Department Of Reasons For That Take A Deep Breath Truism
“The way we breathe has a direct and immediate impact on the state of our mind, emotions, and nervous system. When we’re agitated or anxious, our breath is often quick and shallow. When we’re calm, and grounded, it tends to be long and deep. So, it’s helpful to remember that we can deliberately alter our breath when we want to soften stress or anxiety.…
we can always call on this tool, lengthening our inhales and exhales, in order to regulate our stress response, and gain a sense of calm.”
( Calm meditation, app, “Breath in Three Acts,” 4-6-26 )
* * *
Department Of Powerful People Have The Privilege Of Ignorance
Sub-Department Of Reasons To Use The Calming Breath Tools
“It is an old truism that knowledge is power. The inverse — that power is often ignorance — is rarely discussed.
The powerful swathe themselves in obliviousness in order to avoid the pain of others and their own relationship to that pain. There’s a large category of acts hidden from people with standing: the more you are, the less you know….”
( excerpt, Rebecca Solnit, “Nobody Knows,” Harpers Magazine )
A few days ago, when moiself ran across Rebecca Solnit‘s above cited article, I was reminded of SCOTUS Justice Sotomayor’s recent and right-on critique of her colleagues’ obliviousness to the realities in daily lives of non-one-percenters such as themselves.
( excerpts, my emphases/additions, “Supreme Court’s Sotomayor slams colleague Kavanaugh for ICE ruling,” USA Today, 4-9-26 ):
“Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor took a swipe at fellow Justice Brett Kavanaugh… for his recent opinion in an immigration case….
Sotomayor spoke about the court’s divided decision in September 2025 that allowed the Trump administration to resume indiscriminate immigration-related stops….
Over the objections of the court’s three liberal justices, including Sotomayor’s, the court blocked a lower court ruling that said federal agents need to have reasonable suspicion that the person they’re questioning is in the country illegally…. [1]
‘I had a colleague in that case who wrote, you know, these are only temporary stops,’ Sotomayor said, referencing Kavanaugh’s concurring opinion…. “This is from a man whose parents were professionals. And probably doesn’t really know any person who works by the hour.’
Sotomayor added, ‘Those hours that they took you away, nobody’s paying that person,’ she said of those detained. ‘And that makes a difference between a meal for him and his kids that night and maybe just cold supper.’ ….
In his opinion for the court, Kavanaugh lied blew smoke out of his prep school Ivy League ass made up crap about something he knows nothing about said that legal residents’ encounters with immigration agents are ‘typically brief,’ and impacted individuals ‘promptly go free.’
* * *
Department Of New Great Term From A Book I Might Read
*Might read,* as in, Get in line with the 158 books ahead of you on my list. But, as is often the case with my reading list, the lastest, newest/shiny entry kicks the others to the rear. Sigh. There’s no fighting evolution.
Oh yes the term: safetyism. Before I even read the definition I suspected what it was;…moiself knew it was a name for something I’d previously had no name for – a phenomenon that both alarmed and infuriated me when I saw it creeping into my children’s college experiences. [2]
This term came from a book review of The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure. I’ll post my favorite excerpts of the review, with moiself’s sincere apology for my boneheaded neglect to note where I saw the review and thus give proper attribution. [3]
The Coddling of the … reviewer admitted being skeptical about a book whose title could have heralded a tirade from middle-aged professors about how “today’s students are too soft and whiny.” Instead, the reviewer noted, the book’s authors point out the disturbing data of what is happening on college campuses: the rise of trigger warnings, safe spaces, disinvited speakers, student protests shutting down debate – linked with the dramatic and documented rise in anxiety and depression among young people. The book does not blame young people for these particular problems; rather, it lays responsibility on the bad ideas that youth are being taught by well-meaning adults.
As someone even wiser than moiself [4] wrote,
“…despite their theoretical benefits, protected educational experiences [safe spaces] often fail to instill the most important attributes of a liberal education: critical thinking, persuasive argumentation, close reading, and cultural understanding. Indeed, students’ desire for safe spaces can limit their ability to traverse the real world—where strong disagreements and challenging experiences are part of life…. I know my campus is not a protective bubble that can shield students from reality. Rather, it’s a microcosm of the real world—and I’m not doing my job as an educator if I perpetuate the illusion of safety at the expense of challenging students’ ideas and beliefs.
As a Black man who teaches Shakespeare at a predominantly white institution, I realized years ago that the classroom can never be a safe space. When I teach Othello, a tragedy replete with anti-Black racism and misogyny, am I safe from silent criticisms that I’m an assimilated Black person with a ‘white voice’ teaching a white author? If there is only one Black female student in the class, is she safe? Rather than asking a non-Black colleague to teach the play for me, I lean into discomfort and use it to my pedagogical advantage. I carefully address whatever arises from the class’s collective exposure to the text and its racist moments, because that is my job as a professor.
In my classroom, I eschew safe space rhetoric—such as the truism that all opinions are equally valid—in favor of a pedagogical practice I call ‘productive discomfort.’ This practice leans into difficult discourses on a variety of contentious topics and fearlessly engages students’ personal backgrounds, identities, and experiences. It uses the learning process to expand the boundaries of students’ comfort zones by challenging their existing assumptions and biases.”
( excerpt, “Discomfort Is the Point: Why ‘safe spaces’ do a disservice to students,” by David Sterling Brown, AAC&U, Winter 2024 )
“Education should disrupt the status quo and promote critical thinking.”
Yet again, I digress.
What follows are excerpts from the The Coddling of the American Mind review, with my emphases. I have not yet read the book; thus, my emphases of the reviewer’s statements mark *my* concerns – ones I’ve amassed over the past decade, from my offsprings’ experiences as well as from my own readings and observations. One example: although content/trigger warnings and attempts to establish colleges as safe spaces where students are promised refuge from being “offended” may feel like a kindness in the moment, IMO these policies impinge on free speech, suppress open discussion of complex issues, throttle academic and intellectual diversity, and ultimately (and perhaps most importantly) hinder young people in building resilience.
“Lukianoff and Haidt [the books’ two authors] are not conservatives….both lean left politically. That matters, because this book is not a right-wing attack on campus culture. It’s a liberal critique of things that have gone wrong inside liberal spaces….
The central argument is simple: three bad ideas have spread through American universities (and increasingly through K-12 schools, workplaces, and families). These ideas sound good on the surface. But they are toxic. They make students more anxious, more depressed, and less prepared for adult life.
The three bad ideas are:
- ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you weaker.’ This is the opposite of the old saying. It teaches that discomfort, emotional pain, and offense are dangerous. So, we must protect people from them. The problem is that avoidance makes anxiety worse, not better. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), one of the most evidence-based treatments for anxiety, teaches the exact opposite: you have to face your fears to overcome them.
‘Always trust your feelings.’ This sounds empowering. But your feelings are not always reliable guides to reality. Anxiety tells you there’s a threat when there isn’t. Anger can be based on a misinterpretation. If you always trust your feelings without questioning them, you become a prisoner of your own emotional reactions.
- ‘Life is a battle between good people and evil people.’ This is the us-versus-them mindset. It divides the world into oppressors and victims. It leaves no room for nuance, context, or good-faith disagreement. And it makes every conflict into a moral crusade where compromise is betrayal….
Here are four things the reviewer learned from the book ( again, excerpts from the review, my emphases ):
“1. Safetyism is not the same as safety.
The authors coin the term “safetyism” to describe a culture where emotional safety is treated as more important than intellectual freedom. Actual safety protects you from physical harm. Safetyism protects you from ideas that might make you uncomfortable. The problem is that you can’t learn in a discomfort-free environment. Learning requires challenge.
2. The rise in anxiety and depression is real and alarming. [5]
3. Antifragility is a real thing.
The book borrows Nassim Taleb’s concept of ‘antifragile’ things [6] that get stronger when they’re stressed (e.g. bones, muscles, immune systems) Minds can be antifragile too. But only if they’re exposed to manageable challenges. Protecting kids from every stressor makes them fragile, not safe.
4. You can be compassionate and still allow discomfort.
One of the book’s most important distinctions. Compassion does not mean removing every obstacle. Sometimes compassion means letting someone struggle, fail, and figure it out.
The book ends with a line that has stuck with me:
‘Prepare the child for the road, not the road for the child.’
That’s it. That’s the whole argument. We have been so focused on smoothing the road, removing every bump, every uncomfortable idea, every moment of potential distress, that we forgot to prepare the child. And now we have a generation that is more anxious, more depressed, and less resilient than any in recent memory.”
I’ll drink to that.
* * *
Freethinkers’ Thought Of The Week [7]
* * *
May you remember that discomfort is the point of learning;
May you call out mind-coddling when you see it;
May you always have room for nuance, context, and good-faith disagreement;
…and may the hijinks ensue.
Thanks for stopping by. Au Vendredi!
* * *
[1] Other than what they’re doing now, which is blatant racial profiling.
[2] I don’t know if it went as far back as high school – I don’t recall K or Belle mentioning “safe spaces” or “trigger/content warnings” then – but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was already there.
[3] I copied/wrote down portions, so it must have been online…Facebook? One of my many newspaper online subscriptions? ACVATTWAFNB (All Cat Videos All The Time With A Few News Breaks)?
[4] Gasp – they exist. By the thousands…..
[5] Most of us have heard about the skyrocketing rates of anxiety and depression; the book presents data linking this to social media, the decline of free play, and the rise of safetyism.
[6] Nassim Taleb is a Lebanese-American author, professor, mathematician. His book cited here is Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder,
[7] “free-think-er n. A person who forms opinions about religion on the basis of reason, independently of tradition, authority, or established belief. Freethinkers include atheists, agnostics and rationalists. No one can be a freethinker who demands conformity to a bible, creed, or messiah. To the freethinker, revelation and faith are invalid, and orthodoxy is no guarantee of truth.” Definition courtesy of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, ffrf.org
