I've come to love Corey Delaney, the now internationally famous party animal who helped destroy the peace of suburban Narre Warren last month.
This has nothing do with his brazen self-confidence. It is what he symbolises. He illustrates a picture of the future I've been trying to sketch out for months.
Corey is not merely another teen rebel of James Dean vintage. Rather, his embrace of notoriety articulates the worst fears of baby boomers: that they have raised a generation who will smash their moral compass to pieces in a rush to assert themselves. They can't be shamed. Fame has become everything. This is why Corey's disregard for any level of social responsibility has generated so much moral angst amongst secular Australians.
"Is Corey Delaney the future face of Australia?" they ask. "And if so, what happened to our dreams of a free, but also compassionate society?"
Last year it was hard to open a paper without being confronted with an atheist railing against the evils of religion. Given our post-September 11 context, I take these critiques very seriously. Perhaps a little too seriously given they are often the philosophical equivalent of a block of Swiss cheese. Indeed, through Corey's fame obsession, we glimpse the future of the Nietzschean personality cult.*
Is there hard evidence to back the claim that a less religious Australia will be a better one? Is Corey Delaney an aberration or the norm? Are secularists just as compassionate as Christians? Or does Christianity actually play a key role in promoting civic values?
A comprehensive survey of the beliefs of young Australians, The Spirit of Generation Y, provides an inkling of the direction our society may be heading.
What is undisputable is that, on average, people raised as Christians make better citizens than unbelievers. (There can be no conclusions about Australian Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Hindus because these samples were too small.)
Looking at civic attitudes and participation, active Christians and New Agers brought up as Christians scored much higher than secular atheists.
They were far more likely to take a compassionate attitude to those less fortunate themselves, and this was also reflected in a greater willingness to act altruistically, such as visiting a sick friend.
Active Christians were more generous with their money with 92 per cent giving to charity in the past year compared to 75 per cent of secularists. And far more young Christians gave time to community service work than young secularists.
Most tellingly, the researchers found it was those secularists who were raised Christian who were more actively engaged in activities that benefited others. In other words, secular humanism flourishes in a Christian context.
In contrast, children of secular baby boomers are of the Corey Delaney school: they tend to find meaning through self-gratification. "Among "ways to find peace and happiness'," the researchers write, "it was astonishing to us that nearly a third of Gen Y… considered shopping to be very important".
In the main, most of Corey's peers agree that having "an exciting life' is more important than "helping others'.
What the researchers have identified is the impact of individualism, a trend which has seen most community organisations grey and die. This is the real moral legacy of atheism.
"The prospect of a society with an even higher proportion of individualists than today is rather chilling," the researchers conclude. "It promises to be a grim, driven and tightly controlled environment… akin to the imaginary worlds created by… George Orwell."
Ironically, a far cry from the hedonistic bliss assumed by Corey and his mates.
*I will explore the link between Nietzsche's theories and celebrity obsession in an upcoming web article.
