The stuff that is coming out of modern-day college and university campuses across the country is so rife with stupidity, insanity, and just plain weirdness, that the idea of just having young people skip college and develop a trade is becoming more and more attractive by the minute.
A good case in point is a “happiness professor” from Yale University who recently conducted an interview with the New York Times Magazine where she stated that the culture of capitalism here in the U.S. is causing her students to suffer from massive anxiety. In other words, expecting grown adults to work and provide for themselves, also known as personal responsibility, is making these kids soil themselves.
Future generations are too soft.
“There’s an enormous culture around us of capitalism that’s telling us to buy things and a hustle-achievement culture that destroys my students in terms of anxiety,” Laurie Santos, a cognitive scientist, stated during her conversation with magazine writer David Marchese, according to Fox News.
Santos, who teaches a course known as “Psychology and the Good Life,” which is one of the most popular courses in the Yale catalog, stated that people’s intuitions concerning what will make them happy and avoid feelings of anxiety are, in her words, often misguided, pursuing short-term satisfaction in buying new gadgets like the latest i-phone or chasing down more money and higher rates of pay.
“After a busy day, I want to sit and watch crappy Netflix TV shows, even though I know the data suggests that if I worked out or called a friend, I’d be happier. But to do that I have to fight my intuition,” Santos remarked.
She then suggested that people today are doing battle against cultural forces that are hard at working convincing them they aren’t happy enough or that ultimate happiness could be just around the corner, pouring a massive ocean of information over them that they have to spend valuable time discerning to find out what contains highly beneficial information and what does not.
“Santos also notes that religion and spirituality can oftentimes cause people to be happier, not necessarily in belief, but in the actions and community formed from such beliefs,” Fox News reported.
“It seems to not be our beliefs but our actions that are driving the fact that religious people are happier. That’s critical because what it tells us is, if you can get yourself to do it — to meditate, to volunteer, to engage with social connection — you will be happier. It’s just much easier if you have a cultural apparatus around you,” she bloviated.
“Santos also pushed back on the idea that practices that increase happiness, such as accepting anxiety, avoiding comparison, and being satisfied with what is right in front of you, can lead to complacency. Referencing the work of Kostadin Kushlev, a Georgetown researcher, Santos said that people who self-report the highest positive emotions are also the ones who are taking action,” the report continued.
“When you do have some positive emotion, you have the bandwidth to deal with other things,” she stated in an interview with the magazine.
When she was asked about the kind of impact social media was having on the happiness and anxiety, she had a few simple words of advice.
“Delete all your apps right now.”
Santos then added that she’s noticed the biggest down side of social media on students is from them spending far too much time on the apps and thinking that by doing this they are actually being social. In reality, they need to be meeting with real people in the real world. She then revealed an acronym that she uses when teaching students how to analyze the way social media is making them feel.
“What for, why now and what else? When you pick up your phone, what was that for? Was there a purpose? Then: Why now? Did you have something to do, or were you bored or anxious or fighting some craving? And then, what else?: actively noticing the opportunity cost. It could be studying. It could be talking to your roommate,” she explained.
If you want to poison your soul with more of this drivel, you can check out “The Happiness Lab,” where the professor has taken the course and transformed it into a podcast.
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