The unbearable dullness of the sensitive woke

There was a scene in the Stephen Frears film Dangerous Liaisons in which John Malkovich, as Valmont, says of the so far fruitless efforts of Chevalier Danceny (played by a hapless Keanu Reeves): “He doesn’t need help. He needs hindrances.”

I was reminded of this because I’d been recently told that I was mean, even (*gasp!) harsh, at a public forum — some young people were even traumatized by me, my views, leading them to hold private discussion sessions with the forum organizers to “process” the harshness that is me.

Which is really idiotic. Never mind that I have 25 years of work and study in international law, studied in the best University for it, studied under and drank with the best teachers and practitioners (the people that students cite as authorities), worked on some of the great landmark cases of the country, co-wrote a book on international law with one of the greatest constitutional minds ever — forget all that.

Apparently, I was offensive for simply being honest — with no profanity, insult, or raised voice — in expressing what my years of experience and study have given me.

How is it possible for these young people to function? How can they not whither and shrivel up if their reaction to any opposing thought or (the horror!) for not being praised for their “brilliance” is to rant, take it personally, complain to their peers or teachers, and act like some baby on cheap meth?

I had a professional colleague tell me of an instance when she showed a civics class a short video on poverty and there was this young adult woman who came to her shaking, begging to be allowed to go out the room, as the video was giving her so much anxiety. She went to the toilet trembling and splashed water on her face to calm herself down.

Simply because of a video that showed people eating on the floor with their hands and children playing on a dusty street.

Jeebus, I really hope Trump wins.

And all this time I thought that freedom of expression and academic freedom was for the purpose of enabling and ensuring that one hears a contrary, even offensive, idea.

Instead, all this progressive wokeness is just causing society to regress: “Dissent, in primitive societies, was normally punishable by death. The upshot of this was that a society’s core body of knowledge and doctrine tended to remain almost static, especially if inscribed in writings that were regarded as holy. It was against this historical background that the pre-Socratic philosophers of ancient Greece introduced something wholly new and revolutionary: they institutionalized criticism. From Thales onwards each of them encouraged his pupils to discuss, debate, criticize — and to produce a better argument or theory if he could. Such, according to [Karl] Popper, were the historical beginnings of rationality and scientific method, and they were directly responsible for that galloping growth of human knowledge.” (Bryan Magee, Confessions of a philosopher).

Because that is how one matures, arrives at truth, constitutes a truly dynamic society, where citizens achieve individual human flourishing.

Instead, what matters is that everything bow down to inclusion, equity, diversity, social justice, and the liberal notion of “charity.” That truth must bow down to feelings and for the sake of unity.

And we continue to double down in coddling our kids to the point of brittleness. Reason Magazine (“The Fragile Generation,” Lenore Skenazy and Jonathan Haidt, December 2017) points to the evolution of “safe spaces,” which our Congress unfortunately institutionalized, as causative of the youth’s weird fragility.

“The principle here is simple: This generation of kids must be protected like none other. They can’t use tools, they can’t play on grass, and they certainly can’t be expected to work through a spat with a friend. And this, it could be argued, is why we have “safe spaces” on college campuses and millennials missing adult milestones today. We told a generation of kids that they can never be too safe — and they believed us,” wrote Skenazy and Haidt.

“For a variety of reasons — including shifts in parenting norms, new academic expectations, increased regulation, technological advances, and especially a heightened fear of abduction (missing kids on milk cartons made it feel as if this exceedingly rare crime was rampant) — children largely lost the experience of having large swaths of unsupervised time to play, explore, and resolve conflicts on their own. This has left them more fragile, more easily offended, and more reliant on others,” they wrote.

All “this poses a threat to the kind of open-mindedness and flexibility young people need to thrive at college and beyond. If they arrive at school or start careers unaccustomed to frustration and misunderstandings, we can expect them to be hypersensitive. And if they don’t develop the resources to work through obstacles, molehills come to look like mountains.”

Unfortunately, it will be society and future generations that will have to pay dearly for the fragility of today’s youth.

Jemy Gatdula is the dean of UA&P Law, as well as a Philippine Judicial Academy law lecturer for constitutional philosophy and jurisprudence.