Character, Oh! Character, Where Art Thou?

What has happened to the concept of character in our current times, and is it important? This essay asks this question with reference to the increased use of ‘personality’ in our language and thinking, and contends that this change has resulted in a greater tendency for selfreferencing decision-making in the lives of our young people. The suggested educational response to the trend is that we review our teaching too, so that it is more strongly built around the biblical concept of ‘service’, one to the other. Great opportunities, but loss of character Australian life is inherently more diverse in its ways of life than it used to be when I was a child (some 50 plus years ago). Some of the diversity is easy to celebrate. Food choice has never been greater! Likewise, the opportunity to learn about more distant places from around the globe is as easy as getting to know more of your neighbours or the people at work or school. If one looks at these and other opportunities for our young people, they are amongst the most privileged in the history of the planet in terms of the amount of choice in how to obtain an education and then earn a living. More and more, youth are gaining higher levels of education and expect to be able to use this education for increasingly greater remuneration. Yet daily we see the signs of our young people still casting around to be what they would call ‘happy’. More young women are getting as drunk as the young men. Just when we think we are making progress with one recreational drug (e. g. smoking cigarettes), another bursts onto the scene (e. g. ‘Ice’). Attempted and actual suicide seems resistant to efforts to quell the tragic early loss of life. A researcher in Australia who investigated whether young people’s well-being was improving or not, within very broad contexts, is Richard Eckersley. In the conclusion to one of his papers he noted that: I have argued that, notwithstanding all the complexity and uncertainties, the totality of the evidence suggests that fundamental social, cultural, economic and environmental changes in Australia and other Western societies are impacting adversely on young people’s health and wellbeing. These changes have made it harder for young people to feel accepted, loved and secure; to know who they are, where they belong, what they want from life, and what is expected of them: in short, to feel life is deeply meaningful and worthwhile. (Eckersley, 2008, p. 24) These findings about our young also reflect in their confusion or anxiety about the type of social issues that are flying around them – issues of sanctity of life (e.g. abortion, euthanasia); issues of sexuality (e.g. sexual experimentation, homosexual unions, sexual transformation through surgery); issues of sensual experimentation (e.g. recreational drug use, so called); issues of social justice and compassion (e.g. what is our stance in forgiving debt to developing countries, and should we give aid through the tax system); and issues of attitudes to authority (e.g. can we respect our politicians). Another area of investigation into the lives of our young people is an apparent rise in the public self-centeredness of Western young people. There is a good case to be made that this predisposition has always been there since the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve decided to make up their own minds about what was right and what was wrong. However, Twenge and Campbell (2009) described an increase in narcissism because of the apparent over-feeding of the young’s self-image. They noted what they saw as a growing aggressive behaviour that can be seen in many aspects of youth society: Even apart from the search for fame, narcissism is a significant risk factor for aggression and violent behaviour . However, narcissists are aggressive exactly because they love themselves so much and believe that their needs take precedence. (Twenge & Campbell, 2009, p. 196) One way that some commentators have been trying to understand this ‘best and worst of times’