X Grows Up
A generation finds meaning the hard way.

By Thomas S. Hibbs, associate professor of philosophy at Boston College & author, most recently, of Shows About Nothing: Nihilism in Popular Culture.
September 22-23, 2001

ou could see it in the somber, even grave, tone in their speech, in their subdued conversations in cafeterias, and in the way some averted tearing eyes when the events of September 11 came up in discussion. The current crop of college students, to judge from my experience as a professor at Boston College, will never be the same. Condoleezza Rice called the events of last Tuesday "transforming." This is likely to be most true for college students, who have just begun to taste the independence and freedom that we Americans take, or at least used to take, for granted. During orientation sessions, they were touted by administrators as the first classes of a new century, a new millennium — proclamations they dismissed with a shrug. The dates marked the passage of time, nothing more. Now, one date at least, September 11, is burned in their memory.

This generation of students has never been as hopeless as their detractors on the Right or the Left have imagined. They are not just polite and pleasant, but also organized, goal-oriented, and generally quite diligent. But even in their virtues these students suffer from what Tocqueville called "individualism": "a mature and calm feeling" that disposes each person to "draw apart with his family and friends" and "willingly leave society to itself." The problem is that this way of life can easily devolve into an easygoing nihilism, a version of which was on display in the detached, ironic individualism of the most celebrated sitcom of the last decade, Seinfeld. Pursuing the life of well-being and consumer comfort, today's students are hesitant, indeed feel no real need, to make judgments about good and evil. The question, which our attackers answer for themselves everyday, "for what are you willing to die?" tends to strike them as unreal, irrelevant. These questions are now unavoidable and most pressing. Although teaching and learning in such a situation can be quite difficult, some of my philosophy colleagues report unusually lively discussions of Plato's Apology, which narrates the trial and conviction of Socrates.

On Saturday, September 15, the Boston Globe ran a lengthy story about four, male Boston College freshman and their reactions to the terrorist attack and the prospects of war. The shock they described, the fear for the safety of loved ones (many students come from the New York City area), the loss of their confident sense of America's "impenetrability" — all this indicates the degree to which all sorts of assumptions are now in question. Debates about war, even about enlisting, that were once academic exercises, are now regular features of dorm life. But the students need not entertain the still somewhat distant possibility of active participation in war to realize that heroic sacrifice may be demanded of them. They now have more than the suggestion that heroes once existed; they have the benefit of a host of examples (too many to keep up with) of heroism, of nobility and courage in the face of terrifying death. They have the many police, firefighters, and ordinary citizens who lost their lives trying to save the lives of others. They have the story of FDNY chaplain Father Judge, who was crushed by falling debris while giving the last rites to a dying fireman. Most instructive of all, they have the story of a those passengers on the flight hijacked out of Newark, who, fully aware of their fate, chose to fight and, while losing their own lives, likely saved many others. The absence of quick military response and the constant media presence in New York has given us the opportunity to ponder these deeply moving stories in intimate detail. The examples should inspire reflection not just about dying nobly but about living well, about what we want to celebrate and honor most in our common life.

It is certainly too early to predict the outcome of recent events for the nation or for this generation of college students. And it is not yet clear that a generation raised on expectation of unlimited opportunity and quick financial success is up to the task of extended sacrifice. But one thing is sure. They are less likely to be fated to casting about for a hollow tag like "Generation X" to describe lives that seem to lack public significance or purpose.