Crimes Against Children
Taleb argues that efforts to eliminate ordinary emotional variation can also suppress valued differences in experience and creativity. His essay draws on personal experience and speculation about poets; it does not establish the effects of antidepressant treatment.
THE IDEA
CRIMES AGAINST CHILDREN
Not only are we averse to stressors, and don't understand them, but we are committing crimes against life, the living, science, and wisdom, for the sake of eliminating volatility and variation.
I feel anger and frustration when I think that one in ten Americans beyond the age of high school is on some kind of antidepressant, such as Prozac. Indeed, when you go through mood swings, you now have to justify why you are not on some medication. There may be a few good reasons to be on medication, in severely pathological cases, but my mood, my sadness, my bouts of anxiety, are a second source of intelligence—perhaps even the first source. I get mellow and lose physical energy when it rains, become more meditative, and tend to write more and more slowly then, with the raindrops hitting the window, what Verlaine called autumnal “sobs” (sanglots). Some days I enter poetic melancholic states, what the Portuguese call saudade or the Turks hüzün (from the Arabic word for sadness). Other days I am more aggressive, have more energy—and will write less, walk more, do other things, argue with researchers, answer emails, draw graphs on blackboards. Should I be turned into a vegetable or a happy imbecile?
Had Prozac been available last century, Baudelaire's “spleen,” Edgar Allan Poe's moods, the poetry of Sylvia Plath, the lamentations of so many other poets, everything with a soul would have been silenced.
If large pharmaceutical companies were able to eliminate the seasons, they would probably do so—for a profit, of course.
There is another danger: in addition to harming children, we are harming society and our future. Measures that aim at reducing variability and swings in the lives of children are also reducing variability and differences within our said to be Great Culturally Globalized Society.
When to use it
Discussing how schools can allow ordinary emotional variation while recognizing when a child needs support.
In parenting, resisting the urge to smooth over every stressor or mood swing, recognizing them as opportunities for learning and resilience.
Separating a philosophical argument about variation from evidence about the benefits and harms of a treatment.
In policymaking, questioning societal pressures that pathologize normal emotional variation and viewing it as a source of diversity.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Silencing of Poetic Creativity
Taleb speculates that, had Prozac been available in the 19th and 20th centuries, treatment might have changed the work of Baudelaire, Edgar Allan Poe, and Sylvia Plath. This counterfactual expresses his concern about suppressing variation; it is not evidence of what treatment would have done.
Mood Variation as Intelligence
Taleb describes rainy-day melancholy and more energetic days as contributing differently to his writing and work. He uses the phrase 'vegetable or a happy imbecile' to express his fear of losing that variation, rather than to report an observed treatment effect.
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
How would you distinguish ordinary emotional variation from difficulties that call for additional support?
Which parts of Taleb’s argument rest on personal experience, and which would require clinical evidence?
When does protecting children from difficulty help them, and when might it limit opportunities to learn? What evidence would inform that distinction?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Antifragile (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)