Trend or continuity

I have not examined the study, as I have little access to journals. However, one of the tenants of actual scientific findings is that the findings should connect with reality. In my, now over 30 years of working with young people, this studies results are in fact reflected by experience. The press release is titled: "Recent generations focus more on fame, money than giving back; Young adults less interested in community issues, politics and environment, finds new research" and is from the APA. I do disagree with the first sentence of the last paragraph in the release, in that I do think that most of our generation, who are raising or have raised this current crop, have created exactly what we have and thus our peer group deserves all the derision we can heap upon them. Of course, we are all products of the disastrous 20th century and are only living on the steep downward slope of culture and civilization.

This kind of information should inform any efforts in the area of community resilience, since the children are disconnected, distracted, inattentive...well you know the litany. St. Augustine wrote: Quod amplius nos delectat, secundum id operemur necesse est.  Thus A.J. Nock was able to say;

The fundamental validity of egoism and hedonism seems to me indisputable, as it did not only to the Cyrenaics and to Epicurus, but to Christian moralists like Butler and Wilson among Protestants, to Spinoza among Jews, and to the mighty Augustine of Hippo among Catholics. But putting all such authority aside, I hold it to be a matter of invariable experience that no one can do anything for anybody. Somebody may profit by something you do, you may know that he profits and be glad of it, but you do not do it for him. You do it, as Augustine says you must do it, are bound to do it (necesse est is the strong term he uses), because you get more satisfaction, happiness, delight, out of doing it than you would get out of not doing it; and this is egoistic hedonism.

If altruism exists then it only came into existence in the 1850's. It was developed by Comte in his efforts with Positivism. Comte being a Frenchman needed to try to make sense of the Frenchman's tremendous capacity for destruction (see Twain's comparison and contrast of Frenchmen and Comanches). I guess Comte came up with something, but again does it reflect reality...the answer is a decided NO. Only the individual can be changed. Improvement can not occur in a community, society, state, nation or any other collective unless each individual improves. So, if you have individuals that are drunk all the time, you have a community of drunks; if you have individuals who are idiots, you have not just a village, but an entire society of idiots. With all due respect to E.O. Wilson, we are not ant or bees.

And so it goes.....

SDG