Generational détente

“If you want to be treated like adults, then act like adults.”

That’s a classic line teachers use to deal with misbehaving students.  It’s good advice, but often frustrating to hear and difficult to follow.  Kids do want to act like adults; they want it more than anything.  But they can’t do it so long as they’re kept in the role of children – and that’s what teachers, unwittingly, are doing to their students when they bark at them to “act like adults.”

In ancient societies, the path to adulthood was clear.  Everyone grew up in the same way, following in their parents’ footsteps and ritualistically gaining entrance into adult culture soon after puberty.  But today, because of our exceedingly complicated and everchanging culture, facilitated by sophisticated, pervasive international media, the old model is broken.

Instead of growing up into the culture of its parents, each generation of kids today grows up with its own culture.  The latest generation gets the latest culture – and because each wave of culture inevitably reacts against the previous one, the younger generation’s culture is consistently anathema to the older’s.  This isolates the young from the old, making the elders’ wisdom look obsolete and the youths’ offerings look destructive.

Kids can’t “act like adults” because they’ve become conditioned to think “adulthood” is something that belongs to a completely alien sphere ruled by a different culture.  To act “adult,” in this paradigm, would require kids to leave their culture, where they feel powerful and engaged – and welcomed – and enter the alien adult culture, which seems to have nothing to offer them but reprimands.  Of course, no kids want to do that.

And so each generation embarks on its own terrifying mission of learning, on its own, how to grow up.  I imagine that this has been going on to some degree ever since the dawn of civilization.  The problem certainly grew enormously during the twentieth century.  But only in the last few decades has the speed of change gotten so fast and the reach of media extended so far that now the young and the old seem to exist on separate planets.

I think we’re at a crucial moment in our cultural history.  In the 1960s, the Baby Boomers rejected their parents’ values and founded their own youth culture.  In the 1980s, Generation X rejected that culture and dropped out, retreating into its own anti-cultures and sub-cultures.  The Millennials are now asserting a new youth culture -- one that thrives on individual involvement in larger society through the media.

Recently, predictably, the Boomers have had a rather negative response to Millennial culture, labeling it self-centered and self-indulgent.  I think there’s a lot of truth to those accusations.  But they’re not the full story.  I think the Millennial generation would love to engage in some productive, other-centered activity – if it could only reach outside its generational bubble into the “adult” sphere.

The key to an American renaissance is wrapped up in ending the culture war, but culture is really just the medium for a deeper conflict: What we really need to do is end the generational war – and the way to do that is for young and old to together build a shared culture which everyone can enjoy and in which everyone has a stake.  We need to achieve generational détente: a reconciliation between the youngest generation (the Millennials) and its parents (the Boomers), brokered by those in between (Generation X).

I’ve seen hints of the beginnings of generational détente in the movies recently.  On one side there’s Juno and Knocked Up.  In both those movies, Millennials got into trouble by doing a very “adult” thing – getting pregnant and having a baby – when they were physically – but not psychologically, economically, or in any other way – ready.  Tellingly, in both movies, the characters’ parents, Boomer characters, ended up giving them priceless good advice and practical help that made their “adult” task work out in the end – and helped the characters to do some emotional “growing up,” as well.  In both movies, the Generation X characters – the adoptive couple in Juno and the older sister and her husband in Knocked Up – ended up in the role of commiserators with the Millennials.  They were able to offer understanding and companionship, but were short on good advice and practical help, and ended up disappointing the Millennials when they needed them the most.

In The 40 Year-Old Virgin, the opposite thing happened.  A 40-year-old man – right on the cusp between the Baby Boom and Gen-X generations – tried and finally succeeded to reach another “growing up”milestone – losing his virginity.  But just as the pregnant girls in Juno and Knocked Up were too young for their endeavors, the main character in The 40 Year-Old Virgin was too old.  He almost messed up his best chance at a good first time by relying on his Gen-X friends’ advice, which kept him motivated but ultimately lacked substance.  What saved him was some bonding with a Millennial – his girlfriend’s daughter.

The message in these movies is that the different generations need each other.   Each generation has an important role to play: The Boomers have the wisdom; the Millennials have the energy and enthusiasm; and the Gen X-ers have the communication skills.  If we can find a way to put these ingredients together, we’ll have a powerful recipe for cultural renewal.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the first signs of a generational truce showed up in the movies.  Like it or not, the mass media are going to become even more enmeshed into our lives in the coming years.  We need to make sure that we become empowered agents, not victims, in this new media-filled world.  And so we need to pick a leader who can navigate the media in a way that brings the generations together.  That leader is Barack Obama.

Recently our media stars have become very political, with Angelina and Brad traveling the world to do humanitarian aid, George Clooney making edgy movies, Arnold Schwarzenegger getting elected governor, and Oprah making a presidential endorsement.  What we need now is for our political stars to succeed in the media.  JFK was good at that and his skill with the media was an important ingredient in his success.  Obama is even better, and I’m convinced his media-savviness is going to win him the presidency.  He is a classic Generation X communicator: a bit detached, a bit vague, but with enormous perspective, a knack for making connections and establishing common ground, and quite visionary and inspiring on the topic of the future.

I believe all our American generations are willing to “grow up” by putting aside their cultural differences and turning the media back into a tool of positive change.  I think the Boomers are ready to cede a bit of their control of the world stage.  I think Generation X has been ready for a long time to take a bigger role in culture.  I think the Millennials are ready to look beyond themselves to something much bigger.  And I think America is ready to “grow up” as a country and participate in global government in a mature fashion.

Kids need to act like adults.  But adults need to, too.  "Adults" are people who know how to communicate in a responsible, respectful, positive way.  Obama is communicating for us right now and will successfully lead us in our efforts to communicate with each other and the world.

Vote tomorrow, Tuesday the 5th!!!