We’re becoming so selfish that our old ‘social scripts’ are dying

When postmodern American society dies, everyone will rush to write the autopsy.

Journalists will focus on whatever was going on right before the end. Historians will frame the story in light of the decades before. Economists will talk about income inequality or GDP or national debt. Sociologists might talk about groups they saw as oppressive. Theologians might say we lost faith in God.

There will be some truth in many of those things — and many others — but I suspect the core truth will be found by something they’ll all overlook.

Individuals became so selfish that they were no longer willing to treat strangers with respect and decency.

Something has changed about how people treat each other today. We’re not as polite. We’ve lost the sort of manners that used to be expected among strangers in middle-class society. We believe that only suckers are honest if cheating will bring an advantage.

No society has ever been perfect about any of these things, but fewer and fewer people in postmodern America stick to the “social script” that used to allow us to feel a sense of community.

We’ve lost our way — our values — and unless those things radically change, our society will fail.

All humans have a “social script” inside their minds, even if they’re not aware of it. There’s something that says, “This is normal and it’s how you should behave.”

When we greet each other in public — cheerily saying, “How are you?” — we don’t usually want to know how that person is, whether it’s a neighbor or a stranger. We’re just saying what’s expected — and we’re waiting for that person to say, “I’m great. How are you?” Or some variation of that.

We have scripts for what’s allowed when we drive in traffic. Other scripts for how we behave around strangers in public. We’re running a social script when we hold a door open for a stranger who’s about to walk into a building with us. We’re doing the same when we politely move out of the way of others in public.

It might not be that we genuinely care about those people as individuals. The social script is less about them and more about us. The fact that we adhere to those scripts says — to others and to ourselves — “We are good people and we know how to behave in polite ways.”

But people have to be taught those scripts, either by intentional training or by example. And if the polite “middle-class values” script isn’t trained into us, we adopt some other script instead. That’s what is slowly happening today.

Most people are unaware of how they were trained to respond and what that training taught them. They just casually follow what seems normal to them.

More and more, people have learned values that are completely self-centered:

“Nobody’s looking out for me, so I’m not going to look out for anyone else.”

“Only suckers care about being honest, so I’m going to get away with whatever I can.”

“If I’m nice to other people, they’re going to think I’m weak, so I’m going to demand that they put me first.”

“I deserve to be respected, because it’s all about me. I’m looking out for No. 1.”

Every time someone internalizes these sorts of values, it changes how he or she acts around other people. It changes how he or she sees the people in a public space or neighborhood or city.

Every movement in that direction frays the fabric of community which has long allowed us to live with each other in peace and relative harmony. Even though we don’t think about it, that fabric has been our shared inheritance from so many Americans living a life anchored in middle-class values.

Some people don’t think these things matter, but they do. They lay the foundation for how we see our neighbors and how we see strangers. They lay the foundation for the other decisions we make about our lives — and they set us on paths that are slowly driving us apart.

When postmodern America finally dies — as all societies eventually do — there will be a lot of things written about the reasons. There will be a lot of things that will go into whatever causes our downfall. But when that day gets here — which will be soon if we remain on our current path — it can be traced back to something very simple and disturbing.

“Individuals became so selfish and so shortsighted and so hateful of each other that they could no longer live in a peaceful voluntary society.”

If we have any chance of fixing this, it has to start with individuals consciously changing their values. It won’t come from politicians or new laws or political activists.

It can only come from individuals deciding to do what’s right — not because anybody is forcing them to act that way. But simply because it’s the right way to live.