3.      Emerging adults and (post)modernism II

On the issue of facts vs. opinion emerging adults clearly side with the postmodernists.  In their lives nothing is true no matter what any more.  What they miss in life is a sure-fire way to solve problems that works for everybody.  They are faced with the fact (!) that the way they try to solve their problems often differs totally from the way the others they meet in the world try to solve theirs.  And, in the absence of objective criteria, who is to say that their way of solving problems is better than that of the others?   So, they feel that the best they can do is to decide what is best for them, and allow others to do the same for themselves.  Their motto seems to be, “You in your small corner and I in mine.”  Of all the generations in the past the emerging adults seem to be most keenly aware of the plurality and relativity of human opinions.  On that point they seem to be indistinguishable from the postmodernists.  

It will have become clear, I hope, that emerging adults have an aversion to absolutes and a penchant for tolerance.  They are typically tentative about their own opinions, while at the same time fiercely defensive of the right of others to freely voice the truth as they see it.  In this they are like the postmodernists who hold similar sentiments.  An anecdote may illustrate this characteristic more clearly.

A young friend who is enrolled in a PhD program of studies in Canadian university recently complained to me that she found it so difficult to complete her Masters thesis.  She had by now accumulated more than enough information but found it hard to compile it all into one coherent document.  I could commiserate with her because I had had similar problems when I was enrolled in a PhD program years ago.  When I asked her what she found so hard about that her answer surprised me.  She said that in order to complete her thesis she would have to state her opinion in absolute terms, as if it were the only truth.  “And that,” she said, “would make liars out of all those people who do not agree with my version of the truth.”  The reason she had trouble completing her Masters thesis was she was reluctant to do this.   

This anecdote betrays an ethical concern for others that I have also found in other emerging adults.  Quite possibly the reason why they are so uncertain about their own lives is their fear that by being more sure of who they are and what they can do, they disqualify the certainty that others may have about their identity and their capabilities.  This concern echoes nearly verbatim postmodernism’s concern about meta-narratives.

2.     Emerging adults and (post) modernism I[i]

A cultural shift from the worldview of modernism to the worldview of postmodernism has taken place in the last half century, which is in no small measure responsible for the difference between older adults and the emerging adults of today.  Older people and today’s emerging adults think and feel from out of different paradigms.  (A paradigm, like a worldview, is the way a group of people generally looks at, or thinks, or feels about the world in which they live.)  Older adults and emerging adults don’t think alike.  They process information differently and that may be what makes emerging adults such an enigma to older adults.

Older people tend to think like modernists, emerging adults like post-modernists.  For modernists there are such things as facts.  For post-modernists there are only opinions.   When faced with a problem to be solved or an issue to be settled modernists tend to use the so-called “scientific” method.  They start with an unproven opinion, or hypothesis, then they test that hypothesis against “reality” and when that hypothesis proves to be correct, i.e. corresponds to this reality, it no longer is an opinion but a fact.  And that then definitively settles the matter.  It is the truth.

This approach presupposes that we have a direct, unmediated and error-free access to reality as an objective given outside ourselves against which we can test our hunches.  Postmodernists deny that.  They say that we only have access to our interpretation of that reality.  “Reality” is always constructed and it is never more than a construct we think up.  So, to test an opinion for its truth-value never means more than comparing one opinion with another.  Some opinions may indeed be clearer or more profound and therefore have more truth-value than others, but we can never escape the circle of conjecture.   As someone recently stated, “Truth can only be spoken of within quotation marks.” 

Our present world is still very much influenced by modernism but it is haunted by postmodernism’s suspicion and critique of science’s claim to be the ultimate arbiter of what is or is not true.  Post-modernists argue that science itself is based on an unexamined paradigm, and determined by an unproven worldview.  They state that in our culture science has unfairly co-opted a place of privilege for itself by proclaiming that its story is the only true one and by relegating all other stories to the realm of fables.  In reality (!) science is just one story among many with no more claim to the truth than any other.  It is just another story masquerading as the story above all other stories.  So, for postmodernists it is imperative to deconstruct, i.e. to question the validity of any story (or meta-narrative) that claims to be the truth.

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[i] Three sources I found helpful in understanding postmodernism:

Smith, J.K.A. 2006 Who is Afraid of PostModernism? Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic.

Middleton R. & B.J. Walsh 1995 Truth Is Stranger Than It Used To Be. Downers Grove, Ill: Intervarsity Press.

Prickett, S. Narrative Religion and Science, Fundamentalism versus Irony 1700-1999.Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press chapters 1,6

CHAPTER FIVE:

Emerging Adults and Post-Modernism

1.  Distinguishing the influence of development and of history in the lives of emerging adults

It is a longstanding maxim in developmental psychology that you cannot adequately describe the lives of a given generation without taking note of both the developmental and historical factors influencing their lives.[i]  A developmental approach classifies people in terms of the age group to which they belong or in terms of the stage of life in which they are living.  School-aged children have experiences that differ from those of middle-aged adults and therefore they behave differently.  The life experiences and behaviour of teenagers is quite different from the experiences and behaviour of seniors. In the developmental approach the criteria for distinguishing people from one another are age and stage of life.

Historical factors concern the reality that the experiences and behaviours of a group of people are codetermined by the time in history in which they were born and raised.  People who were born and raised during the Great Depression have a clearly discernable different lifestyle from those of the post-war boomers because they grew up under different historical circumstances.  The same can be said, of course, for all the other cohorts variously labeled post-boomers, hippies, yuppies, generation X, Y, Z and now the generation of emerging adults.

The fact that the current generation of emerging adults can be defined as a cohort, i.e. as an age group born and raised at the same time in history, is a reality very much worth noting.  If we were to describe them in purely developmental terms as some commentators are doing, then their behaviour could be seen as an aberration of normal adult behavior.  Then parents and other older adults could say: “They are just going through a phase, they are taking their time at it but they will grow out of it when they hit thirty.  Sooner or later they will act just like us.”  However, if their behaviour is also historically determined, then they may exhibit some of the behaviours peculiar to their age group even after they have turned thirty.

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[i] See, for example,

Kimmel, D.C. 1974 Adulthood and Aging. New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. p.26 ff.

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)