On The Subject Of “The Generation Of Me”…

I am in the process of reading the opus that is “The Empathic Civilization: The Race to Global Consciousness in a World in Crisis” by Jeremy Rifkin. I will reserve my comments until I have a firmer grasp on the author’s reasoning and intent.
But I will say this on the subject of “The Generation Of Me”, in relation to a few comments of late and as a follow-up to some conversations I had lately with some… The root of our problems, in my humble opinion, is the celebration of avarice. We were raised as children with a simple truth – to not measure our own worth and value, or the worth of anyone else, by the numbers on a bank statement. What I found shocking was the amount of resistance, ridicule and prejudice this simple principle seemed to encounter in practice. What I find even more shocking, as I look back, is that by the end of the 1980’s the simple concept of “virtue” itself had become passe – it is now a quaint little notion to be scoffed at and laughed off. Those doing the scoffing and the laughing are not just the youth born in the 1980’s but their parents and elders born long before.
There are too few people who are not afraid to say – there is such a thing as having ENOUGH money, a big ENOUGH house, an expensive ENOUGH car, etc. There are too few people who have enough courage and virtue to insist that sharing must not stop at the kindergarten level. Even worse, the few who DO say such things are labeled un-American, un-patriotic, jealous, envious, etc… Our society has become deeply perverted, and dissent is squashed quickly both in social and financial circles.
I do wish that most people were raised in a way that the compunction to BE virtuous would come from within, but I have lost hope of seeing this any time soon, or in my lifetime for that matter…