David Brooks Feb. 15, 2018, New York Times
uncaptioned image from article
During moments of historic transition, generation gaps open up. So I’ve begun a
little tour in which I gather millennials for interviews and ask them what they have
faith in and how they are going to lead us in the years ahead. The first uplifting
results seem worth unveiling this week, a week otherwise filled with sadness,
mourning and a sense of national futility.
One thing that’s hit me over the head right away is how many young adults have
interesting backgrounds — one is part French, part Costa Rican. Another is a
conservative lesbian from the rural Midwest who came to study in the urban East.
A number talked with me about the difficulties of living with heterogeneous
backgrounds: Who am I? If people ask me where I’m from, what do I say? “The
problem is being hyphenated,” one graduate student said. “It’s a spiritual problem.”
But those people who are fishes out of water were often the most vibrant ones in
the room. I’ve begun to recognize a social type, the Amphibians — people who can
thrive in radically different environments.
It’s possible to be an important change-agent if you stay in your lane: If you
grow up in a progressive middle-class home, go to a liberal arts college and then
move to a hipster neighborhood. But you really have to work at it.
But if you grew up in war-torn Syria and wound up at a community college in Ohio,
you’re almost bound to be magnetic and original. If you grew up in a Baptist home in
Alabama and now are first-generation college at an Ivy League school, your life is
propelled by an electric, crosscutting cultural dynamic.
The Amphibians are pluralism personified. Pluralism, remember, isn’t just
living with difference, or tolerance. It’s the weaving together of different life
commitments. It’s being planted here and also being planted there, but somehow
forming yourself into a third thing, one coherent personality. Amphibians make E
pluribus unum their life mission. [JB emphasis]
Amphibians have to master two or three different ways of being in the world,
and often they do not fit perfectly anywhere. They were considered liberals in their
Midwestern high school but are considered conservatives in college. They come from
a mostly black town and work at a mostly white company. They have that on the
edge-of-inside mind-set. They are within the circle of the group, but at the edge,
where they can most easily communicate with those on the outside. They are at the
meeting-place of difference where creativity happens. They have that semi-outsider
mentality that forces them to observe everything more closely.
It seems to me that the Amphibians are best suited to solve three of the big
challenges of their generation:
Bridging Capital. Robert Putnam speaks of bonding and bridging capital. One
binds people within communities and the other binds different communities
together. We need more of both kinds of social capital, but we need bridging capital
more. The thing you notice about Amphibians is that they come to regard their
ability to enter different cultures as a thrilling adventure, their defining life trait.
They may have been born into one monoculture, but they’ve made a life calling of
diving into others. It would be excellent for America if that kind of leap became a rite
of passage for young Americans — if young adults from Waco were expected to spend
a few years working in and exploring Burlington, and vice versa.
Re-Centering. We have a lot of thriving cities and local communities, but we
have no compelling center. We lack a unifying narrative to explain how a pluralistic
people live into a common national life. We don’t know how to take what’s
happening at the local level and make it work nationally.
Amphibians spend their lives creating centering syntheses. They understand
from experience that the only way you can bring different groups together is by
uniting them at a higher level. It would be great if, having found a way to create a
narrative and a cohering ideal to unify their personal internal diversity, they could
do the same for the nation.
A Culture of Connection. So many voices tell oppressor/oppressed and
elite/populist stories that put each person in a single box. They assert that the way
you see the world is determined by your single tribal identity. They describe society
as a battleground with one group here and the other group there. In so doing they
cultivate mistrust, division and emotional frozenness.
The Amphibians’ lives teach us that backgrounds are more complicated than
simple class- or race-conflict stories. Their lives demonstrate that society is not a
battlefield but a jungle with unexpected connections and migrations. Their lives
teach that what matters is what you do with your background, the viewpoints you
construct by combining viewpoints. Their lives are examples of the power of love to
slice through tribal identity. If you start with the Amphibian approach — that every
new and different person you meet is first of all my brother, my sister — then the
concept of difference changes. The emotional atmosphere is transformed.
One thing I’ve learned so far: When you talk to young adults you hear a lot of
disillusion and disaffection. But when you look at their lives you see a lot of hope.
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