The last few Mays, I’ve found myself issuing the same caution to each departing class. I’ve pointed out that, although they don’t think of themselves this way and I hope never will, they are now aristocrats. They are members of a privileged elite. It’s not the kind we’ve known through history. It’s not based on a family name, or inherited wealth, or a father’s position in some ruling totalitarian party. It’s the new aristocracy of a knowledge economy, with membership conferred by unusual cognitive skills, augmented by a superior education like Purdue’s.
I’ve noted that the people I’m describing have begun to cluster together – to work with each other, live near each other, socialize with each other, marry each other, have children just like each other’s children, starting the cycle over again. And unintentionally to segregate from their less blessed, less well educated fellow citizens. I’ve urged each set of graduates to resist this tendency, to make special efforts to connect with those who never made it to Purdue or a place like it. It’s a shame to go through life with a narrow range of human interactions, and all one can learn from those who are different.
But over these last few years this new self-segregation has taken on a much more worrisome dimension. It’s no longer just a matter of Americans not knowing and understanding each other. We’ve seen these clusters deepen, and harden, until separation has led to anger, misunderstanding turned into hostility. At the individual level, it’s a formula for bitterness and negativity. For a self-governing people, it’s poison. The grandest challenge for your leadership years may well be to reverse and surmount this threat.
Over your final year with us, people have begun to use the word “tribalism” to describe this phenomenon. To people who have only known freedom and self-government, it’s easy to forget that tribalism was the way of the world for most of history. Anthropologists long ago discovered that our humanoid ancestors formed tribes for survival and responded violently to the presence of outsiders. As one essayist wrote, “Tribalism … is the default human experience. … The notion of living alongside people who do not look like us and treating them as our fellows was meaningless for most of human history.”
Suddenly, or so it seems, this nation has divided into tribes, made up of people with very different views of true and false, right and wrong. They seem deeply alienated from each other and deeply distrustful.
Pollsters have even begun to use the term “hatred” to describe the degree of estrangement. They tell us that members of both tribes tend to belong mostly because of their animosity to the other side. In almost reciprocal numbers, they describe the other side as “closed-minded,” “dishonest,” “unintelligent,” even “immoral.”
As we trust each other less, trust in the institutions of our society has eroded in parallel. Almost no sector – government, business, the media, even higher education – has escaped a steep drop in public confidence. Some constant vigilance and skepticism about centers of authority is a healthy, all-American instinct. But ultimately, to function effectively as a free and self-governing people, we must maintain some degree of faith that our institutions and those leading them have our best interests at heart, and are performing their duties with sincerity and integrity. And today, we plainly lack such faith.
There are plenty of culprits here, starting with too many who have misused positions of authority. The so-called social media – I have come to think of it as “antisocial media” – enables and encourages hostility from the insulated enclave of a smartphone or a laptop. People say things to and about each other that they would never say face to face, or maybe even think, if they knew each other personally.
> The last few Mays, I’ve found myself issuing the same caution to each departing class. I’ve pointed out that, although they don’t think of themselves this way and I hope never will, they are now aristocrats. They are members of a privileged elite. It’s not the kind we’ve known through history. It’s not based on a family name, or inherited wealth, or a father’s position in some ruling totalitarian party. It’s the new aristocracy of a knowledge economy, with membership conferred by unusual cognitive skills, augmented by a superior education like Purdue’s.
>I’ve noted that the people I’m describing have begun to cluster together – to work with each other, live near each other, socialize with each other, marry each other, have children just like each other’s children, starting the cycle over again. And unintentionally to segregate from their less blessed, less well educated fellow citizens. I’ve urged each set of graduates to resist this tendency, to make special efforts to connect with those who never made it to Purdue or a place like it. It’s a shame to go through life with a narrow range of human interactions, and all one can learn from those who are different.
>But over these last few years this new self-segregation has taken on a much more worrisome dimension. It’s no longer just a matter of Americans not knowing and understanding each other. We’ve seen these clusters deepen, and harden, until separation has led to anger, misunderstanding turned into hostility. At the individual level, it’s a formula for bitterness and negativity. For a self-governing people, it’s poison. The grandest challenge for your leadership years may well be to reverse and surmount this threat.
>Over your final year with us, people have begun to use the word “tribalism” to describe this phenomenon. To people who have only known freedom and self-government, it’s easy to forget that tribalism was the way of the world for most of history. Anthropologists long ago discovered that our humanoid ancestors formed tribes for survival and responded violently to the presence of outsiders. As one essayist wrote, “Tribalism … is the default human experience. … The notion of living alongside people who do not look like us and treating them as our fellows was meaningless for most of human history.”
>Suddenly, or so it seems, this nation has divided into tribes, made up of people with very different views of true and false, right and wrong. They seem deeply alienated from each other and deeply distrustful.
>Pollsters have even begun to use the term “hatred” to describe the degree of estrangement. They tell us that members of both tribes tend to belong mostly because of their animosity to the other side. In almost reciprocal numbers, they describe the other side as “closed-minded,” “dishonest,” “unintelligent,” even “immoral.”
>As we trust each other less, trust in the institutions of our society has eroded in parallel. Almost no sector – government, business, the media, even higher education – has escaped a steep drop in public confidence. Some constant vigilance and skepticism about centers of authority is a healthy, all-American instinct. But ultimately, to function effectively as a free and self-governing people, we must maintain some degree of faith that our institutions and those leading them have our best interests at heart, and are performing their duties with sincerity and integrity. And today, we plainly lack such faith.
>There are plenty of culprits here, starting with too many who have misused positions of authority. The so-called social media – I have come to think of it as “antisocial media” – enables and encourages hostility from the insulated enclave of a smartphone or a laptop. People say things to and about each other that they would never say face to face, or maybe even think, if they knew each other personally.
(post is archived)