>>>Another "reminds me..."
>
>Seems to me that this sort of decency has decayed visibly during our lifetimes. Easiest to call it one of the prices of a secular society, but actually the truth is that many of our generation are unspeakably selfish and proud of it.

I think there are certainly many who feel that way. It's so foreign to me. On my father's side, I come from a long line of troublemakers <g>: Great-Grandma worked for Carrie Chapman Catt, the suffragette and, in fact, one of the women's suffrage organizations was housed in my great-grandparents home for a time. Family history says Great-Grandpa (her husband) was run out of Richmond for teaching freed slaves to read. Etc., etc. On my mother's side, we had the legacy of being a KinderTransport child; in her case, that meant spending the rest of her life paying forward the kindness dealt her by the foster families that took her in. I just can't imagine living in a way that doesn't take the care of others into consideration.

I guess the big question is whether there's more selfishness now, or whether people are more willing to be open about it. I think it's no longer considered "bad" to be openly selfish in a way that it was a generation or two back.

Tamar