The city I live in was hammered by youth on St. Paddy's day weekend. They rioted, overturning and scorching a CTV news van and pelting police with bricks and bottles. An estimated 1,000 college students and transients were involved in turning a quiet street into a war-zone simply because it's what appealed to them in their drunken stupor.

http://www.lfpress.com/news/london/2012/03/18/19518906.html

IMO, the dividing line between genuine moral intuition and faux moral intuition is Truth.

The difference between good behavior and bad behavior is not immediately in the intentions. The intentions can be good, but if one's perception of the world is false then good intentions merely pave a highway to hell.

I wish I had a more concrete example; but take as an example the Kony 2012 campagin. If one just watches the documentary, believes what is said and wants to help. One's intentions may be good, but what if the information in the documentary is wrong? What if Kony has never done any of the things he is accused of? What if it is the Moseveni government who has done them and has passed the buck onto Kony? If we rush in like heroes to squash Kony and give absolute power back to the Moseveni government? Wouldn't that mean good intentions failing to meet justice? Absolutely! It could very well be good intentions resulting in crimes against humanity. Think of the Nazi propaganda and how Germany was deluded into believing they were liberators.

Good intentions are nothing if you misperceive the world.

A fundamental error lies at the basis of our individualized self-hood. That error is that we are not really individuals. We were born out of the same dust (so-to-speak) and all share a similar form, ordered and structured by the cosmos through cause and effect (Karma/Logos). In essence all that appears opposite is fundamentally unified in one grand universal system. Our choices issue forth from all the factors which conspire and converge to create us. Our identity structures (who we believe we are) is entirely dependent on the conventional use of socially differentiated identifiers. In reality we are Nature's puppets with an imagination of ourselves.

This is contrasted by our socialized perspective and our innate perspective. We are born with no sense of self whatsoever, we do not distinguish between "I and thou", but by repeated reference to us through our parents and siblings we gradually construct a self-concept which we learn to identify with. Now we have a self-absorbed perspective of the world; where everything relates and revolves around this self. To the extent that we are unaware that this self is not who we really are, we also have a skewed sense of morality.

For those of us who are trapped within a self-absorbed perspective, fairness is "an eye for an eye" it is retribution, vengeance, "you get what you give" mentality. In the integrated "All is One" perspective the 'individual' choices made by others are our responsibility as well. You cannot say that "Person A made a free-choice and nothing I could have said or done would have changed it." because this is not true in the integrated (true) reality. The truth is, everything you say and do influences (contributes to the cause) of everyone else's behavior.

Likewise; there aren't really "three generations" here. To begin with a "generation" is an arbitrary category and it could just as easily be 5 generations if we chose to make it. One should not identify strongly with a generational identity because they are - at bottom - false constructs, merely conventional categories. But they serve their purpose for approximating the truth. In this case they show a trend toward increased self-absorption. Don't get hung up on the generational identifiers and feel offended that something like self-absorption is attributed to "your" generation, or else you are basically exhibiting the kind of self-absorption researchers are talking about. A good measure is whether or not your attitudes are motivated by affect or reason, are you immediately offended or hurt? Then you are probably more concerned with your own sense of self than what is true.

"Sincerity and truth are the basis of every virtue" - Confucius

Here is a video that attempts to introduce "Strategic Self-Presentation" and talks about several "truth-avoidance" and "accountability-avoidance" strategies.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QfElEEQFqs

There is actually a whole host of "truth-avoidance" and "accountability-avoidance" strategies that serve the individual to avoid any threat to their identity.

This is a good one: "Personally I don’t believe in generational character." (You don't believe doesn't mean not true)

And if that doesn't work, try to attack the messenger: "I’m surprised this form of bigotry is considered acceptable." (Has nothing to do with whether it is true or not)

Or you can always puff up your own identity by attacking an opposite identity: "but they all had good jobs and nice lives and everything already handed to them"

Actually the generation before the boomers were less narcissistic than the boomers. It is a slow incline up to the 60s where it exploded. That's when people became "liberated" from the old ethical systems. They began indulging more in acts aimed solely at personal satisfaction. e.g. "free love"

Now we have wholly self-absorbed people dominating our entertainment world. Take for example; Jersey Shore or more acutely "My Super Sweet 16". The 60s marked major changes in society to do with our focus. Women's lib, despite it's positive consequences, meant women were less family oriented and became more self-oriented.

Commercial advertising switched gears from telling you about the product to pumping self-image. It's actually pretty hard to find a TV commercial that doesn't directly or indirectly seek to manipulate the viewer's self-image.

Part of the problem with self-presentational concern is that those high in self-presentational concern CAN'T admit it. They are in absolute denial over it. To say that they are high in self-presentational concern merely seems to them to be an attack on them. In order to protect themselves against these attacks they engage in "truth-avoidance" and "accountability-avoidance" strategies, which is all part and parcel of being high in self-presentational concern.

Narcissistic self-views actually decline with age (http://a-s.clayton.edu/bgoldman/Psy3560/fostercampbelltwenge2003jrp.pdf)

What is a narcissistic self-view? Let's say for example some researchers do a bunch of research and determine that your generation is the more selfish of the last three. Well maybe you identify strongly with your generation and feel compelled to overemphasize, exaggerate or otherwise "puff" up you identity. Under the circumstances you'd probably feel the need to defend your identity and may do so without any support except your own actively reconstructed and anecdotal memories.

"Well I know MY generation is not self-absorbed, because I am one of them." "The people I talk to in that age-group do not seem selfish to ME"

I, ME, MINE, rinse repeat. According to Twenge et al's research the use of personal pronouns and personal anecdotes increases relative to narcissism.

To be more specific "pressure" means a threat to one's identity. I've tried to think of simple ways of putting this and the best I can say is this:

Imagine you are in the company of your spouse and a bystander. The bystander observes how you and your spouse relate to each other and makes one of two comments. Think about what your reaction to either comment would be.

A) You two make a horrible couple, just seeing you together makes me lose faith in monogamy.

B) You two make a great couple, just seeing you is enough to restore my faith in monogamy.

In circumstance (A) your identity within the relationship is threatened by this bystander and if you have significant concern for how you appear to others will have a tendency to become defensive of that identity. Conversely, if you are intrinsically motivated to be with your partner and self-image doesn't factor into it, you'll probably just ignore the bystander.

Circumstance (B) is a little different, it is flattering and a re-affirmation of your identity. But there is a catch; while it re-affirms the good quality of your relationship it may also signal too high a status, something that is itself socially undesirable. You may have a tendency to diminish the good quality of your relationship and qualify it with a statement like "We get along now, but it hasn't always been this way." That is an effective way of diminishing the self-image associated with the affirmation. If this is not done then there may furtile ground for future criticism of the identity e.g. "Oh, you think your relationship is soooo great!" By diminishing the good quality of the relationship one avoids having to defend it as well. Ultimately this is all geared towards developing and maintaining a positive appearance.

@KCanathema

The difference lies in the motive for those "morals". People frequently ascribe to ethics which they do not intrinsically hold to be true. Consequently they only uphold those "morals" when it is personally beneficial to.

In evolutionary psychology it is basically assumed that the only kind of altruism that exists is reciprocal altruism. Which means they are only altruistic or "moral" when it benefits them to be. There is actually a long history of human literature that struggles over the question of how to be truly moral and it has been concerned with issues of identity since Heraclitus. This tradition is generally called Religion & Theology. The primitive man's psychology.

But modern psychology has zeroed in on the same strand of thought. That whether the behavior is motivated by self-presentational concern makes the difference whether it is a stable quality in the person or something that will drop away under peer pressure. As long as it remains socially beneficial to be seen as an "environmentalist" then it also remains an identity that will sought after by people seeking status.

Social interactionist perspectives view how social identities become differentiated from each other over time and define the boundaries between them. The difference between identities is typically exaggerated while the similarity within a group-identity is generally minimilized by its members. Our modern world has many overlapping, conflictory and non-conflictory identities. All seems well because people are seeking status and one usually attains status by upholding the values of the group, but if one does not own these values intrinsically then they will drop away under pressure.

Part of being pre-occupied with fame is maintaining a positive self-image or differentiated social identity. Which provides the motive for getting involved in social activism. Rather than a genuine concern that might evolve out of more intrinsic motives.

The Narcissism Epidemic: Living In The Age of Entitlement <-- Great Book!

Twenge's research was something I stumbled upon when my father bought me the epidemic as a gift. It precluded a bunch of study into different branches of academic psychology. I had been studying mostly evolutionary psychology but realized that there were other descriptive methods that were highly potent and rivaled the success of evolutionary psychology. Ultimately they are all complimentary to each other but I appreciate familiarity with them all. My current area of interest is modern social interactionist psychology which draws on the earlier work of Cooley and Herbert Mead. i.e. The Looking Glass Self, Self-Determination Theory, Dramatism/Dramaturgy.

Basically; it's about maintenance and differentiation of social identities, group dynamics, but more importantly the conscious and subconscious dynamics psycho-emotional dynamics of the mind, studying that along side neuroanatomy. My two main sources are: The Handbook of Self and Identity by Mark R. Leary and Neuroanaomty Through Clinical Cases by Hal Blumenfeld. Crazy interesting stuff!

I read about that story too.

Q: Does it have anything to do with unfenestrated (tight-junction) epithelial cells?

Q: If I snort human flesh infected with a disease am I more likely to get the disease?

A swift shot to the lateral cranial wall, that will make him think twice... or not think at all.

Cologne (Köln)? Isn't that in Germany too?

Shouldn't sith have a red saber? Fail! Throw it out! j/k

I can see that; but it's not without its cons.

A study last year concluded that people are become more distracted and younger people experience an "intruding thought" about every 8 seconds. Whereas older people who did not grow-up with all the bells and whistles of the modern world are far less likely to have an intruding thought. Consequently older people are demonstrably better at staying focused on a task.

So I would say there are maybe two sides to this (pro/con). The pro is you exercise working memory and are capable of retaining more information. The con is you lose the ability to stay focused.

Here is an excerpt from a recent discussion; keep in mind that I'm not a mathematician, but the author of this quote studied zero in college math:

"When something is divided by zero, I see it as mapping out the potentialities of any non-differentiable object. What are the potentialities? Infinite. Existence, in this sense, is defined by differentiation/integration through the relation of parts to a whole. The reason it is infinite is because it's potentiality."