Humans are meant to be antifragile beings, say Lukianoff and Haidt, and their case is strong. Human muscles are antifragile because resistance, challenges, and moderated stressors actually make them stronger.
A plastic sippy cup is resilient because it can be thrown on the floor by a toddler every night at dinner and not be damaged. A glass vase is fragile because it can be easily damaged or broken when put under stress. In his book Antifragile, Taleb breaks everything down into three basic categories: fragile, resilient, and antifragile (p. The authors cite the work of statistician and stock trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb. What do the authors say this has to do with the coddling of America’s young people? A lot. In short, the study concluded that among children who were “protected” from peanuts, 17 percent developed a peanut allergy and among students exposed to peanut products, only 3 percent developed an allergy (p. Lukianoff and Haidt open up this section with a controversial example by examining a 2015 study on peanut allergies. This untruth is expressed as, “What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.” Let’s examine the book through the lenses of the three Great Untruths on which it is based.
This book is full of important observations and timely applications for parents, pastors, educators, and others, despite not being a Christian volume. The Coddling of the American Mind is broken into four parts: an exploration of these Great Untruths a couple of examples of how those untruths are manifest a in-depth look into how the Great Untruths came to prominence and some practical advice on where to go from here. Based on an article the duo originally wrote in the September 2015 edition of The Atlantic, the book focuses on three “Great Untruths” that have grown in popularity the last few years and are particularly potent on college campuses today. The Coddling of the American Mind by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt is, in the authors’ own words, “about wisdom and its opposite” (p.
0 kommentar(er)
