In the future, it seems, there will be only one \u201cism\u201d\u009d \u201d\u201d Individualism \u201d\u201d and its rule will never end. As for religion, it shall decline; as for marriage, it shall be postponed; as for ideologies, they shall be rejected; as for patriotism, it shall be abandoned; as for strangers, they shall be distrusted. Only pot, selfies and Facebook will abide \u201d\u201d and the greatest of these will probably be Facebook.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the implication, at least, of what the polling industry keeps telling us about the rising American generation, the so-called millennials. (Full disclosure: I am not quite one of them, having entered the world in the penultimate year of Generation X.) A new Pew survey, the latest dispatch from the land of young adulthood, describes a generation that\u2019s socially liberal on issues like immigration and marijuana and same-sex marriage, proudly independent of either political party, less likely to be married and religious than earlier generations, less likely to identify as patriotic and less likely \u201d\u201d by a striking margin \u201d\u201d to say that one\u2019s fellow human beings can be trusted.<\/p>\n