How To Launch a Documentary on Substack - The Coddling of the American Mind

Yuri's review of "The Coddling of the American Mind", a documentary film directed by Ted Balaker based on the book by Jonathan Haidt and Greg Loukianoff

Comrades: Today we make history for free speech and independent film. “The Coddling of the American Mind” is the first feature documentary presented by Substack! You can access the full film at its Substack page here. We no longer need massive funding to produce and distribute a movie, dependent on gatekeepers at studios and theaters. All you have to do is click to see world class movies.

Coddling’s stars are all Substack writers. It is directed byTed Balaker. The film features FIRE’s Greg Lukianoff and NYU’s Jonathan Haidt, who co-authored the eponymous book. Ted was kind enough to provide early access so that I could review it.

***Paid subscribers - keep an eye out for a podcast with Ted and an invitation to a special meetup in the coming months.

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YURI’S TLDR VERDICT: 5 stars out of 5. A coddled mind is a demoralized mind. Coddling helps us understand how the woke mind virus has taken root and, more importantly, how to heal it by offering young people a brighter vision of the future. It is a must-watch white pill to see Gen Z waking up. The light in their eyes will light you up. Everything is downstream of culture, so we need more great films with universal appeal like this one to continue subverting the subversion.

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The story starts in 2012. Anxiety, depression, and suicides begin spiking among young people. We all know the data and reasons, but Coddling illuminates the human toll. Kimi recalls how friendly she found America when she arrived from Uganda as a child and how much confidence she had before going to UCLA. Lucy recounts her struggles with mental health issues and autism, but is excited about getting into Stanford. Saeed arrives at Lafayette straight from Nigeria, ready to fulfill his American dream.

All the students believe that their college professors will impart wisdom that justifies their hefty tuitions. From their first days on campus, they are inundated with indoctrination in the forms of love-bombing and language manipulation. Social media reinforces the groupthink 24/7 outside the classroom. Coming from relative poverty, Saeed is bemused by his peers’ politicization and irritation: “In Nigeria we don’t have left or right, everything is corrupt. Why are you so annoyed? Why are you screaming?” He struggles to stay true to his values, as he is forced to regurgitate dogmas to fit in.

Trump’s 2016 election was a traumatic trigger that ratcheted up the mass psychosis. The students grapple with the constant bombardment of doom and contemplate death. Greg empathizes with their plights, opening up with vulnerability about his battle with depression in his younger days. Jonathan provides an overview of his research on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Binary thinking and catastrophizing have always been part of the human experience, but philosophers from all cultures and time periods found ways to avoid our baser instincts and elevate cognitive resilience. Greg and Jonathan discover that the “adult” professors and administrators are exacerbating cognitive fragility, especially amongst girls. They meet and decide to collaborate on an article called “The Coddling of the American Mind”, which prompted heated debate when it was published in 2015.

3 Great Untruths are making the woke miserable:

1. You are fragile

The hysteria around George Floyd poured more fuel onto the fire in 2020. Lucy attempts to untangle the cognitive dissonance. She begins to see the religious cult parallels that tell her she is the problem no matter what she does because she is white. COVID lockdowns give her a welcome respite from campus. Away from the suffocating environment, the students have breathing room to discover other perspectives like Haidt, Glenn Loury, and the legendary Titania McGrath (Andrew Doyle). Kimi explores a skate park in scary conservative Orange County. While she enjoys practicing her childhood hobby in a new place, her friend does not because she felt threatened by all the whiteness. A light bulb goes off that it’s all in her head. She resolves not to treat microaggressions as mosquitoes, an analogy she picked up at a DEI struggle session. We experience the world through distortions, not as it is. Our responsibility is to respond with anti-fragililty and equanimity.

2. Always trust your feelings

Social media is driving the gender gap in depression and politics. A Providence College student named Anna shows a stark contrast with her two siblings, who are over a decade older than her. She started using social media before high school, whereas they weren’t exposed until they were more mature in college or later. While she was isolated scrolling as a teenager, they had been out and about driving, dating, and drinking when they were her age. They are well adjusted, but she suffered crippling anxiety and could barely function. Thankfully, a professor helps her see the flaws in her thinking and guides her to strength.

3. Us vs. Them

At Michigan, an Indian international student named Aryaan takes a stand against the DEI sessions required for him to land a job. He pens a well-reasoned e-mail challenging DEI, but faces vicious -ism and -phobia smears in the backlash. Immigrant students like him and Saeed contrast the idealized but threatened free speech in America with the real lack of free speech and stark penalties in their home countries. Perhaps only outsiders can understand how bad things can get if the left continues its fascistic thought and language policing.

I only have two minor critiques of the film. The first is that I would have liked to see more time spent naming and shaming the adults who are responsible for this epidemic. Perhaps Ted can produce a sequel on all the DIE commissars like Gay, Kendi, and thousands of others who have destroyed higher education and student mental health while lining their pockets. The second is that no Christian, conservative, straight white or Asian males were featured. It would have been interesting to hear the perspective of students who are facing real systemic racism and discrimination.

This movie has a happy ending. The students resolve to change their emotional frameworks from “social justice” to kindness. They seek the discomfort of disagreement and exposure to different opinions. Shedding wokeness removes fear and anxiety, while restoring energy and endurance. You can see it in their eyes and smiles. In a beautiful cathartic moment, Kimi compares it to taking the knives out after stabbing yourself. They know they have switched from a dark path to a bright one. All of them are now confidently navigating adult life. Perhaps they will help us all swing the pendulum back to sanity.