First of all, thanks to Ethan Watters for sharing his sources and updating this blog yesterday more than it’s been updated for quite a while! The Virtual Book Tour moves on today to Geoffrey Long’s Inkblots.
Now, I absolutely meant to post this last night, when I had Mr. Urban Tribes himself in residence, but I left it on my computer at work, so here it is today, a day late and a dollar short. But I went to so much trouble writing it that I want to put it up, even if I think it’s pretty rambling and incoherent. Let me tell you about my tribe…
In the book, Watters (gee, the guy’s blogged on my site, let’s call him Ethan) points out that since his/our generation has mostly eschewed the traditional social groupings of its elders (church, social clubs), the rise of the “urban tribe” was inevitable.
I’m a fairly unique case, then. I’m a confessed social junkie. I love people. And I’m a member of a church. I grew up, in my late teens and early twenties, as part of a large and dynamic church youth group. I also live in a large city (3 million plus), so even though, as a rule, church people tend to marry younger, by and large most of our group didn’t marry until their mid-to-late twenties. But it was more than marriage that slowly pulled our “tribe” apart.
Churches (and more especially youth groups) bring together a huge variety of people. People who share faith but not necessarily politics or opinions. A particularly nasty “tribe”-bomb for us was the “coming out” of one of our members. Another converted to Catholicism. Others drifted away from their youthful faith. Still others found their youthful faith and idealism hardening into the social conservatism of their parents. In a group where beliefs are important, the social aspect just wasn’t as appetizing as it was when we were going on hayrides and playing volleyball.
On the other hand, I appreciated the fact that I never had to conduct my social life in the bars and clubs of my city. Most of my friendships, even the ones that were later broken, had enough depth so that matters like faith and politics and ethics could be discussed openly. It was easy to form very strong ties with some of these people.
I suppose we were like animal rights activists or Greenpeace members. We were very idealistic, and the compromises that become inevitable with age and experience led to disillusionment, if not with ourselves, then with others.
It hurts to think of how we’ve scattered. Some of the blame is due to the regular stuff: marriage, careers, real estate. Those losses ache with the dull ache of mortality, growing older and apart. But the ones that hurt most are the ones that were the sharpest. Betrayals, self-righteousness, the growing realization that some of us have changed, or haven’t. Among this community, it is still difficult to figure out which are the virtues: staying the same or changing. Integrity (or just rigidity?), compromise (a good or a bad thing?), principles (or just rules?), tolerance (or just looking the other way?), honesty (or just spite?).
Sometimes I see the fallout from a group like ours as more of a broken marriage than just a social group disintegrating. We disappointed one another. We weren’t the people we thought we were. We grew out of each other.
And then some of us got married. We left one complicated web of relationships for a single complicated relationship. Our choice of partner probably influenced the group’s opinion of us. Our partner had an opinion of the group, too. By its very nature, marriage forced us to leave (the group) and cleave (to our partner). In most cases, this just means “growing up,” giving up some of the “boys/girls nights out”. But in our case, it also meant shutting the door a little more on some of those old relationships. Or opening it, though the time and effort required usually found us just not bothering.
It’s my belief that the friends we make in our teens and early twenties (roughly from junior high until the end of our undergraduate years) are the ones we most desire to keep. That’s certainly been borne out in my own life. Though I’ve been a member of several churches since those heady youth group days, none have ever produced the sort of relationships I crave. People are much more guarded as they age, and that frustrates intimacy.
The closest I’ve come (and it’s not that close, believe me) is the film club that my wife and I began about two years ago. We invite a wide cross-section from among both our groups of friends to a monthly film screening in our home. It’s non-threatening because during the film no one really talks, and there’s no expectation that you have to stay for long afterward. But some people do, and that’s where we get closer. The only problem so far is that the people staying late are people who are already in our close circle, and that may be intimidating some of the others. But we plug away, month after month, hoping that our persistence will convince our acquaintances that we really do want them as friends. And some of the people that I invite are actually members of that old tribe. No matter what has happened between us, my faith (and my heart) dictates that I should never just fold my arms across my chest.