Such inner convictions, I argued in “Brief History,” require external and stable reference points, which are increasingly unavailable. Now, young people, Ms. Mahmood rightly observes, are often forced to navigate amid “rapidly shifting and often contradictory value systems.” As psychoanalyst Allen Wheelis once wrote: “[I]f everything is open to question, no question can be answered. Another, deeper outcome follows from the loss of firm structures of rules, values, and standards. In these fluid times, it can provide some stable ground on which to develop commitments we can stand by.