If you were hoping your buddy might fork over a couple bucks for your still single-digit Dance Marathon fund, don’t hold your breath.
According to a new study from the University of Michigan published August 2010, American college students have gotten more selfish and narcissistic over the past 20 years with the sharpest decline in empathy occurring over the past 10 years. Our overly ambitious demographic seems to have out-Me’d the “Me” Generation. Madonna’s materialism has nothing on the glittery intoxication of Ke$ha. But take away the glamour of our pop stars, and apparently we’re left with a pretty gloomy picture, an emotional landscape of detachment and selfishness.
Anybody except an Ayn Rand groupie would agree that this is a bad thing. But it’s hardly fair to label this a deficiency exclusive to our generation. The sound effects from the middle-age Tea Party movement are mainly just cries for government to “Get Outta My Way!” The general consensus from the frontlines of this attack on government is that Americans just wanna have fun, whatever the cost.
And that cost comes in the form of slashed government funding to social programs. After all, when livin’ well is the best charity, why get bogged down with welfare? It certainly is attractive to think that the relentless pursuit of one’s own self interest in the form of a bulging wallet is a societal good, a solemn duty. In an escalating American Rat Race, dreams of white picket fences have been replaced by blueprints for ski houses in Aspen.
And the stakes of the all-American gamble have gone up. At the same time, the sharp increase in income inequality – with the top 1 percent of households owning 34.6 percent of all private wealth in 2007 – suggests that the unprecedented American wealth doesn’t mean better education and healthier citizens; it means nicer MTV Cribs.
This infection of selfishiness brought us incalculable financial risk and bursting oil pipes. It gives us sky-high worker productivity and unprecedentedly low wages for those same workers. It gives us million-dollar bonuses for corporate CEOs and malnutrition in lower-income American homes. It was the American commitment to selfishness that Republican politicians fought to protect during this bitter holiday season when they specifically demanded extension of the Bush tax cuts to those earning over one million dollars. Less than one percent of the American people enjoy that luxury, but everybody will appreciate the next layer of our fiscal deficit cake, and everybody can sign our thank you note to China for continuing to underwrite our pricey party.
We say the quality that most separates us from animals is the ability to reason, to control our instincts. But when reason proudly invents the “trickle down” effect — enjoyed primarily by private jet manufacturers and professional escort services — and rationality encourages deregulated playgrounds for a predatory financial sector, perhaps a little more animal instinct to protect members of our tribe who can’t survive in the jungle alone would be wise.
Behaving compassionately is as common in nature as eating without silverware, as natural as “fight or flight.” The weak, the old, the hungry members of the pride count on strong hunters.
The truth is, most of us are not going to achieve the one million dollar mark that guarantees our protection by conservative lawmakers. And that’s okay. Most lions don’t become king of the jungle. But every lion in the pride feasts from the same hunt. Modernity is no excuse to change that. Governments and companies (and, ahem, college campuses) ought to care for their people with adequate wages, benefits, and respect.
Perhaps our generational Peter Pan tendencies are the explanation for our selfishness – we’re still whiny kids at heart. But to those purportedly older and wiser, what’s your excuse?
Amanda Scherker is a Communication sophomore. She can be reached at [email protected].
Want to weigh in on the conversation? Send a letter to the editor to Forum Editor Nicole Hong at n-hong@northwes
