Brooks' Thoughts On the Deterioration of Middle-Class Culture Has Me Thinking

Here, David Brooks laments the debasement of American culture, the willful turning from anything that might take us--lab rats in a Sims game--outside and beyond ourselves. It's a great article.

Parenthetically, one word used for demonic or evil in the Bible has the meaning of being turned in on oneself, away from God and away from neighbor.

The rising coarseness, narcissism, and utilitarianism of America's middle class is not only evil, though. It also bodes ill for the future. An educated, empathetic, and industrious middle class is the glue of a culture going places. Our current course, unless reversed, will spell our doom.

Self-indulgence is never the path of greatness. It is the way of the jungle.