Memorandum on Youth Author(s): Erik H. Erikson Reviewed work(s): Source: Daedalus, Vol. 96, No.

3, Toward the Year 2000: Work in Progress (Summer, 1967), pp. 860-870 Published by: The MIT Press on behalf of American Academy of Arts & Sciences Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20027079 . Accessed: 20/02/2013 00:04
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ERIK

H.

ERIKSON

Memorandum

on Youth

I
In responding to the inquiry of the Commission on the Year 2000, I w?l take the liberty of quoting the statements put to me in order to reflect on some of the stereotyped thinking about youth that has of older become the it seems us, This, representative generation. as as to me, is prognostically the behavior of the important young for youth is, after all, a generational themselves; people phenom are now treated as those of an its problems enon, even though on us from Mars. The actions of outlandish tribe descended young are always in part and reactions to the stereo people by necessity this becomes types held up to them by their elders. To understand our in time when the so-called communica important especially tions media, far from merely mediating, themselves be interpose as manufacturers tween the generations of stereotypes, often forc of the images that at first they ing youth to Uve out the caricatures in experimental had only "projected" fashion. Much will depend on what we do about this. In spite of our pretensions of being able to study the youth of today with the eyes of detached naturaUsts, we are to make youth in the year 2000 what it w?l be helping by the kinds of questions we now ask. So I w?l point out the ideological beams in our eyes as I attempt to put into words what I see ahead. that are diagnostic and then proceed I w?l begin with questions in character. to those that are more prognostic assume that adolescents I would today and conduct which to define new modes of gling lives. are tomorrow strug are relevant to their

bent have always done of a questioning this. Young people more before and with less reUance than any young generation But on a meaningful choice of traditional world images, the youth of is universally relevant is forced to ask what in human life today 860

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Memorandum

on Youth

in this technological age at this junction of history. Even some of with "their" most the faddish, neurotic, delinquent preoccupation a fact. is of this Uves symptom seem the context of two culture factors which in the history of moral is One the temper. to the all natural of refusal define authority, scepticism authority even that of and a cast of mind authority) paternal (perhaps and even antinomian. which is essentially anti-institutional Yet, this is within to be extraordinary that even in the minority to whom I do not believe of youths is at all appUcable there is a scepticism of all author this statement is an abiding mistrust of people who act ity. There authoritatively or refuse to assume the authentic without that authority authority Paternal is theirs by right and necessity. Oh, yes? authority? wars fathers have been exposed everywhere pompous by the world It is interesting, and the revolutions. the that word though, paternal is used rather than parental, for authority, wh?e less paternal, from the parent generation, insofar as a may not slip altogether and paternal of maternal better balance evolve authority may from a changing position of women. As a teacher, I am more im with our varying incapacity to own up to the almost oppres pressed sive authority we reaUy do have in the minds of the young than in in the alleged all of the Their scepticism young. authority even in its most scepticism, cynical and violent forms, often seems true to express a good sense for what is, or should be, authority or yet could be. If to "refuse define natural authority"?are they and they not right if they indicate ' by all the overt, mocking, it is up to us to kinds that "alienation of them challenging help define it, or rather redefine it?and it, since we have undermined

feel mighty gu?ty?

to the essentiaUy cast of mind, one must anti-institutional is here rejected. It appears that the alternative majority are, in fact, all too needy for, trusting in, and people to present industrial institutions, organizations, parties, conforming this because true super-machineries?and complexes, personal Even the anti-institutional is waning. (whom authority minority we know better and who are apt to know our seem to writings) me to plead with institutions for permission to rebel? existing seem to as in private with often their they plead just parents to love them. And are for rejecting not them doubly they remarkably new uniforms of non (a kind of uniformity eager for old and As ask what of young 861

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ERIK H. ERIKSON for public rituals, and for a coUective conformity), style of indi as in the as well vidual isolation? Within this minority, however, are are in there interested numbers who majority, great deeply and responsive to a more from institutions concerted of critique a newer and more ethical point of view than we can adequate offer them. The second factor is an the word hedonism?using extraordinary in the broadest sense?in that there is a desacralization of life and an attitude that all is permissible and even desirable. experience the word hedonism in which we use ?lustrates the way Again, new terms for outdated Although many young entirely phenomena. a entertain of sensual and sexual experi greater variety people ences than their parents did, I see in their pleasure seeking rela search Uttle relaxed and addictive and often tively joy compulsive for relevant experience. And here we should admit that our genera tion and our heritage made "aU" experience relative by opening it to ruthless inquiry and by assuming that one could pursue radical without or, indeed, enlightenment changing radicaUy changing the coming generations The young have no choice but radicaUy. to experiment is left of the "enlightened," with what "analyzed," to them. Yet and standardized world that we have bequeathed but for new logical and their search is not for all-permissibility, can offer correc ethical boundaries. Now direct experience only tives that our traditional mixture and of radical enlightenment I suspect that "hedo has failed to provide. middle-class moralism in deed of its attractiveness nistic" perversity will soon lose much and in print when the ava?able inventory has been experimented once it is with and found only moderately permitted. satisfying, new New boundaries w?l from then emerge ways of finding out latent affirmation and much what reaUy counts, for there is much overt soUdarity in all this search. AU you have to do is to see some of these nihilists with babies, and you are less sure of what one of as yet to be terms the "Hegelian the statements quoted certainty" that the next generation w?l be even more alienated. of life by the young, As for the desacralization it must be desacralized their Uves by (to mention obvious that our generation side) na?ve scientism, only the intellectual thoughtless scepticism, and irresponsible dilettante technical opposition, political expan of a search for resacralization sion. I find, in fact, more in the in the older than younger generation. 862

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Memorandum

on Youth

At the same time society imposes new forms of specialization, of new hierarchies and organizations. extended Thus, one training, of divorce between the culture and the finds an unprecedented a such society. And, from all indications, separation will increase. Here, much depends on what one means by the word imposes. I have already indicated, in much of youth new hierarchies and are are apt to We and welcome. organizations forget accepted that young people their parents' conflicts) (if not burdened with have no reason to feel that radical change as such is an imposition. our tradi is between The divorce we perceive unprecedented it tional culture shall I the tasks of their and (or KulturP) spell new A with and up society. growing generation technological new scientific progress may well and its experience technology a new culture and new modes of thought as the link between As forms of society. will In this respect, assuming this hypothesis is true, the greatest strains be on the youth. This particular generation, like its predeces the with sors, may come back to some form of accommodation society as it grows older and But the also

the so accepts positions within a leave "cultural experiences ciety. deposit" which consciousness is cumulative and?to this extent I am a Hegelian? is irreversible, and the next generation therefore starts from a more advanced position of alienation and detachment. sense that a Does it make in such unprec involved generation to some should "come back edented form of accommoda change the society"? This was tion with the fate of certain rebels and in the past; but there may soon be no romantics predictable even to were a viable term if "come back to," society coming back or image in the minds of youth. Rather, I would expect the major to too to be to overaccommodate the exploiters of ity only w?ling we to the and cast of feel off until their minority change, speak we can whatever function becomes clearer?with help give. n somewhat the statements formu summarily disavowed Having now like to ask a in Une lated by others, I would question more with my own thinking, and thereby not necessarily more free from are some of the sources stereotypy: Where principal contemporary leads us from of identity strength? This question to diagnosis prog 863

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ERIK H. ERIKSON connota nosis, for to me a sense of identity (and here the widest future. tion of the term wiU do) includes a sense of anticipated sources of The traditional racial, na identity strength?economic, in of all the tional, religious, process aUying occupational?are in which the vision of an an themselves with a new world-image state of future and, in fact, of a future in a permanent ticipated I call over much If of tradition. take the w?l of power planning I am using the word such sources of identity strength ideological, a con to denote a system of ideas providing again most generally a system each new needs? Such generation vincing world-image. so much I w?l so that it cannot wait for it to be tested in advance. call the two principal ties the technological sume that even the basic to future identi orientations ideological and I will as and the humanist orientations, w?l be alternatives great poUtico-economic

to them. subordinated I will assume, then, that especially in this country, but increas masses of young people feel attuned, both by ingly also abroad, to the technological and by opportunity, and scientific giftedness and that these promises, if sus of indefinite progress; promises a new tained by schooling, and a ideological world-image imply new kind of in and every past technology identity for many. As each historical period, there are vast numbers of individuals who can combine and domination the dominant of mastery techniques their identity development, and become what with they do. They can settle on that cultural consolidation that follows shifts in tech and secures what mutual and what verification transitory nology in in and lie fam?iarity doing them right? doing things together a response of "nature," whether Tightness proved by the bountiful in the form of the prey bagged, the food harvested, the goods or the ideas the tech the substantiated, made, money produced, solved. nological problems for new kinds of course, also makes Each such consoUdation, in institutionalized enforced entrenched sacrifices, privileges, that become contradictions ob bu?t-in and glaringly equalities, lack the appropriate who vious to outsiders?those gifts and op or have a surplus of not quite appropriate talents. Yet portunities to overlook the sense of vindictiveness it would be intellectual flux that each age provides in the and natural embeddedness to it helps to how of the artifacts of organization; midst bring man some of and of ascendance type style perfection; particular to limit their horizon effec how it permits those thus consolidated of 864

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Memorandum

on Youth

won unity tively so as not to see what might destroy their newly of with time and space or expose them to the fear of death?and lines a consolidation scientific and Such along technological killing. is, I submit, now taking place. Those young people who feel at home in it can, in fact, go along with their parents and teachers? a kind of fraternal identification, not too to be sure?in respectfully, can ch?dren and because parents jointly leave it to technology a to provide and self-accelerating and science self-perpetuating to ideals so long as is felt limit way of life. No need expansionist to the hope certain old-fashioned continue rationalizations provide an an intrinsic American ideol (a hope that has long been part of nature of to in in the that bu?t-in evil any very ogy) regard possible and amend brakes, corrections, appropriate super-organizations, in the nick of time and without ments w?l be invented any undue investment of strenuously new principles. Wh?e they "work," these a suffi and associations organizations, super-machineries, provide aU those who feel actively engaged ciently adjustable identity for the danger of overaccommodation in this, as in a new and maybe the of any other consolidation world-image, is greater today. It is the danger that a willful and playful danger now limitless range of the technicaUy testing of the possible w?l replace the search for the criteria for the optimal and the ethically includes what can be given on from generation which permissible, to generation. This can only cause subliminal panic, especially and where where the old decencies w?l prove glaringly inadequate, of overkiU can be denied the threat or the mere possibility only strain?a mental with which w?l strain, incidentally, increasing match the sexual repression of the passing era in unconscious patho genic power. I think, that the nonaccommodators It is against this danger, existence con the "on line," often in a thoroughly put their very the manifestations com because of alienation and founding way are sometimes The on the mitment insistence indistinguishable. or not to be" looks "to be question always gratuitously strange to If the question of being oneself and of the consolidated. dying one's own death in a world of overkill seems to appear in a more and confusing confused form, it is the ruthless heritage of radical some that forces into a young people intelligent enUghtenment that be human without cynical pride, demanding they seemingly ethi narcissism, Alusi?n, naked without idealization, loving without 865 in and by them. All of us sense

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ERIK H. ERIKSON neu restless without cal without moral passion, being classifiably a utopia to end aU utopias. rotic, and poUtical without lying: truly seem What should we caU this youth? Humanist would right if by a recovery, with new as the man of this we mean impUcations, a man to far grimmer and with much less temptation measure, a on his exalted in himself the universe, position congratulate more that in the has past always encouraged self-congratulation cruel and more consolidations. The new humanism thoughtless an is an island insistence from that existential ranges every man unto himself to a new kind of humaneness than that is more a human for and and animals compassion savages, stray decidedly itarian activism ready to meet in concrete dangers and hardships the service of assisting the underpriv?eged Maybe anywhere. cover aU this better, universalist if we mean by it an in would sistence on the widest the range of human possib?ities?beyond technological. no less But whatever orientation, you caU it, the universalist than the technological one, is a cluster of ideas, images, and as of hopes, fears, and hates; otherwise, neither could lay pirations, Somewhat l?ce claim to the identity development of the young. the "hawks" and the "doves," the technologists and the universalists seem almost to belong to different in separate species, Uving for the dominant ecologies. youth, example, expects "Technological" to work themselves forces in foreign as weU as in domestic matters out into some new form of balance of power (or is it an old fashioned balance of entirely new powers?). It is w?ling, for the to do a reasonable amount of kilUng? sake of such an expectation, and of dying. "Humanist" youth, on the other hand, not only opposes a unlimited mechanization and regimentation, but also cultivates awareness in gun sensitive of the humanness of any individual oppose and repel sight range. The two orientations must obviously each other totally; the acceptance of even a part of one could cause an sUde in the whole configuration of images and, ideological to die. These to be?and two it foUows, in the kind of courage were as the if the other views, therefore, face each other enemy, or friend?and, at a he be brother oneseU indeed, may although a even own or in of different mood different life, stage of one's the same stage. inherent in Each side, of course, is overly aware of the dangers the other. In fact, it makes out of the other, in my jargon, a nega the danger felt to exist in the tech tive identity. I have sketched 866

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Memorandum

on Youth

orientation. On the "humanist" side, there is the danger nological faith in the certainty that if you "mean it," you can of a starry-eyed move and of a subsequent total in mountains, quite monolithic ertia when the mountain moves only a bit at a time or sUdes right back. This segment of youth lacks as yet the leadership that would or the loss of other tradition tradition, any revolutionary replace Then there is the danger of a retreat into aU kinds of of discipline. or into its Beat snobbishness each with private worlds, parallel own artificaUy expanded consciousness.

Ill
drawn As one is apt to do in arguing over diagnosis, two "ideal" syndromes so as to consider to me: in a further question presented gested I have now the prognosis over sug

that the fabric of traditional authority has been torn Is it possible so severely in the last decades that the re-establishment of certain is all but unlikely? earlier forms of convention in answer this question that I would I have already indicated to be I would not expect a future accommodation the affirmative; or to old a to conventions characterized "coming back" either by era in Has not every major fashioned movements. history been a new class of a division into characterized power-specialists by are and an intense new group of (who "know what doing") they universalists (who "mean what they are saying")? And do not these an era's character? The specialists two poles determine ruthlessly test the limits of power, while the universalists always in remember cut off from the re ing man's soul also remember the "poor"?those as in is that third group, the sources of power. What yet dormant to say, especially if an all-colored is hard truly under-privileged, our include that would anticolonial Negro youth should solidarity new revolutionary seem that aU it But would emerge. probable ori identities w?l be drawn into the struggle of the two ideological a fruitful entations sketched here, and that nothing could preclude we survive. these two orientations?provided polarity between But is not the fact that we are st?l here already a result of the had not I have spoken of? If our super-technicians polarization and into brakes the machin been able to put warning very signals our universalists would not have known ery of armament, certainly It also seems reasonable how to save or how to govern the world. 867

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ERIK H. ERIKSON to assume that without the apocalyptic of the universal warnings not have been shocked into re ists, the new technocrats might straining the power they wield. a fruitful is the probability that What polarization speaks for a new in and scien with and up technological growing generation as a matter of course will be forced by the daily tific progress unheard-of and confrontation theoretical with practical possi to entertain radicaUy new modes of thought that may sug b?ities in both culture and society. innovations "Humanist" gest daring some accommodation in find wiU with the machine turn, youth, in in which of their course, age already participate they, da?y needs and habits. Thus, each group may reach in the other what or commitment may be ready for activa sensitivity, imagination, even to wish that the tion. I do not mean, however, clarity of op of the and the humanist position technological identity be blurred, needs clear for dynamic interplay poles. to What, finally, is apt to bring youth of different persuasions is a change in the generational awareness itself?an process gether mere division that they share a common fate. Already today the
into an older?parent?generation and a younger?adolescing?

is becoming it Technological superannuated. change makes an older traditional of for difference ( way any age being impossible ever to become quoted) again so in by the questions suggested that the younger could stitutionalized "accommodate" generation to it or, indeed, resist it in good-old fashion. Aging, revolutionary it is already widely noted, will be (or already is ) a quite different rather early occupationally for those who find themselves experience and for those who may have something more outdated lasting to into offer. By the same token, young adulthood will be divided and not-too older and younger young adults. The not-too-young ar into the position of principal old specialist will probably move of his special biter, that is, for the limited period of the ascendance in many ways, will replace the sanction of tradition ity. His power, too, will be or, indeed, of parents. But the "younger generation," more into or the is olderand the divided ) ( already younger clearly the older young w?l have to take over where young generation, (and are eager to take over) much of the direction of the conduct of the parents and of the younger young. Thus, the relative waning and of the young adult specialist as the permanent the emergence a shift are about which bringing by changing authority permanently for the con older youth w?l have to take increasing responsibiUty 868

one

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Memorandum duct

on Youth

older people for the orientation of younger youth?and of the same token, future and older of youth. By the specialists reUgious less in the emotions and the imagery of ethics would be grounded infantile gu?t, than in that of mutual in the responsibility fleeting

present.

In such change we on our part can orient ourselves and offer an orientation and only by recognizing cultivating age-specific in older youth, for there are age-specific ethical capacity factors that speak for a differentiation between morality and ethics. The a moralism which child's conscience tends to be impressed with says "no" without giving reasons; in this sense, the infantile super-ego a in ch?d has become danger to human survival, for suppression to in hood leads the exploitation of others and moral adulthood, istic seU-denial to annihilate ends up in the wish others. There we should in older is also an age-specific ethical capacity youth that learn to foster. That we, instead, consistently this ethical neglect in it reaction the with that we moralistic and, fact, potential deny toward and against youth (anti-institutional, traditionally employ more is much resented hedonistic, by desacralizing) probably to keep them in order by than our dutiful attempts young people At any rate, the ethical questions of the future will be prohibition. on the the influence the older less determined of by generation in a Ufe scheme younger one than by the interplay of subdivisions in which in which the life stages the whole life-span is extended; in which new roles for both sexes will will be further subdivided; a certain in all Ufe stages; and in which of free emerge margin come to be considered will choice and individualized the identity inventiveness. In the next decade, youth w?l reward for technical force us to help them to develop ethical, affirmative, resacralizing to the promises that remain flexibly rules of conduct adjustable and communication. of world-wide and the dangers technology of course, include two "things"?one These developments, gigantic, to find one tiny?the of which w?l irreversible have presence to in daily life: the Bomb and the Loop. They acknowledgment will call for everyday decisions the life of involving sanctity gether and not to and death. Once man has decided not to k?l needlessly must to he establish what birth for try carelessly, capacity give owes to each and for child every generation letting live, Uving, to be born?anywhere. planned to predict only on the basis of one One can, I guess, undertake one Either of two premises: expects that things w?l be as bad as 869

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ERIK H. ERIKSON or one visualizes what one is they always have been, only worse; to take a chance on at the risk of being irrelevant. As I wiUing a committee wants to foretell the at that the beginning, implied itseff by asking what its future may have to take a chance with and talent would wish might wisdom be done with combined what seems to be given.

870

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