The Real Problem with Society: We Have No Grit

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Several months ago I was sent this video from my Mom, of all people, and it was from a YouTube doctor that I got her to follow because I thought his ideas about the pandemic were really spot on. I watched it and I was stunned. If you want to watch first and come back you can but I will do my best to quickly summarize the video as the article continues.

In this video, he goes over what he calls the Three Great Untruths and why people are more miserable for not understanding how the world really works. He bases this on the book, “The Coddling of the American Mind” by George Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt (whom I adore). In this book, they argue that we are breaking down civilization because we believe in these great untruths and we are simply becoming too soft and too fragile. Is the real problem that we just lack “resilience” and “grit?” According to Lukianoff and Haidt, yes. Zdogg jumps into the conversation by adding in how our performance and attitude during the pandemic (you can never get this disease) is emblematic of the modern idea around these great untruths.

Untruth 1: What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker? Or does it?

There is wide criticism of the “Fragility mindset.” The mindset comes from this recent idea that events, words, micro aggressions and other behaviors are merely an endless stream of trauma that has adverse mental health effects. If people believe they can’t survive the slings and arrows of the normal world then their minds are simply too fragile. Instead of looking at it as making someone stronger or more resilient, “woke” culture maintains that it makes us weaker and less resilient.

Zdogg promotes the idea that stress can be a good thing. He isn’t wrong to a certain point. However, any system or being that is stressed over time will eventually break and usually not in ways that harm only themselves. He maintains, as does Haidt and Lukianoff that kids are overprotected by not being exposed to different opinions, ideas, and things that they may not like or with which they do not agree. According to them, words can’t hurt you so why get worried about the things that people say. The answer of course is simple: words are vehicles of thoughts. If someone is walking around saying overtly racist things, not only will that make the oppressed group uncomfortable but it reveals how people really feel about you. No Black person is going to eagerly go have dinner with people who casually use racist language. Why would they do that to themselves?

This is an area where I tend to agree with both sides. I do think that adversity and overcoming challenges does make folks stronger and more resilient and better able to meet the challenges of life. That being said, I think much of the fragility mindset comes from the envy of people who have much easier lives. Let’s face it, if you’re white in the US, you’ve never had to deal with racism. I was recently speaking with someone who was with me when I got pulled over my police. They had never been pulled over by police with a person of color before. They were surprised at how I behaved (hands on the steering wheel, waiting for instructions, announcing my movements) and that they had never seen that before. That is the daily reality of being pulled over for a minor traffic violation because I’m a large brown guy and I like not getting shot by police, if I can help it. The same situation applies to social situations. If you are part of the dominant racial hierarchy then there are experiences, words, and events that simply just don’t touch your life. The same dynamic exists between men and women. Women have all kinds of habits to protect themselves from violence (keys in hand, don’t walk down empty stairwells, don’t go to certain areas at night). As men, this is far out of our experience and our lives are easier because we don’t have to deal with such things. And this is the important part: for those with certain privileges, be those of sex, race, economic, or otherwise, their lives are easier for having that privilege than those who do not have it and have to deal with the consequences of that. The effect of that piles up over time and can be psychologically difficult. Does that necessarily make people stronger? Does it really increase their resilience? Are they simply managing as best they can in circumstances that are less than ideal?

Untruth 2: My Feelings are Valid?

Emotions are difficult things. Most people are plagued by them and many people are often fighting them to avoid negative impulses. Most people act from emotion and from instinct. If all humans were logical, our planet would more like Vulcan than Earth. For most of human history, even back to antiquity, human emotion has often been seen as the enemy with logic and later reason (thanks to the scientific revolution!) being put forth as a better way of understanding and acting in our world. Human desire and emotion can be incredibly destructive. Some of the greatest stories of literature cover this very thing (Wuthering Heights, Anna Karenina, the Scarlet Letter). Sufficed to say that emotion emotions are complicated. The stoics eschewed human emotion in favor of their own philosophy of control and not giving oneself into those impulses.

In the 21st century, this has been eschewed for a focus on emotions. Statements like, “I know it’s not logical but it feels right, isn’t that just as valid?” or “My feelings are just as valid as your logic.”

Zdogg (and plenty of other people) are enraged by this idea. Emotions are fleeting and can’t be relied upon for decision-making, especially on the big life issues. I’ve seen this myself in my own life and in the lives of other people. I can always tell when someone who has fallen on hard times made some bad decisions along the way because they were following “the good times” or “what they felt they should do” even though when you evaluate it in a more objective manner, it seems like a bad idea.

This even extends to an attack on reason and logic itself. Viral videos of “woke” black students complaining that logic and reason are tools of white supremacy generate vitriol online but it is indicative of this modern idea. Who has control over culture? What is objective truth and if the truth contradicts my feelings, aren’t my feelings more important? This has a great deal to do with the narcissistic, self-centered individualist society in which we find ourselves. Our society has been so atomized that we don’t look out to the world and other people to gauge our own responses or have a sense of any conformity, instead, we are wrapped up in our own minds full of instincts, feelings, and emotions with a complete disregard for other people.

This is probably the only untruth where I’m in lock step with ZDogg. We cannot be creatures of emotion without any reason or logic. This will destroy society and reduce humanity back to the caves (or at least the huts). One of the reasons why humans are dominant on this planet is because of our ability to use reason, form groups, and use our large brains to solve problems. It also allows us to be persistence predators and adapt to a variety of situations.

Having power of our own emotions and being able to separate from them, process them, and move on from them gives us control over our lives and makes us human in the purest sense of it all.

Untruth 3: The Big Struggle: Good and Evil

In an effort to simplify the world, we have largely drawn some conclusions about things and one of the conclusions we have drawn, as a society, is that things are really complicated and therefore we need a simple framework to understand the world.

In his documentary, All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, Adam Curtis shows how scientists over the 20th century, in an effort to make the world fit into neat computer models. In one example, a biologist was studying the ecosystem of the Colorado plains and found that contrary to this idea that the system could be easily quantified and put into a flow chart, it was dynamic and complex far beyond the hypothesis.

The unfortunate reality is that the world is far more complicated than any one person or any one system can understand or comprehend. To keep things simple, like the scientists of the early 20th century, politicians have simplified our world down to tribes and a struggle between good and evil.

The world, unlike the ever-popular Marvel movies, is not denoted in simple terms of black and white or good and evil. There are some people who are “problematic” but can do good things that are laudable. There are some “good” or “unproblematic” people who can do things that are not so great. We are complex creatures and while we might always try reach for our better ideas and impulses sometimes we reach for those and fail to achieve them. We all make mistakes but we need an opportunity to grow from those mistakes and not be cancelled just because we tweeted the wrong thing 5 years ago or said something out of ignorance, not malice.

I do think that its is disingenuous to reduce the world to a simple black and white comparison. It’s not really fair to the complex world we live in but I think in a world where everything seems so complicated, it serves people in helping them understand the world. The only problem is that the seeming simplicity is a trap and only leads to more division. If the world is “good and evil” then everything has to be categorized in a binary context.

Grit and Resilience

These untruths spring out of these changes. It seems like everyone is “so sensitive” all of a sudden and things that were ok in the past are now cringeworthy or even criminal. As Meryl Streep said about the #metoo movement, “We are aware and we aren’t going back, we’ve got out foot in their now. Some people are going to have to evaluate how they have lived their lives and realize that we are civilized people.”

According to ZDogg and plenty of online commentators, the real problem with modern society is that we’re just too weak with your fragile mindsets and our lack of grit and resilience. But is that really the problem? Is that merely a recall to a time when it seemed like people were stronger? They often weren’t as strong as they thought they were and many coped with drugs and alcohol that caused harm. I think our people are growing up a little bit and handling issues head on rather than at the bottom of the bottle.

We’ve spent the last few decades telling people to be healthier, don’t smoke, don’t drink, don’t do drugs and so on. We’ve extolled health as a virtue signal for “goodness” and now we are confronting the traumas in our lives rather than drinking away the pain. And let’s face it, going to the gym is not a bottle of Johnny Walker no matter how many people try to convince us of the endorphin rush. Social media is filled with people using pop psychology to talk about their problems and finding others who relate. Communities are forming around dealing with mental health issues and how the brain and body interact.

People are having experiences, feeling things, understand the world in a new way and that has radically changed what it takes to be successful in society. Emotional Intelligence is being prioritized. Words like Emotional Labor have entered our collective vocabulary. We have exposed things underlying in our society. From the relationships between men and women to how we raise children, everything is coming under scrutiny as we evaluate our world through new shared values. Perhaps, it is not Grit and Resilience we need but deep change in our society. I know that I bang on about systemic changes but it is no good thing to be well-adjusted to a sick society. I’m not saying society is as sick as some might posit but I am saying that our society doesn’t work for real people in real situations. That is what we have to change and address in meaningful ways that improve the material conditions of people.