Rotary Reader June 5, 2013 pdf - Rotary of Fort Walton Beach Main ...

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June 5, 2013 The Rotary Reader Page 2 The Cost of Fame: Is Empathy a Casualty of Our Self-Centered Age? By Frank Bures The Rotarian -- June 2013 Growing up, I spent shocking amounts of time in front of the television. We may have had only 13 channels at our house, but we stared at them, slack-jawed, for hours on end. My mother assured us that our heads were rotting from the inside out. These days, I don’t spend nearly as much time in front of the tube. This is partly because I don’t have time, partly because the Internet is more interesting, and partly because, at the tender age of 41, I am a prematurely cranky old man, and therefore easily infuriated. Either TV has changed, or I have changed. This dawned on me last year as I was channel-surfing at a hotel, unable to settle on anything – until I came across a rerun of The Lawrence Welk Show. I set down the remote and sat happily transfixed till the end. My inner 80-year-old had taken over. Over the years, people have looked at the “vast wasteland” of television and seen the approaching end of western civilization. I try to take criticism of the medium with a grain of salt, but I recently came across some studies suggesting that it wasn’t only me who had changed. Two researchers at the University of California, Yalda Uhls and Patricia Greenfield, devised a way to measure the values expressed in U.S. television shows. Their idea was not that TV is a corrupting influence or a source of moral instruction, but a mirror that reflects our society back to us. Given how much the world has changed over the decades, you might not think that TV shows from the years 1967, 1977, 1987, and 1997 would have much in common. But they did. Taking the two most popular programs for tweens from each of those years, as well as from 2007, Uhls and Greenfield looked for 16 values demonstrated by the characters, such as benevolence, popularity, community feeling, financial success, tradition, and fame. For the first four decades, the shows were fairly consistent: Community feeling was the top value for all of them except 1987, when it ranked second. Benevolence and tradition were consistently at the top. Meanwhile, fame ranked 15th in 1967, 1987, and 1997. (In 1977, it was 13th.) Achievement and financial success hovered around the bottom half of the list; they were never dominant forces in the characters’ lives. By 2007, however, community feeling had dropped to the 11th spot. Benevolence had fallen to 12th, and tradition to 15th. Financial success had jumped from 12th to 5th since 1997, achievement to 2nd, and fame to 1st. In the age of American Idol, you might have expected as much – and the researchers did, in fact, anticipate that individualist values would have moved upward. But they were surprised by the magnitude of the change. “If you believe that television reflects the culture, as I do,” Uhls says, “then American culture has changed drastically.” There are a slew of related trends. Narcissism has been rising for several decades. In the early 1950s, only 12 percent of teens ages 14-16 agreed with the statement “I am an important person.” By the late 1980s, 80 percent did. In a study that ran from 1979 to 2006, scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory rose by 30 percent among college students. By 2006, the average college student scored nearly the same level of narcissism as the average celebrity. Researcher Jean Twenge says we are seeing an epidemic, which she details in her 2009 book, The Narcissism Epidemic: Living in the Age of Entitlement. We are also seeing decreases in empathy. One study found that from 1979 to 2009, college students’ “empathetic concern” (the capacity to feel what others are feeling) dropped 48 percent, and their “perspective taking” (the ability to see from another’s point of view) declined by 34 percent. Psychologist Sara Konrath summed this up as an “empathy paradox,” in which we are finding “increasing disconnection in the age of connection.” Researchers have suggested several possible causes. Smaller family size is one, as is the decline of social organizations, which Robert Putnam wrote about in his 2001 book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. The Internet and social media play a role; many of the changes accelerated after 2000. But Konrath points out that these trends started several decades ago. After all, Tom Wolfe called the 1970s the “Me Decade,” arguing that a great religious awakening had occurred, centered on the worship of the self. Continued Next page... www.fortwaltonrotary.org
June 5, 2013 The Rotary Reader Page 3 June 12 June 19 June 26 UPCOMING SPEAKERS AND EVENTS Kelly Humphries - Catholic Charities Robert Starr - Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship Dr. Debra Petry - Conflict Resolution The Cost of Fame: Is Empathy a Casualty of Our Self-Centered Age? ...Continued Another cause may be the “self-esteem” movement of the 1980s – which, research shows, did little good. Much of what still passes for self-esteem building, Twenge argues, fosters self-importance and narcissism. Self-esteem is the result of accomplishment, not the cause of it. High self-esteem doesn’t lead to academic achievement, or good behavior, or less violence or drug use. What it has led to is grade inflation – 30 percent more students getting As, even as SAT scores are declining. “After all these years,” psychologist Roy Baumeister wrote in 2005, “my recommendation is this: Forget about self-esteem and concentrate more on selfcontrol and self-discipline.” What do these changes mean, and what are the implications for our society? Will our egos keep growing? Will they swing back to some historical norm? Will people eventually rebel against the narcissistic tide? We are still mapping out the extent of the transformation. But one of the costs may be our very sense of well-being. We are social animals; we need to take part in others’ lives, and have them take part in ours. Many researchers suggest that our rising levels of stress, anxiety, and depression stem from rising levels of self-regard. The negative health effects of loneliness are well-documented, as are the health benefits of being socially engaged. Konrath and her colleagues found that people who did volunteer work had a lower mortality risk four years later. The more regularly and frequently they volunteered, the lower the risk. But this was only true if the person volunteered for other-oriented reasons. Among those who volunteered for selfish reasons, the mortality rate was the same as that of non-volunteers. What’s best for society may also be what’s best for ourselves. This Day in History On this day in 1933, the United States went off the gold standard, a monetary system in which currency is backed by gold, when Congress enacted a joint resolution nullifying the right of creditors to demand payment in gold. On this day in 1968, Senator Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary. On this day in 2004, Ronald Wilson Reagan, the 40th president of the United States, dies, after a long struggle with Alzheimer's disease. On this day in 1944, more than 1,000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries placed at the Normandy assault area, while 3,000 Allied ships cross the English Channel in preparation for the invasion of Normandy— D-Day. THE ROTARY FOUR WAY TEST 1) Is it the truth? 2) Is it fair to all concerned? 3) Will it build goodwill and better friendships? 4) Will it be beneficial to all concerned? www.fortwaltonrotary.org
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