No wonder today’s Millennials are such fans of TV’s reality and survival shows! They relate! They are starring in their own personal reality dramas where life has boiled down to survival of the fittest. The values of loyalty, fidelit,y and honor have little meaning when you are on your own up against “Life.” Sadly, far too many of today’s young people live desperately lonely lives: living alone, raising children alone with no support from anyone else or living with someone unwilling to make a permanent commitment. Every day is a matter of personal survival; every day increasingly more Americans face the world having to fend for themselves with no support system and feeling like no one understands or cares about their problems and challenges.

The post-modern worldview -- an attitude that says: “I’ll do as a please,” “I answer to no one,” “Don’t you dare judge me” -- has resulted in a huge segment of society that accepts no standards, no demands, and no accountability, a crowd of isolated persons whose relationships are at best tenuous. They have defiantly said they don’t need anyone; they especially declare they don’t need God or a personal faith that makes demands on their freedom to do as they want. These are the legions of the uncommitted and unconnected -- 81 percent of the nearly 42 million single-person non-family households are persons living all alone. While married couples made up 70 percent of all households in 1970, today they are less than half (48 percent).

Such are the results of self-indulgence. This is what happens when the capacity for commitment and pair bonding is stunted by promiscuity. When self-centeredness rules, life boils down to just surviving; it’s “everyman (woman and child!) for himself” in a “dog eat dog world.”