Sigmund had some ideas about people and why they do what they do. Some still believe he contributed much to our understanding of ourselves. Others do not necessarily agree. In many ways, we still do what we used to do. But, I don't think Freud could have wrapped his head around events such as 9/11 or the 2008 meltdown. I cannot put a professional tag upon the following, although intuition plays a small role in what I'm about to offer. Ever since the emergence of the Gothic movement; millenialism; extreme sports and certain other devil-may-care attitudes and behaviors, there has been a tilt towards the dark and bizarre aspects of human existence. Cultural and sociological changes have altered our world, such that some attitudes and behaviors are radically different from those of, say, the 1960s and 70s.

Another contributing factor, I believe, is the fact that young Americans are more fully aware of graft and corruption, in most all of its/their forms, from purely capitalistic endeavors to those involving saving mortal souls (no, I did not mean IMmortal) and the gamut betwixt and between. Throw in the tendency of modern children being unable to mind their own business (one aspect of this, then and now called 'bullying'); the ever-more-elevated worship of competition; and a sense that their elders have no grasp of how to engage in polite discourse, let alone how to negotiate and cooperate with other countries' leaders and the witches' brew gets messier and messier. I am reading Carson's SILENT SPRING for the first time. It was written (and she died) before I graduated high school. Would any young person have the slightest interest in this book today? Maybe so or maybe no. I see why they are careless with life: there ain't much of a future in it. Especially if we cannot wake up to threats to our very existence. Fortunately, the game's not over---yet.