These days, many people think we need to protect people, especially kids and young people, from anything unpleasant, or any point of view with which they disagree.

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Here’s a transcript of our conversation:

Brittany: Hi, Emma.

Emma: Hi, Brittany.

Brittany: So we have come a long way since our founding, and I don’t actually mean that. Good way. No. We used to be known for our grit, like Americans, and our ability to pick ourselves up by the bootstraps and meet obstacles with resilience and strength. And you know, back in the day, children’s and children and teen, like they helped out their families on farms. They felt their fathers and they had to, you know, help at home. And they saw disease claim family members. They dealt with a lot of horrible things, and a lot of ’em were stronger for it. And a lot of them were stronger than we are today, even though we don’t go through that much. So they were emotionally tough. Because sometimes, you know, terrible things do happen. And over the, and in fact, I would not say sometimes, all the time terrible things happen. And over the last several years, maybe longer, we have had to we’ve and left our strength and our grit behind as a people. And now everyone seems to want to be the victim. The victim is of course, meaning like, well, something bad happens to you know? And so, Jonathan Hite, who’s great, and Gregory, I’m gonna say his name off Lukianoff.

Emma: Oh, Lukianoff.

Brittany: And he’s a friend of mine, so I’m sorry. Yeah. I said your name wrong. They wrote a book called The Coddling of the American Mind. And it’s a great book, basically. Great book. And it’s all about this problem, specifically what’s happening to college students because they’re taught, they’re not responsible for their emotions now. And, you know, anything that makes them uncomfortable should be avoided, is kind of what they think. And they’re in this mindset that words are weapons. You and I have talked about hate speech. And what hates speech is violent and stuff before? So they also believe that any speech they don’t agree with should be shut down. And that they’re honestly, they, I don’t think they believe that they are strong enough to deal with bad things. And that’s crazy to me. Yeah. So safe spaces, and I’m saying that in quotes, were implemented on campuses across the country. Safe space is like, well, you know what, I’m gonna wait to say that I have to explain an example. So a safe space, like when Trump won in 2016, college campuses were offering free counseling and like special rooms for kids that were emotionally dealing with trauma because somebody they didn’t like won. And that is like. That is crazy to me. But first, let’s back up and I’m gonna actually, I’m gonna put Emma on the spot here. Yeah. And I’m gonna ask you to kind of explain this whole concept of safe spaces and then we’ll get into more of it. So, Emma, what is a safe space?

Emma: Totally. So to give some background, I actually worked at a group that focused on the kind of college news and crazy stuff that was going on on campuses. It was called Campus Reform. And we wrote tons of stories about this in 2016, all the way through 2020. As long as Trump was in office, people were demanding these safe spaces on these campuses. And it was so absurd. You would see people sometimes having like, coloring book sessions with puppies and stuff. And it was like this, oh, this is a safe space where you can let your emotions out about having Donald Trump as the president. And it’s interesting cuz I don’t know if there’s a super clear definition, but it’s basically, it kind of is what it sounds like. It’s like a reserved space where you can, you know, let certain feelings show or where you’re not allowed to bring up other stuff. And that’s the part that really concerns me is there were even like no whites allowed safe spaces on certain campuses. There were these places where it was like, oh, you know, we’re all gonna talk about the effects of Trump being in office and how it’s affected us emotionally or there would be safe spaces on finals week where they would say, all right, everyone’s taking their college exams. These are colleges that are doing this. And they would have, you know, like I said, coloring books and puppies and stuff. And I’m all about puppies and coloring books. I love both of those things, but the fact that they were just expected for adult students is just mind-boggling to me. So, I don’t know, I, you asked me to define it and I didn’t really do that, but it’s, it can be anything. It’s, a weird like designated space where you’re either not allowed to say things that are offensive or you have to give a trigger warning if you’re gonna say something that could potentially upset somebody. Or you’re going there to just vent and let your emotions out. And I’m not against people venting or you know, having their own associations in clubs and stuff. But the fact that it became such a common standardized thing, even at public, you know, publicly funded state schools is just crazy to me. Like, it really does show that a lot of adults and young people have just been so coddled and so infantalized and treated like babies their whole lives that they grow up and they still kind of act like babies. It’s crazy.

Brittany: Yeah. And it’s, they’re acting, you know, it’s, there used to be a day and age where adolescents didn’t really exist when you weren’t a kid anymore, you’d go off and work. Right. So it’s funny to me now that we’re college students like you said, are being treated like babies. One thing that really got me, and you’re not saying this happened as much, probably just because people aren’t doing live events as much because of COVID, but used to be in like 2020 like 16 to 2019 is really bad. Where people would try to speak on campus like Jordan Peterson. Yeah. And people would protest and they’d say, how dare you, like, ruin our safe space? Like you’re bringing in a threat and blah, blah blah, blah. Yeah. And one thing I really wanna make sure we talk about is that trauma is really bad things that happen to people. Absolutely. But if you make your right, but if you make yourself the victim, then the people who did the bad thing to you were actually winning because not only did they do something bad to you at that time, now what they’re doing with, I like to call renting space in your mind. Cause you’re thinking about them all the time and then they’re controlling you long after the thing happens. So I think the greatest superpower that we have as people are, is not, you know, the ability to fly or, you know, like Spider-Man shoot spiderwebs out of his arms or wherever it is, but it’s controlling your emotions because being emotionally resilient when bad things happen that’s what’s really important. But now it’s not even real trauma. Now it’s like, oh, Jordan Peterson is saying something that I don’t like, and oh my goodness, his words are making me feel like I am in danger. Yeah. Or, Dave Chappelle, who is not for kids, but just made some jokes. Yeah. He’s a comedian. And people were like, oh my goodness, his joke hurt. My feelings. Well, first of all, that’s like what, not, they don’t hurt feelings, but comedians make funny observations and everyone gets picked on. That’s what a comedian does. So it’s crazy to me because now we’re sheltering people when, like from experiencing any negative thing and not just real bad things. Right. Things that make them feel uncomfortable. Yeah. Things like differing opinions, you know, and it sets them up for failure because what are you gonna do? So, Emma, I wanna throw this to you. Why is, you know, coddling and safe spaces Yeah. Why is this hurting our society at large? Like, why should we all care about this?

Emma: I mean, I think the biggest problem is that when you treat people like infants and adults, especially when you treat them like infants and like they need all of this special care and attention and, you know, safe spaces and they need to never hear anything that offends them. You’re not going to have resilient people and you’re not going to have people that are able to meet their own needs. And that’s a huge problem because that, that ultimately is a burden on our government. It’s a burden on taxpayers. When people feel like they just have this right to have everything that they want or to have all of their emotional demands met by other people, that’s a big problem. And once again, you know, to kind of go back to what Britney was saying, I am very pro-people getting professional help for trauma. Trauma is real. I think if you need to go to therapy, go to therapy. That can be an awesome tool for people. And Jordan Peterson, isn’t he a therapist as well? That was part of his Yes. His career.

Brittany: He works with people with trauma. Like that’s what he specialized in.

Emma: Yeah, but he helps people work through it so that they can overcome it and conquer it rather than identify with their trauma and make it part of who they believe that they are. And that’s another part of the big problem here is when you can only find your identity in ways that you’ve been oppressed or in ways that you feel like others have harmed you, that’s a really negative mindset to have. And I think that has really bad effects on people long term when the only way that they see themselves is through this lens of how am I oppressed? How have I been harmed by others? And once again, you know, if you have been genuinely harmed by someone else, you should do what you need to do to work through it and overcome it so that they don’t have power over you anymore. That’s a really good thing. And people like Jordan Peterson are huge on that. But when we have people who make their pain or their trauma or they’re you know, so-called oppression, just their main thing that they believe about themselves, that’s gonna have really damaging effects. Because, you know, you’re not gonna be thinking about how can I contribute to society? How can I provide for myself, you know, people need to believe that they’re capable of providing for themselves to provide for themselves. You have to, that’s like step zero. It’s not even step one. You have to believe that you can do it. And when we have college students who, you know, you rewind 50 years prior would’ve been grown adults, starting families and working jobs and like building houses and stuff. When you have people at that age that are so wrapped up in, you know, oh, I need my safe space. Oh, you need to give me a trigger warning, that’s pretty scary. And I think it’s a big indicator that our society’s kind of slowing down and almost regressing back into not even regressing though because in the past people weren’t as much like this. So maybe it’s like this strange new world that we’re living in, but I think it’s dangerous when people believe that they are incapable of being resilient.

Brittany: No, absolutely. Right. And on that note, you know, I want to challenge all of our listeners to learn to be mentally tough. You know, when hard things are, bad things happen and they’re going to happen. It’s unavoidable in life. You know, try your best to learn how to control your emotions and learn how to listen to people with other opinions. You know, if somebody says something you don’t like, hear them out. Don’t run away. Cause it makes you scared. If something gets you riled up, don’t run from it. Right? Face it. And learn how to deal with it. And to get to just be mentally tough. So that’s the advice I’ll leave our listeners with.

Emma: Yes. I love that. Jordan Peterson’s a good guy. He’s got a lot of great, interesting quotes on all of this stuff. And maybe we can link to one of his videos on resilience or on mental toughness, cuz I think he has some awesome stuff. So, we’ll link something for you guys to watch and kind of see what we’re talking about there and we will wrap it up here. Good to talk to you, Brittany and we will talk to you all again soon.

Brittany: Talk to you soon.