Politics

Don’t Hide From Scary Ideas

Matt K. Lewis Senior Contributor
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A New York Times op-ed titled “In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas” has sparked a lot of discussion. Most of the chatter is about political correctness run amok; college is supposed to be a time of learning and challenging one’s own ideas, yet too many campuses become a “safe space” where opposing viewpoints and free speech are deemed disruptive and even hostile.

Young people ought to be exposed to opposing viewpoints where their worldviews are challenged. This means that liberal college kids ought to hear some conservative ideas and speakers, etc. I won’t dwell on that much, simply because the op-ed, itself (and much of the commentary it spawned) does precisely that. The piece primarily deals with so-called “Trigger Warnings” for issues people who might be sensitive to discussions about issues like rape and racism, but I found myself thinking about the larger question:

Is it healthy for any of us (and that includes, say, Christian conservatives) to hide from scary ideas?

An oft-quoted Bible verse tells us: “[W]hatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.” While it makes sense to meditate on the sublime, common sense dictates moderation. None of us should dwell on the evil or the macabre, but hiding from all aspects of the dark and seedy side of life is to bury one’s head in the sand.

When I say scary ideas, I’m not just talking about ideas that challenge our political perspectives, but from anything that might disturb us. And here, the notion that visualizing positive outcomes leads to happiness or mental health increasingly appears dubious. Gabriele Oettingen, a professor of psychology at New York University and the University of Hamburg, penned her own New York Times op-ed a couple years ago, citing several studies demonstrating that: “Fantasizing about happy outcomes — about smoothly attaining your wishes — didn’t help. Indeed, it hindered people from realizing their dreams.”

There’s also the fact that spending a little time contemplating things like loss and death, for example, might help you deal with them when the storms of life, predictably, come. Silver Linings Playbook always reminds me of this. If you’ve seen the film, you’ll recall the part where Bradley Cooper is reading his ex-wife’s syllabus for her students, and becomes outraged by the ending of “A Farewell to Arms.”

After recounting all the travails the protagonists overcome, Cooper’s character is prepared for a happy ending, only to be devastated by Hemingway’s denouement: “You think he ends it there? No!,” he cries. “He writes another ending. She dies, Dad! I mean, the world’s hard enough as it is, guys. It’s fucking hard enough as it is. Can’t somebody say, ‘Hey, let’s be positive? Let’s have a good ending to the story?'”

In a later scene, Cooper’s character is presented with a response letter, ostensibly from his ex-wife, which seeks to answer these concerns (as I recall, the letter was surreptitiously written by Jennifer Lawrence’s character — but that’s beside the point): “I’m sorry you find [the books] so negative,” the letter goes, “but I disagree. I think they are great works of art that reflect how hard life can be and they can also help kids prepare themselves for the hardness of life.”

We don’t do kids any favors when we fail to do just that.

Matt K. Lewis