Reading this and many other pieces- and speaking with people in their 20s, I get the horrible feeling that those who don't live in the middle of cities, or in the remaining community-oriented small towns, are losing their best biological opportunity (perhaps like foreign languages) to learn the complex language of real life social skills.
But let me say this: I think the up and coming generation may be among the best generally educated, social aware, least selfish, and community oriented in a long time. But there seems to be a broken spirit - a tremendous loss of animus and hope. The almost total domination of consumer/market culture, the push to replace the actual voice, actual sight, actual society, with technological simulations, (and not incidentally, the value of human labor), has begun to erode the dignity and value of human beings. 4-23-1