# Society is a mess.

So last month I read the "The Coddling of the American Mind - How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas are Setting Up 
a Generation for Failure".  Whilst the book is American and discusses mainly American examples, 
I'm sure everybody is aware that the same issues raised in the book apply equally here in the UK.  The book looks at 
various aspects of modern society including the rise of social media, increasing screen time, overprotective parenting, 
the reduction in children's unsupervised play time, politics and more.  The end result of all of this appears to be a 
damaged generation of children that are not maturing at the same rate we did, and are completely unprepared and lacking 
the skills to handle college, let alone life in the real world.

We've all seen it, I wrote a [post](http://localhost:3000/blog/post/woke) about the current woke culture destroying 
everything just a few days ago.  I've read a number of books on this subject already and whilst they are all successful
in identifying the situation and provide examples of the damage it causes, none have managed to explain quite so well 
the how and why we got to this stage.

From the surface it's easy to see but difficult to understand the changes we now witness in society. Why everyone is now 
so obsessed with trigger warnings, safe spaces, and why people are now so desperate to be offended by literally 
anything and everything, and why we now seem to promote a general victimhood mentality. 

I don't want to spoil the book, but it focuses on what it calls the rise of "Safetyism".  There are three "Great Untruths"
which are explained in the first three chapters. The authors then continuously link to Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) 
to show how these are damaging from a psychological point of view, yet how they are pushed in current society from college
campuses and in the media and wider adult world. Often with the very best of intentions but terrible results.  One of 
these great untruths is "what doesn't kill you makes you weaker". You can see this everywhere.  People so quick to 
misinterpret things and then take offence, that they try to "cancel" everything before it can hurt even their feelings.
People are trying to craft their own perfect little worlds, free of all risks.  It's just not realistic. It also becomes 
chilling when you apply "Safetyism" to wider society. Consider this paragraph from the book for example:

> Just as we were finishing this book, a head teacher of an Elementary School in East London issued a rule that children
> must not even touch recently fallen snow, because touching may lead to snowballs. "The problem is it only takes one 
> student, one piece of grit, one stone in a snowball in an eye with an injury and we change our view," he explained.
> That is the epitome of safetyism:  If we can prevent one child from getting hurt, we should deprive all children of 
> slightly risky play.

Sounds a lot like Covid right? Many people forced to close their businesses, lose their livelihoods, isolate from their
friends and family, cover their faces, trust proven liars with their health, ignore data, accept censorship and completely 
pause their lives because "if it saves just one life".

Now consider this quote.

> The sovereign power [or soft despot] extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a 
> network of small, complicated, minute and uniform rules...it does not tyrannise, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, 
> it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and 
> industrious animals, of which the government is the shepard. - ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, Democracy in America

If you're not scared yet, it's because you haven't read enough to understand the wider picture.  But trust me, this book
is a great place to start! 

CODDLED SOCIETY