5.  Reverse mentoring and reciprocal renegotiation vs. socialization/acculturation[i]

Relationships in mentoring communities, even though they involve the same individuals, differ from parent-child relations and teacher-student relations in that they are more egalitarian and also include some aspects of reverse mentoring in which older adults are mentored by emerging adults.

 A common definition of the relationship between members of the older and younger generation is that it is characterized by socialization and acculturation.  In this relationship according to this definition, older people like parents and teachers introduce younger people into an existing society or culture.  The influence flows in one direction, from older to younger. 

 One may wonder whether this definition of the relationship is still valid in today’s world.  In this world parents and teachers are no longer the only ones socializing young people.  They are not even the most important socializers.  Increasingly, mass media personalities, fashion style trendsetters and recording artists have a much greater impact on the life choices and styles of emerging adults.  In addition, the influence of peers via social network technologies is pervasive in their lives. Moreover, the reach of all these influences is worldwide, cross cultural and global in its impact.    

In addition, given the fact that we live in an age of rapid social and cultural change, young people are often more aware of the direction in which the world is going than their parents or teachers.  All this argues for the proposition that mentorship should be augmented by reverse mentorship.  Young people also have things they can teach older people, for instance about the future of information technology.

So, the relationship between the older and the younger generations should be interactive, mutually supportive and mutually influencing. In short, it should be one of ongoing reciprocal renegotiation about the shape of a common culture and society.  However, no amount of talking with young people will by itself promote intergenerational concord unless we are willing to include twenty-something young people in the running of the world, either in a leadership, or in an apprenticeship role.  My long-standing motto about young people has been: “Don’t do anything for them.  Give them something to do!”

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[i] Creps, E.G. 2008 Reverse Mentoring, How Young Leaders Can Transform the Church and why we should let them.  San Francisco, Ca.: Jossey-Bass.

4.  The importance of mentoring relationships and communities for emerging adults[i]

In my experience the best way to promote intergenerational communication in society is through mentoring relationships.  In such relationships an older person cultivates a close friendship relationship with a younger person to the mutual benefit of both.  A mentoring relationship is more egalitarian than a parent-child, or a teacher-student relationship.  In such relationships both learn from one another and both are changed by the other.

There is a general consensus in the literature that emerging adults benefit greatly from a mentoring relationship with a member of the older generation.  A mentorship relationship is one, which provides company for emerging adults, which shows respect and caring towards them, and which supports, challenges and inspires them in a context of ongoing dialogue with them.  Older adults in these mentoring relationships relate to emerging adults in such a way that both their strengths and their vulnerabilities are acknowledged.

Mentoring relationships between older and younger people are made possible by the fact that older and younger generations need each other and complement one another.  This is evident from parent-child relations and teacher-student relations.  Children cannot grow up unless parents nurture them and students don’t learn unless teachers teach them.  But the converse is also true: parents cannot be parents unless they have children to raise, and teachers cannot teach if there are no students to educate.  Generations complement each other and that is an important fact to note when dealing with intergenerational communication.

When enough of these relationships have been established, a society takes on the character of what Daloz-Parks calls a mentoring community.  Mentoring communities such as families, schools, places of work and churches provide much the same mentoring services to these young people in a communal fashion.  The tasks of mentoring communities toward emerging adults, mentioned in the literature are manifold, but they all appear to come down to encouraging them to grow up with foresight and vision.  In an ongoing authentic dialogue with them mentoring communities are to show hospitality to their potential of becoming.  Older adults in these communities are expected to recognize and honour the strengths of emerging adults but also to challenge them to face their problems.  Mentoring communities give emerging adults practical support and a place to belong.  Most of all they are expected to anchor the promise of their future by providing them with an inspiration for the long haul.  In the main, mentoring communities offer emerging adults security for the time being and a viable hope and vision for the years to come.    

Mentoring relationships and communities envelop emerging adults into a network of belonging in which they feel safe to wrestle with the big questions of life and in which they feel free to explore worthy dreams about their future.  In these communities they can come to terms with the paradoxical nature of human life, where things are hardly ever as they ought to be and in which they can practice some of the skills they need to function as contributing adults in the society in which they live.  

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[i] Daloz-Parks, S. 2000 Big Questions, Worthy Dreams. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

3.  Factors hampering and factors fostering intergenerational communication[i]

What does it take to bring these two worlds into a more relevant contact with one another?  In every form of interhuman contact between friends, marriage partners, parents and children and also between the generations, a creative tension exists between identity and relationship, between individuality and communality, between who we are inourselves and what we have in common with others.  What we want for ourselves at times runs counter to what we have in common with others. 

When this happens and for the sake of a relationship, we are sometimes willing to sacrifice part of our identity, to become like the others want us to be.  We are also ready at times to give up our relationship to others in the interest of safeguarding our right to self-expression.  What we need to learn is that to be secure in our self-identity we actually need to be related to others and that to be intimately related to others we need to be secure in our identity.  We need to master the difficult dance between identity and relationship.

What most often happens instead is that we communicate solely with those who think and feel like we do and we denigrate the views and life style of those who differ from us.  We consider our own chosen way of living normal and we label the lifestyle of those with whom we disagree as strange or absurd.  We neglect to consider the possibility that there may be more than one kind of normal in the world.

           

Intergenerationally this form of miscommunication revolves around the notion of “reality”.  Instead of acknowledging that the emerging adult lifestyle of their children is different from their own but equally valid, parents may tend to label their views and behaviour as unrealistic and immature.  The underlying assumption is that once they settle down and become more serious about being adults the choices they will make will also become more realistic, and like the choices their parents have made.

Instead of respecting the views and lifestyle of their parents as different but equally valid as their own, emerging adults may tend to view the way their parents live as unrealistically outdated and out of touch with the world of today.  Regardless of the truth content of these views by one generation of the other, such evaluations hamper the process of communication between the generations.

To preserve or restart intergenerational communication a change in attitude is required first of all.  This entails the mutual recognition and acceptance by the generations that the experience and outlook on life of the other, while different from one’s own, is equally valid and needs to be respected. The generations need the support of each other’s difference.  A society of only younger people or only older people is not a good society.

Furthermore, the key to fostering intergenerational communication lies in appreciating each other’s otherness.  Society is of necessity made up of different generations and age groups.  A society of only old people or only young people is neither possible nor desirable. Generational diversity is good for society.  Acknowledging and appreciating this fact enhances communication between the generations and it, in turn, strengthens the bonds of society.

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[i] Van Belle, H.A. Persisting Themata and Changing Paradigms, explorations in the history of psychology.  Pp. 6- 8. (Unpublished manuscript. For access google Harry Van Belle)

2.     Differences between emerging adults and their parents of the boomer generation[i]

There are major differences today between emerging adults and their boomer parents that transcend normal differences as a result of education.  These differences can become obstacles within intergenerational communication.  A description of few of the more obvious differences follows below.

As compared to their parents, emerging adults tend to:

·       settle down into marriage and start a family about a decade later

·       spend a longer time in school and have more education

·       be more invested and proficient in information technology

·       be future oriented and have less interest in history

·       be collaborative rather than competitive

·       be given to indirect/ironic communication styles

·       be pluralistic in their outlook on life

·       have a tinkering, cut-and paste, remix attitude toward the world

·       surf the net rather than read books

·       scroll, skim, scan for information

·       multitask and range widely rather than focus

·       value diversity, dialogue, tolerance, interaction and inclusion

·       favour unimpeded personal expression over privacy 

·       be relationship rather than task oriented

·       be committed to virtual, rather than face-to-face communication

·       spend much of their time social networking (texting, tweeting, blogging) their peers

·       send and read only instantaneous, interactive, and brief communication items, (TL;DR: Too long; Didn’t read)  

·       value personal authenticity and relational transparency in interaction with others

·       be progressive and democratic in their outlook on life

·       distrust established institutions and persons in power

Perhaps the most fundamental way in which emerging adults differ from their parents is that their lives are by and large characterized by the integrity of questioning rather than by the certainty of knowing.  They are voracious researchers.  Theirs is a probing generation.  They view testing as an authentic place to stand.  They like to live on the edge, to try new things, to walk in a space of not knowing, to believe something tentatively for the time being to see where it leads them.  They are receptive to otherness, welcoming of diversity, open to dialogue, and willing to change their minds.  They believe that all points of view are inevitably subject to revision and doubt that there are many prefabricated truths worthy to live by.  To them almost everything is (still) up for grabs.  

By way of contrast, their parents have a stake in maintaining that some things must be true no matter what.  They feel uncomfortable with so much openness and uncertainty.  It has taken them years to craft a credible way of living of their own and they feel that their life style is currently under attack.  They secretly want their children to adopt their values and their lifestyle, to accept their worldview and follow in their footsteps but see very little evidence that this is happening.  It is troubling for many parents to watch their children’s lives go in a direction that is quite different from their own. 

However, it appears that most parents keep these worries to themselves and that they generally give their children a great deal of latitude in shaping their own destiny.  Moreover, there actually is much that these children admire about the lifestyle of their parents, such as their work ethic and their willingness to sacrifice.  Notwithstanding their concerns, their parents also continue to support their children during their twenties, especially when they are still in school.

As for the way today’s emerging adults view their parents, they may disagree with elements in their lifestyle, but most of them see no need to openly voice their criticisms. Thus, the relationship between today’s emerging adults and their parents is surprisingly close and relatively free from conflict.  All this entails, however, that there is little dialogue happening between today’s emerging adults and their parents about life’s most fundamental issues.  The best they can come up with, it seems, is a peaceful co-existence between two solitudes.

It is said that today the lifestyles of the younger and the older generations differ so widely from one another that they might as well be living in different worlds.  Yet, as a matter of fact these generations populate the same planet, belong to the same society, live in each other’s homes or neighbourhoods and actually are meant to complement each other.  How are they to relate to and to communicate with one another?

1.   Normal Generational differences[i]

There always have been, and always will be differences between older and younger people.  These are differences in any culture and at any time of history that normally and necessarily exist between younger and older people because of an educational relationship between the two.   In this relationship the young learn the ways of the old but also change the culturally established ways of the old and in this way effect cultural change and renewal.

One generation introduces the next to a given culture by transmitting its experience, its expertise, its competence, and its insight into that culture to the younger generation. Without such an educational, culture-transmitting process from one generation to another, no culture can exist for long.  In addition to inculcating the next genera­tion into a given culture, the successful transmission of that culture also entails a transfer of responsibility for that culture.  Learning involves more than gaining com­petence in the ways of the old. Insofar as one is able, the learner is also expected to take respon­sibility for the ways of the old.  The success of the educational process can be gauged in terms of whether or not the behavior of the new generation manifests the ways of the old.  From this vantage point learners have rightly learned the right things to the extent that they mimic the behavior of their teachers.

However, in being educated into the ways of the old every new generation also changes the ways of the old more or less drastically.  During our period of history in particular, this process of change appears to have accelerated to such an extent that generational differences appear to be taking on the characteristics of a genera­tion chasm.  Why in learning the ways of the old do the young change the ways of the old?  Education is more than teaching new dogs old tricks.  It does not only change persons but cultures (i.e., commonly accepted ways of doing things) as well.  Education offers a culture the opportunity to change itself, to do things in a different way.  Next to providing cultural continuity, education is also a process of cultural renewal.  In this process it is the learner rather than the teacher who changes culture.

Both individual change and cultural change are products of education.  As a result of education learners change themselves to suit existing culture or change existing culture to suit themselves.  By means of this process they give their stamp of approval or critique on the culture in which they live.

Cultural renewal can be a positive result of education.  The older peo­ple become, the more they are inclined to miss-identify the way they do things with the way they ought to do things.  After decades of working at constructing a certain way of living, people can become so committed to the way things are done that they can hardly distinguish it any longer from the way things ought to be done.  Their way becomes the way to be taught and lived.

However, the next generation is not so committed to what is taught.  Because the old teach the new generation, it stands on the shoulders of the old and can thus be expected to see farther.  But also, because young people are not committed to the old generation’s way, they can stand back from its culture and see more clearly where the way things are done deviates from the way things ought to be done.  Thus, a new generation has the opportunity to be properly critical of the cultural products that are taught. It is the responsibility of each new generation to bend the ways of the old into the right direc­tion.  The task of reforming culture to make it conform to what ought to be done is intrinsic to learn­ing.

The faithful exercise of this task can renew a culture.  Whether cultural change becomes cultural renewal (in the sense of the Greek New Testament word kainos, which means "fresh, improved," rather than the word neos, which only means "different from before”) depends on whether as a result of learning the learner’s actions increase the opportunity for humanitarian function­ing in a culture.

CHAPTER FOUR

Intergeneration

 

Between the generations

In this chapter we will explore how emerging adults and previous generations differ from one another and how they can profitably communicate with one another.  Of course, one can argue that there is nothing to explore since people, whether young or old, are first and foremost human beings who all struggle with the same problems of humanity and, as a matter of fact, regularly communicate with one another about these problems.

Furthermore, one can always point to older adults who act like the emerging adults and to emerging adults who act like older adults.  So, where does one draw the line?  Developmentally speaking, when does a younger generation end and an older generation start?   The literature generally pegs the time frame for emerging adulthood between 18 and 30.   That would make age 30 the start of the older generation!  So, lots of problems exist in defining the precise boundaries of the generations. 

Yet, generational differences do exist.  Many of the parents of emerging adults find the views and behaviour of their children more than a bit puzzling and quite different from their lives when they were growing up.  On the surface then, there seems to be a decided difference, or even a disconnect between the older generations and the younger ones.  All this entails that today the generations tend to live along side one another with very little dialogue between them about life’s most fundamental issues.

8.  Irony as a lifestyle: from nothing fits to nothing should fit

Hipsters are postmodern to the core.  Postmodernism is the worldview that moves from the experience that nothing fits to the prescription that nothing should fit.  When one starts from the conviction that nothing should fit, then trying to identify even pockets of order in an otherwise absurd world or attempting to fit things together that in themselves are absurd is seen as a form of selling out.  Irony as a lifestyle is not only a recognition that nothing fits but also a lifestyle that must respond to any forms of order, be they philosophies, religions, institutions, organizations, or convictions with critique and disavowal.