Woke anti-CBT Ideology Excels at Producing Adult-Sized Toddlers

Exploding numbers of people are falling prey to Woke ideology. Those steeped in Wokeness claim that they cannot cope with people who challenge their own world view, even slightly. They see offensive ideas (even barely offensive ideas) as a form of “violence.” This is in contrast to the approach used by classical liberals (and many conservatives), who want their ideas to be challenged. Subjecting one’s ideas to the marketplace of ideas is for the betterment of society in the spirit of John Stuart Mill’s book, On Liberty (Free download of an abridged version from Heterodox Academy here). Ideas invite opposing ideas, because they are opportunities to explore, extend and deepen the truth.

Feelings, on the other hand, seek only validation. Feelings clash with opposing feelings and ideas. Wokeness is an ideology that heavily relies on feelings, often seeking to disparage and ridicule the use of Enlightenment approach to learning by the sorts of tactics used by authoritarian dictators, including cancel culture, compelled speech, struggle sessions and censorship. Wokeness has many of the hallmarks of a fundamentalist religion whose main tactic is attempting to silence any person who refuses to bow and give total homage to the ideology.

In The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure (2019), Attorney Greg Lukianoff (President of Foundation for Individual Rights in Education) and moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt have diagnosed America’s mushrooming inability to engage in productive civil discourse (see here for the Atlantic article that was the basis for the book). One of my biggest take-homes from Coddling of the American Mind is that our most visible and powerful sense-making institutions (many universities and media outlets) have allowed the proven healing therapy of CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) to be turned upside down and used as a weapon for indoctrinating our children and young adults to ever-higher levels of cognitive dysfunction. Although we should sometimes trust our feelings, that is often not a good idea. Our feelings often mislead us into a convoluted moral landscape that destroys human flourishing (the focus of Paul Bloom's book, Against Empathy). When our feelings are substantially misleading us, we might need psychotherapy, such as CBT, which has been repeatedly proven to help people who have the following cognitive distortions:

EMOTIONAL REASONING: Letting your feelings guide your interpretation of reality. “I feel depressed; therefore, my marriage is not working out.”

CATASTROPHIZING: Focusing on the worst possible outcome and seeing it as most likely. “It would be terrible if I failed.”

OVERGENERALIZING: Perceiving a global pattern of negatives on the basis of a single incident. “This generally happens to me. I seem to fail at a lot of things.”

DICHOTOMOUS THINKING (also known variously as “black-and-white thinking,” “all-or-nothing thinking,” and “binary thinking”): Viewing events or people in all-or-nothing terms. “I get rejected by everyone,” or “It was a complete waste of time.”

MIND READING: Assuming that you know what people think without having sufficient evidence of their thoughts. “He thinks I’m a loser.”

LABELING: Assigning global negative traits to yourself or others (often in the service of dichotomous thinking). “I’m undesirable,” or “He’s a rotten person.” NEGATIVE

FILTERING: You focus almost exclusively on the negatives and seldom notice the positives. “Look at all of the people who don’t like me.”

DISCOUNTING POSITIVES: Claiming that the positive things you or others do are trivial, so that you can maintain a negative judgment. “That’s what wives are supposed to do—so it doesn’t count when she’s nice to me,” or “Those successes were easy, so they don’t matter.”

BLAMING: Focusing on the other person as the source of your negative feelings; you refuse to take responsibility for changing yourself. “She’s to blame for the way I feel now,” or “My parents caused all my problems.”

Lukianoff and Haidt point out that the dysfunctions listed above are the symptoms of the current Woke dysfunction on some campuses. We are encouraging this dysfunction whenever we shut down meaningful conversation regarding controversial claims, e.g., that biology makes clear evidence-based distinctions between males and females and that this can be done with a high degree of accuracy at birth. Somehow, in the year 2021, this exact fact-based claim has become, for many, a mark of "bigotry" and “violence.”

Those who have been thoroughly indoctrinated with the opposite of CBT willingly embrace massive disfunction, refusing to give alternate viewpoints charitable readings, focusing on negative possibilities, assuming that other people are threats, shoving people into silos of “good” and “bad” and casting blame for all of one’s frustrations on others, refusing to accept responsibility for changing themselves. Woke ideology has turned numerous people into adult-sized toddlers. And throughout this turmoil, many of the adults running our institutions sit there, “peeing in their pants” (as John McWhorter explains), refusing to say the obvious because they can’t bear to be called names like “racist” by Woke mobs, even when there is no basis for such name-calling.  Here is the relevant video (Min 29), where John McWhorter is discussing the problem with many school administrators with Glenn Loury:

Apparently, the entire curriculum has been turned upside down into these endless indoctrination sessions about the nature of racial oppression in the United States, including role playing games and separation of people by race. And all of this being done by people who think of themselves on the side of the angels. This is a school that's been running for 100 years as one of the most innovative and effective educational institutions on earth. And because of the fear that these CRT types inspire in other people--the idea that if you don't agree with them, you're going to be called a racist in public--goodness gracious, that scares people. The whole school has possibly been ruined. Bryn Mawr was essentially taken over by students demanding that kind of ideology as what was taught in all classrooms for weeks, to the point that some people have withdrawn their students from the school. The President, or whatever the head of Bryn Mawr is called, and she should be called out, Kim Cassidy actually gave in to these students and apologized for initially criticizing them for, for example, making other students--frankly most of the student body--scared to their socks for not agreeing to this idea that the education in the school needed to be completely hijacked. This sort of thing is happening in various places. And in each case, CRT fans could say, well, that's extreme, but. But the problem is, this has become a meme nationwide and we only need think about the Princeton letter that we've talked about, which basically implies that Princeton ought to be run by a star Chamber of people deciding what's racist and what isn't.

This whole dialogue is getting a little frightening, I write about it actually, in my latest Atlantic piece, and I have to say, my latest Substack piece. This stuff is scary, and I would bring it up, even if there wasn't my new substack account. This way of looking at things really is becoming overly influential. The reason I'm saying it is overly influential is because it doesn't teach people how to think constructively except about one very narrow thing. And it's not based on any coherent philosophy of education.

It's a religion. This is religion being preached as some sort of higher truth by people, most of whom I doubt consider themselves very religious. So okay, we're not going to have the White House prescribing against critical race theory in education. But on the other hand, we do need to have a conversation if there's going to be a racial reckoning under the Biden administration, as to what that reckoning is going to be. And if the reckoning is going to be that any Black person who decides to exert the performance art of saying that their institution is racist, [they] will have 90% of what they demand given to them, because everybody is peeing their pants, being afraid that somebody is going to call them a bigot on Twitter. This country is in serious trouble. And anybody who wants to tell me that I shouldn't say that until there's no such thing as a right wing militia zealot who might overtake the Capitol? Anybody who says that we can't talk about that until we do something about the idiots on the right?

Well, you know what? Frankly, I don't believe you. I think that really the people who say that just don't want to hear what they know is a truth because they're afraid that somebody is going to call them racist on Twitter if they don't bow down. We've got to sit these people back down--and notice I'm not saying chase them out of the room. But the hyper wokesters need to go back to the way it was 20 years ago when they were one voice at the table. And it does not make anybody a right-wing zealot to feel that what's happening at places like Dalton is deeply, deeply wrong. You can be somebody who's just a good old fashioned liberal.

These cowards, our university administrators and editors at major sense-making institutions, are enabling psychotherapeutic dysfunction on a nationwide scale. They need to stiffen their spines and start speaking up as a group.  The Woke activists are a loud shrill minority, even though it doesn't look that way when you read the woke-infested legacy media these days.

As far as a cure, is there, anywhere in the U.S., a clinical psychologist’s office big enough for CBT sessions for tens of millions of people?

Continue ReadingWoke anti-CBT Ideology Excels at Producing Adult-Sized Toddlers

Ben Fainer’s Bracelet

Ben Fainer inspired me. With his wonderful Irish-Polish accent, he consistently spoke of the need to love and forgive others, despite the horrors he had been through. This included long perilous years during the holocaust, including time at the concentration camp at Buchenwald.  I was so glad Ben allowed me to tell his story. He sat patiently in his living room as I asked him lots of questions. I just noticed today that my video interview of Ben has now been viewed by almost 100,000 people.

And now, Ben's daughter Sharon Berry has a new story. It has been determined that while in captivity, Ben created a metal bracelet that was recently discovered on the grounds of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Apparently my video helped to make this determination. I invite you to "meet" Ben by watching his video, which I filmed in his living room in 2012, a few years before he died. For more about Ben's bracelet, see also this article from today's edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. 

Continue ReadingBen Fainer’s Bracelet

The University of Virginia Medical School Engages in Macroagressions When a Student Questions “Microagressions”

The University of Virginia School of Medicine deserves an "F" for the exercise in Wokeness described below, as reported by Reason.  The article is titled, "A Medical Student Questioned Microaggressions. UVA Branded Him a Threat and Banished Him from Campus."

[Update: I have attached key legal filings from this lawsuit, because the details demonstrate that the thought process of the Administrators is pathological - - thoroughly Woke infested. Do this university really think that the students they admit to their medical school are this fragile? I want to believe that people generally act in good faith, but the University's positions in these pleadings are not credible. The faculty and administrators of UVA have completely fallen off the rails regarding the educational mission.

Doc 33 - Amended Complaint

Doc 112 - Defendants' Motion to Dismiss

Doc 113 - Deft Memo in Supp of MTD

Doc 115 - Plaintiff Memo in Opp re MTD

Doc 129 - Court Ruling on Deft MTD

Doc 132 - Order that Discovery may proceed.]

But first, what is the purpose of a college? I fully embrace the definition offered by Heterodox Academy: "We aspire to create college classrooms and campuses that welcome diverse people with diverse viewpoints and that equip learners with the habits of heart and mind to engage that diversity in open inquiry and constructive disagreement. We see an academy eager to welcome professors, students, and speakers who approach problems and questions from different points of view, explicitly valuing the role such diversity plays in advancing the pursuit of knowledge, discovery, growth, innovation, and the exposure of falsehoods."

Here's what UVA did to one of its medical students:

Kieran Bhattacharya is a student at the University of Virginia (UVA) School of Medicine. On October 25, 2018, he attended a panel discussion on the subject of microaggressions. Dissatisfied with the definition of a microaggression offered by the presenter—Beverly Cowell Adams, an assistant dean—Bhattacharya raised his hand. Within a few weeks, as a result of the fallout from Bhattacharya's question about microagressions, the administration had branded him a threat to the university and banned him from campus.

Why are schools firing professors and kicking out students who question Woke orthodoxy? It's simple. They don't have good answers for the questions being asked by the professors and students. Many schools are now acting like churches, excommunicating rather than intellectually engaging. For more, see John McWhorter's new book, The Elect, in which he explains how Wokeness is not like a religion. Rather, it is a religion. Instead of engaging with good faith intellectual inquiry, the Woke tell people to "Shut up!" They do this through ostracization, expulsion and infinite varieties of ad hominem attacks.

Notice the irony: The crime was "microaggressions," whereas the remedy is physical expulsion, a classic macro aggression.

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A few links regarding "microagressions":

The theory behind microaggressions—unintentional insults based on race, sex, or another protected status—is woefully inadequate and lacks scientific rigor. Scott Lilienfeld, a clinical psychologist at Emory University, took a close look at the core assumptions that undergird the academic understanding of microaggressions and concluded that there should be a "moratorium on microaggression training."

From "Oberlin College Is Hiring Students to Be Social Justice Activists, Host Microaggression Training"

"There is insufficient justification for concluding that the potential benefits of microaggression training programs outweigh their potential risks, including a substantial increase in the number of false-positive identifications of statements as microaggressions," he wrote.

From New Discourses:

[According to the Woke] there is no way to mistakenly identify a microaggression, as the victim’s perception is considered absolutely authoritative (see also, lived experience). Because of the reliance upon the perception of the recipient of alleged microaggressions, there is reason to be concerned that critical theories of identity can teach people to become more sensitive to and aware of slights that might even be being read into the situation, with no way to make a determination on the matter (see also, critical consciousness and woke). This problem has been noted by lawyer Greg Lukianoff and psychologist Jonathan Haidt in their book, The Coddling of the American Mind, as a kind of “reverse cognitive behavioral therapy” where people are taught to become more and more sensitive to (and less resilient against) slights and minor insults (see also, victimhood culture).

An excerpt from Wikipedia, demonstrating that the concept of microaggressions is controversial:

A number of scholars and social commentators have criticised the microaggression concept for its lack of scientific basis, over-reliance on subjective evidence, and promotion of psychological fragility. Critics argue that avoiding behaviours that one interprets as microaggressions restricts one's own freedom and causes emotional self-harm, and that employing authority figures to address microaggressions (i.e call-out culture) can lead to an atrophy of those skills needed to mediate one's own disputes.[7] Some argue that, because the term "microaggression" uses language connoting violence to describe verbal conduct, it can be (and is) abused to exaggerate harm, resulting in retribution and the elevation of victimhood.[8]

Continue ReadingThe University of Virginia Medical School Engages in Macroagressions When a Student Questions “Microagressions”

Personal Pronouns as Badges of the In-Group

I'm amazed that I need to write that there are only two sexes and see here. That said, many people have a felt need to announce personal pronouns that go light years beyond identifying one's sex. At New Discourses, in an article titled "Land Acknowledgment Statements: The Cultural Violence of the Academic Elite," Adam Ellwanger took a stab and trying to understand what is really going on with this fast-spreading custom:

While the stated purpose of explicitly naming one’s pronouns is to foster inclusion and tolerance, the practice actually performs two unstated functions. The first is to compel compliance from those who might not be willing to cooperate with the increasingly complicated lexicon that grows out of the pronoun wars. The paper trail generated through daily institutional interaction (which frequently indicates preferred pronouns) is used to force dissidents to comply. If you “misgendered” someone and that person wishes to file a formal complaint with the Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion, it is a great boon for their case if they can prove you were aware of their preferred pronouns by showing email communications where they made their preferences clear to you.

The second unstated purpose of listing one’s pronouns is to signify one’s membership in the priestly castes of university life: those intellectuals who, by mastering a complex vocabulary that eludes the grasp of regular people, demonstrate their superior respect for human dignity and their deeper concern for the many marginalized communities in the racist, fascist, homophobic, xenophobic, misogynous hellscape some people still insist on calling “America.” The ways that this group indicates their status among the clerics of social justice often parallels the performative aspects of religious sacraments. Naming pronouns when introducing oneself takes on a formalized, ritualistic character that is akin to making the sign of the cross at the end of a prayer. It serves to signal one’s profound devotion to a particular way of understanding the world.

This particular article uses personal pronouns as an introduction to a recent fad, "Land Acknowledgment Statements." According to Ellwanger, these statements "represent a kind of virtue-signaling that marks one’s belonging to the intellectual elite, there are a number of problems with this trend." And there are many problems . . .

Continue ReadingPersonal Pronouns as Badges of the In-Group

Another College Professor Takes a Hit for Expressing Her Opinions at a Compelled “Anti-Racism” Session

In an April 5, 2021 article at Reason, Jesse Singal reports on an incident at Lake Washington Institute of Technology, a Washington State public institution with 6,000 students. Newly tenured professor Elisa Parrett was labeled insolent, insubordinate and disruptive for having the gall to stand up at a compelled and segregated "anti-racism" college assembly based on the preachings of Robin DiAngelo and stating the following:

"Over the past couple of weeks, a lot has happened," Parrett began. "Protests have occurred, riots have broken out, people have been killed. And across the United States, companies, organizations, and schools have proclaimed their support of a movement called 'Anti-racism'"—here Parrett was referring to the capital-A variety. Parrett went on to complain about the segregated setting of the training and what she saw as the generally closed-minded nature of the nation's post-Floyd discourse. "Democracy thrives on conversations, but what we are seeing happening right now in the United States is not a conversation," she read. "It is a coup. Everyday Americans of all colors, creeds, backgrounds, and beliefs are being held hostage. Zealots are telling us, 'You're either with us or against us, and if you're against us, you're an evil bigot.' They are telling us, 'You're either part of the solution, or you're part of the problem.' They are telling us that all people may be classified into two sides: us or them, Democrat or Republican, liberal or conservative, people of color or white, righteous or bigoted, oppressed or privileged. I don't accept such false dichotomies, and I don't accept the ad hominem implications that come with it. Too often, words like 'privileged,' 'defensive,' and 'fragile' are just ways to dismiss what another person has to say. Too often, words like 'racist' are just a way to intimidate someone into silence." Parrett argued that people should work together to solve "real problems like wealth disparity, poverty, job insecurity, unemployment, the high cost of living, or the fracturing of the nuclear family, whatever form that family takes," but are waylaid by those who claim the "real problems" are "racism, sexism, transphobia…[and] hateful words."

"Thank you, Elisa," said the facilitator, cutting Parrett off about three minutes into her remarks. "No, you don't get to cut me off—I'm going to finish what I have to say," she responded. "I'm going to ask that you share the platform with the rest of the 200 nearly people who are here today," replied the facilitator. But Parrett continued for about another minute, telling the all-white attendees of the mandatory, segregated conversation that universities should be places where "ideas could be discussed, explored, debated, and assessed"—and that "this is not that."

Prior to the session, Parrett was bothered by the fact that the college had segregated the attendees of this session, separating the "whites" from the others. The college referred to this technique as "race based caucusing."  Singal quotes another professor who spoke out in an email to senior administrators: a "conference based on segregation by skin color does nothing to build a community of belonging."

The favorite technique by people captured by Woke ideology is the ad hominem attack and Washington Institute of Technology did not disappoint.  Following the struggle session, a college administrator wrote to Parrett, indicating that her: "egregious behavior which has led to substantial harm to hundreds of colleagues on campus." The charge was that Parrett's behavior was "downright scary, startling, and bewildering as she yelled a diatribe."  The college told Parrett that she had used her "new positional power [as a tenured professor] in a very corrupt, insolent and insubordinate manner." She was placed on leave and denied access to her college email account. The President of the college sent an email blast to every member of the college community indicating that she was "disappointed, angry, and shocked" by Parrett's dissent during the training.

Jesse Singal spoke to one of the administrators who criticized Parrett. She said,

a large cohort of professors and academic administrators were so emotionally devastated by hearing someone raise concerns about White Fragility–style diversity trainings that they could no longer do their jobs.

What happened next? A college "investigation" that has so far officially cost $80,000. Unofficially, it's closer to $250,000.

LWTech went to war against a tenured faculty member, launching a cartoonishly over-the-top disciplinary process that included the hiring of a private investigator, dozens of interviews, and claims of widespread trauma.
As you'll see if you read Singal's entire detailed article, the college's arguments comedically and instantly disintegrated when they encounted Singal's mild cross-examination of the administrators, especially after his revelation that he had a copy of a secretly recorded audio file of Parrett's statement at the session.

Parrett kept her job because her behavior was not fire-able, not even close.  On March 26, 2021, the college issued a vague reprimand.  One might be tempted to say that this reprimand was intentionally vague in order to stifle Parrett (and, as an example, others) from speaking up when a college next employs shrill racism as a "remedy" for racism.  Singal comments: "It wouldn't be surprising if this were one of the more expensive written reprimands in community-college history."

The bottom half of Singal's article reviews some of history of similar incidents (with links), mentioning violations by both the political left and right, but expressing concern that the far left is careening into a tailspin.  Much of this is due to the far left's expanding concept creep regarding the definition of "harm." Singal explains:

In this worldview, everything is a harm. There is no such thing as legitimate political disagreement, because we (the progressive in-group) already know the correct answer to every question (even if the answer can sometimes change overnight), and anyone who disagrees clearly—clearly—does so not because of some well-founded political or philosophical difference but because that person wants to harm the innocent people we are righteously hellbent on protecting.

In my writings, I've often asked, and I again ask: Where do you draw your line?  At what point will you say a firm "No" to Woke ideology?  At what point will you take a deep breath and say what you are thinking, that's it's not OK that everything is turning into Evergreen College.  Longstanding social psychological research highlights how important it is for you to be the one to speak up.  You are not alone.  Far from it. Be brave.

Continue ReadingAnother College Professor Takes a Hit for Expressing Her Opinions at a Compelled “Anti-Racism” Session