Letters to the Editor
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Are you better off than you were 40 years ago?
I think the answer to this is yes. People are simply more compassionate. I recall anecdotally from my youth, that if a dog was hit by a car few people would stop. Now several people stop, and someone calls a veterinary ambulance. Television (the vast wasteland) is filled with programming which demonstrates how people care about each other, and their environment. (We still tend to stare at the TV violence, and this may be the reason behind the red state blue state divide. What does cable content in Montana look like?)
Aside from television, how do you measure this thing? I think you reread Joan Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem, a set of essays written ostensibly by a noted liberal. The essays are littered however with what are Conversative principles; fear of crime, rejection of the self indulgent, and repeated use of the symbols of decay. The Liberals of the 60's may have become the COnservatives of the 90's, without changing political values one whit. What has changed is how people treat each other outside these outdated parameters. Didion may have been prematurely aged, but the rest of society has been evolving. Even the most regressive Republicans were forced to pay lip service to the concept of compassion. That the system still doesn't get it, should remind us that 60's activism is still necessary.