Can Youth Be Out Of Touch?
Tradition and Asymmetric Responsibility
Byrne Hobart observes an asymmetry in our vernacular:
Why are elders said to be “out of touch,” but youth are rarely described this way?
My theory draws from Biblical anthropology.
Priests are supposed to be in touch with the people, while prophets are supposed to be in touch with God (even as they defend the people against divine judgment). The pitfall of prophets is that they demand too much of the world; the pitfall of priests is that they are too conciliatory. Priests have a technically difficult task, but the prophet’s task is existentially far more difficult. That is why prophets frequently ask to quit.
Only someone who ought to be in touch with X—but can’t be—is said to be out of touch. Someone who is exempted from being in touch with X cannot be out of touch. The prophet can be out of touch with the people, and often is, but the people are not out of touch with the prophet or God, because we don’t hold them to the same standard. We don’t expect them to be leaders.
You can argue that we should hold youth to the same standard as elders, and that our idiomatic use of “out of touch” should reflect greater reciprocity. That it doesn’t means that we generally think elders can and should know better—even if it’s difficult. But we don’t think the youth can and should know better.
In the Biblical paradigm, elders are prophets; the youth are priests. If you think that elders are transmitters of tradition and the youth are its recipients, it makes sense that, positionally, elders play the formal role of prophet—mediating between past and present. The youth, meanwhile, know only of the present. They can’t be held accountable for their ignorance of the Before Times. The problem with elders is that their loyalty to the past (a stand-in for God or heaven) may inhibit their ability to find students in the present.
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