Check this out.
First off, let’s not pretend My Hyman is doing anything more than being a provocateur with this nonsense. Still, he’s on the friggin news, and regardless of his true purpose, he’s still the one spitting out his poorly thought out insults.
What Mr Hyman is doing in this video is called generalising. He has observed, or more likely been informed of, certain behaviours that he disagrees with. He has then associated those behaviours with… an entire generation… and… ‘certain students’ and ‘social justice warriors’.
Generalisation is a form of judging people before knowing them. In other words, he is pre-judgining them… see where I’m going with this? Yep, he is essentially spouting prejudices as if they are truths.
That’s a shitty move. If you don’t want to be considered a massive douche, you should avoid that sort of thing. The reason you should avoid it is quite simple, it’s because when you paint with a broad brush it’s impossible to be accurate.
Sure, there are individuals who are fighting for social justice and going too far with their demands. There are also individuals out there who agree entirely with the concepts of social justice but have a completely reasonable attitude about the whole thing, and are simply trying to improve society by trying to minimise the harm people do to each other.
For example, Mr Hyman mocks concepts like ‘safe spaces’ and ‘trigger warnings’ as if they’re nonsensical garbage.
Look at it this way, every single one of us has some sort of horrible memory of something that we don’t like to think about. For the lucky majority, if that thing is brought up, we might cringe, or feel sad, or whatever, but for those amongst us who have more severe reactions like panick attacks, or bursting into tears, or being taken right back into that moment of the worst thing that has ever happened to you in your life.
What most ‘social justice warriors’ are asking for, is simply that if you’re presenting content that contains things that might cause these really intense reactions, that you offer a heads-up. I guess it costs us all a couple of seconds but is that really such a huge imposition?
Why can’t Mr Hyman “deal with it” and consider the fact that there might have been some thought behind the concept?
One second he’s complaining about the NSFW videos “this generation” is making because they’re crude and rude, and the next he’s lamenting the fact that their efforts to encourage the courtesy of warning people that some certain content not be to their taste. It would appear Mr Hyman thinks ‘this generation’ is too impolite and too polite at the same time.
But… there’s been a rating system in place for like 40 years now that helps people decide what is and isn’t suitable for certain audiences. There’s also been mass outrage when something has been broadcast that people found offensive. I don’t see how anyone could reasonably blame “this generation” for following on from that concept.
He also suggests that the only safe space you should have at your university is your dorm. Well, fuck me, I thought America fought wars to preserve a way of life, and part of that way of life was about feeling safe from attack?
If you went to a night class to learn cooking or something and the entire class yelled political beliefs at you the whole time, do you think you’d want to go back? If you extend that single class to years of your life, and you consider the fact that most of those students are not only paying to be there, but will be paying off the right to be there for decades to come, maybe they have purchased the right not to feel under attack?
Learning institutions are for attacking ideas, not individuals. If someone can’t handle having a notion challenged, that’s one thing, but that’s very different from allowing speakers who spit hate speach on behalf of known violent and racist groups.
And to me, these are the points that are making Mark Hyman sound like a massive douche. He sounds like a person with blinkers on, like he can’t comprehend that his perspective is not the only perspective.
To be fair, I’m sure that growing up with the last name Hyman helps you develop a thick skin, possibly even a sort of barrier that prevents you from being penetrated by hard things, but that doesn’t give him the right to assume that nobody else would benefit from some forms of protection that he doesn’t personally believe in.
Anyway, don’t act like Mark Hyman if you don’t want a significant portion of the western world to think you’re a massive douch.