You've seen the signs in your favorite home decor store:
"GATHER"
"FAMILY"
"IN THIS HOUSE, WE..."
Growing culture means that like attracts like: "Birds of a feather flock together," or as Seth Godin phrases it, "People like us do things like this." A home is the microcosm of culture: a place where people who are physically, legally, and emotionally bound to each other share their values, their property, and the necessities of life. The idea that small cultures could band together and become tribes is a disturbing thought for some. They claim that tribalism threatens governmental systems, perpetrates violence, and increase prejudice. But is that really true?
THE CULTURAL PHYSICS OF TOLERANCE
To understand why people become intolerant, it's helpful to consider what tolerance really is. By definition, tolerance refers to the ability to endure stress or strain. Strong bridges can tolerate extreme amounts of weight; strong ropes can tolerate heavy wear and tear. But neither can endure everything, forever. Tolerance always has limits.
Tolerance is not merely a physical concept, but also a societal one. Think of it as the ability to coexist; this means enduring differences, even unlikable ones, so long as a person feels safe. Tolerance is possible because there is no perceived or actual threat to one's rights, liberty, and property. But the boundaries of those rights, liberties, and property must be realistic, explicit, and enforced for tolerance to continue.
This is also why tolerance is incredibly difficult, especially in close quarters. It requires large amounts of self-control and an internalized sense of the Golden Rule: we tolerate, because we wish to be tolerated by others. We accord them the freedoms we wish to have, but we don't get greedy, and we're not doormats either.
As renowned psychologists, authors, and leadership experts Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend say in Boundaries: When to Say Yes, How to Say No to Take Control of Your Life, "A boundary shows me where I end and someone else begins, leading me to a sense of ownership. Knowing what I am to own and take responsibility for gives me freedom" (p. 29). Confusion and chaos reign when we don't understand where the boundaries lie, how to enforce them, or the amount of personal responsibility we each have.
LEVELS OF PAIN
A sense of responsibility, of the loads we each must carry, is then the lynchpin of a healthy boundary and a healthy society. However, as I've written before, the sense of responsibility is increasingly muddled in a post-, or post-post-modern society. Baby Boomers, the PROPHET generation elders who should be leading by philosophy and example, have fallen short of their duties. As Strauss and Howe wrote in The Fourth Turning, "Many of their best-known politicians have tended to treat civic responsibility the way David Letterman might treat a guest, [...] spending more energy on discussing how power feels than on actually doing anything with it" (p. 224).
Generation X, the NOMAD generation, has continued to resist coalescence in their hardscrabble, individualistic ways. As long as Baby Boomers (and even a few Silent Generation members) resist retirement in the upper echelons of big government and big business, those slots are unavailable to Generation Xers aged 40 to 61. Therefore, the Gen X sense of responsibility is high, but is inwardly-directed toward their family, job, and local community. As Strauss and Howe predicted, they "appreciate the worth and precariousness of whatever good fortune they have achieved" while ever-cognizant of the possibility it could be lost (p. 241).
Meanwhile, Millennials, the HERO generation, have an incredibly muddled sense of responsibility. Expected to achieve, but sheltered and tutored to that achievement, they have an overwhelming urge to "Save the World" but a lack understanding of the sacrifices required to achieve that fuzzy goal. As I wrote in "Take That Hill!", their generation's focus on group work blends bullying and confirmation to enforce consensus. But these heavy-handed tactics do not respect boundaries or individuality; they respect collectivism: the "Greater Good" at any cost.
THE BRIDGE TO SOMEWHERE
The combination of these traits has created a powerful and disturbing cognitive dissonance among Millennials; how can they be responsible for so much but unable to achieve it? Why do they feel miserable even while they attempt to rally for important, worldwide causes such as global climate change or social justice? It's for this reason that Dr. Jordan Peterson's works, such as 12 Rules for Life, have profoundly impacted Millennials with his emphasis building from personal responsibility to greater causes.
For another take, consider the axiom of our friendly neighborhood Spider-Man: "With great power comes great responsibility." The inverse is also true: With great responsibility comes great power. Dr. Peterson's exhortation to "clean your room" sounds simplistic, but is actually very empowering because it draws on the foundation of ethics: integrity. Integrity is oneness, wholeness, and strength. A bridge or rope that continues to tolerate its load well has integrity: it is not fractured or frayed. A person who takes care of their own responsibilities can lead by concrete example, rather than hypothesis.
This is also the difference between a tribe and a cult: tribes exist for the practical benefit of the group, while cults exist for the elevation of one person. Unfortunately, our current American culture has more often seen the latter than the former in leadership. Everything from the echo chambers created by social media algorithms to the focus on celebrity influencers has perpetuated the Cult of Personality, and in one author's words, the "stupification" of the last ten years. It's all possible because of the generational constellation: Baby Boomers who prefer to lead by personality rather than example, Generation Xers who (until recently) have opted out, and Millennials who have had ample opportunity to use the tactics of bullying and confirmation on each other. The message is clear: follow the leader, or else! Don't ask, don't question. Comply, and you will be rewarded.
It's also incredibly messy. We're all familiar with the tales of how cult leaders often betray their own values and eventually end in disaster. But what few of us realized was that when everyone's famous, we're all susceptible to the same fate. Our lack of personal integrity will eventually give way to the enormous weight of leadership, crushing us and those we pretend to serve. In the end, we cannot even tolerate ourselves-- and neither can anyone else.
BETTER, FASTER, STRONGER
Author Jonathan Haidt compares our current situation to the aftermath of Babel, the Biblical event where the height of human hubris was met with confusion and diaspora. It's hard not to see today's world as a terminal diagnosis: America once great, heroic, and strong, now left like a patient etherized upon a table. But winter isn't the end of everything.
In the 1970s television show "The Six Million Dollar Man," astronaut Steve Austin is critically injured during a test flight. On death's door, an opportunity comes for Steve to be reborn. The voiceover says, "Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We have the capability to make the world’s first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man. Better than he was before. Better. Stronger. Faster."
America has this opportunity too.
In a recent interview with On the Margin, Neil Howe talks about how fourth turnings are times of terrible upheaval, but also contain the seeds of hope for a new and better world. As it stands, our current conflict bears some resemblance to the Civil War, a time in which the national identity was severely challenged, and our founding documents were hotly debated. According to Adam Goodheart's 1861: The Civil War Awakening, "The war represented the overdue effort to sort out the double legacy of America's founders: the uneasy marriage of the Declaration's inspired ideals with the Constitution's ingenious expedients" (p. 19). The nation we'd been given by the founders was a delicate compromise, and the South's exploitative practice of slavery was making tolerance impossible. A moral boundary had been crossed; a war was fought; slavery ended.
Where do our nation's moral boundaries lie now? It seems difficult to tell, when the following are but another line in the news feed:
Legislation that allows extreme late-term abortion and postnatal infanticide
A book for young children that celebrates abortion as a family planning tool
College speakers being beaten and threatened at campus events
The proposed stripping of Fourth Amendment rights to self-defense in conjunction with defunded police departments
District Attorneys who refuse to prosecute criminal activity, even by repeat offenders
Praise for and partnership with communist dictatorships like China, who continually commit human rights atrocities like Uyghur persecution or Shanghai lockdowns
Perhaps this is where tribalism enters. As The Fourth Turning states, "In a High, people want to belong; in an Awakening, to defy; in an Unraveling, to separate; in a Crisis, to gather" (p. 112). As individuals begin to define their own boundaries and take responsibility for themselves, they state: "This is who I am, this is what I believe, and this is what I'll do." Those who share the same beliefs band together for mutual benefit, becoming a tribe. Needs are met; the Crisis Era must be survived, especially as runaway inflation and supply chain disruptions that impair access to food, shelter, and transportation. Time goes on; a new culture forms. Other tribes who have slightly different but still tolerable cultures make alliances; a nation forms. Tentative, precarious, and different from before. But on the whole, better.