chilling effect on my safe space, dude.
Rich, now dead, friend was raised in a gigantic house in Mass. His parents and sisters lived in one, heated, wing while the boys were sheltered in the unheated wing.
His father's motto was: Cold boys don't make trouble.
They should have started a campfire in the unheated wing.
On safety:
"Complete safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world."
Mary Shafer, SR-71 Flying Qualities Lead Engineer, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center
(said sometime back in the 80's, probably)
Deeply troubling?! You sound like you need a trigger warning... a trigger warning for trigger warnings. This is the ultimate in softness.
Althouse wins the thread.
Where is Bloom County when we need it?
Bob Boyd said...
This microaggression stuff is a form of stolen valor.
In SJW circles, the coolest of the cool are survivors of traumatic events, people with war stories.
Well, not all people, though. I mean, the Left & Universties don't exactly love Ayaan Hirsi Ali, do they? Funny how that works. Maybe Ali should tote a sleeping bag or something, mix it up.
Do you wish to be known as the first generation that comes with its own fainting couch?
Peggy does have a way with words.
So much for being warriors.
"'Complete safety is for people who don't have the balls to live in the real world.'
(said sometime back in the 80's, probably)"
Just around the same time that the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded.
I have found a productive social role for both the Hells Angels and the various black gangsters. They should be put on service contracts to colleges, to go about the campus periodically threatening college kids, committing petty larceny, and making them feel unsafe.
That would indeed promote diversity and a degree of perspective. Artificial, but who knows. Its worth a try.
Why, when I was a child, oldies lectured the youngsters about how many miles they had to walk to school in the snow after milking cows in the dark. These old people today! They lecture the kids about how they read Shakespeare without flinching. They've gone soft, I tell you.
Hell, when I was a kid we had a big poster of "The Rape of the Sabine Women" on the wall of the classroom where we read "The Nigger of the Narcissus" without flinching. Then we went out and killed a dinosaur for lunch.
When I was a teenager it wasn't considered safe to go to college at Columbia-Barnard. These kids have it so easy on the Upper West Side today.
They lecture the kids about how they read Shakespeare without flinching.
Well, it's pretty tough to get through "Titus Andronicus" without flinching. Not to mention skipping meat pies for the rest of your life. Emma Sulkowicz might watch a good performance of the play to find out what a real rape victim looks like.
The link you posted is this:
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=Why+are+you+so+fixated+on+the+idea+of+personal+safety,+by+which+you+apparently+mean+not+having+uncomfortable+or+unhappy+thoughts+and+feelings%3F+Is+there+any+chance+this+preoccupation+is+unworthy+of+you%3F+Please+say+yes.&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#q=Why+are+you+so+fixated+on+the+idea+of+personal+safety,+by+which+you+apparently+mean+not+having+uncomfortable+or+unhappy+thoughts+and+feelings%3F+Is+there+any+chance+this+preoccupation+is+unworthy+of+you%3F+Please+say+yes.&rls=en&tbm=nws
The link you meant to post is this: http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-trigger-happy-generation-1432245600
Nope. Your link takes you to the front of the pay wall.
If you click through Ann's link you get behind the wall to the full article.
Can you call out a microagression without committing a microagression
Not if you are a White, male, heterosexual.
"Hell, when I was a kid we had a big poster of "The Rape of the Sabine Women" on the wall of the classroom where we read "The Nigger of the Narcissus" without flinching. Then we went out and killed a dinosaur for lunch.
You had walls? Lucky!
Then we went out and killed a dinosaur for lunch.
You mean a chicken or some other bird? Yeah, I ate a dinosaur the other day too.
I wouldn't feel safe either with those enormous student loans hanging over my head.
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