Have We Really Grown So Selfish?

Looks like my Mamaw has inspired me to do another blog post. She talks a lot about things, so I suppose it's not that surprising. Anyway, the idea for this post came from my Mamaw's musings over the funeral of her sister-in-law's sister. One she mentioned that caught my attention was the serving of food at the funeral. Although this isn't an unheard of practice, it disturbs me a little. Why would someone want to eat while mourning the loss of a loved one? I for one associate food with festivities and celebrations. Why would anybody want to celebrate the death of a fellow human being?

I shared my opinion with my beloved Mamaw, and her response was full of anger and annoyance. It was not at me, but at society in general. She revealed to me that she believes that "whoever come up with the idea of serving food at a church house ought to be shot," that "people don't come to funerals to mourn or to be with people, but just for the food," and that "when the old people started to die, everything went downhill."

This isn't the first time I've heard from her that the older generation had better values than ours. In fact, I've heard it just about all of my life. But is it true? Has Generation Y really stopped caring? Do we only care about ourselves, and not the rest of the community?

I will concede to my Mamaw that we have grown more than just a little lazy and complacent due to the prosperity of the 20th and 21st century. However, our core moral values have remained similar. We may be a little more accepting of certain lifestyles or habits, but we still condemn murder, lying, cheating, theft, and other selfish vices. Where it's important, society has not faced a huge amount of moral decay.

Even so, we do spend more time condemning what is wrong than getting off our butts and trying to make things better. Perhaps it is because modern society has been spoonfed so much that people just want somebody else to take care of their problems. Perhaps it is because we feel that the system is just too unresponsive to ordinary citizens. Whatever the problem is, it is crippling community efforts. When it comes to major projects, we need all of the help we can get. We need a way to stir the masses and turn them away from their selfish inaction. Maybe New Cities can achieve this goal. Maybe it cannot. But one thing is for certain: We cannot give up hope.