Where are we headed?

[troppo]

I've been thinking a lot lately about life in general and it seems to me the quality of people is slipping. By that I mean we are becoming more self centred and less able to empathise with our fellow man.
For some reason the film "Class of 1984" popped into my head while watching another report of a high school shooting in the US and I couldn't help wondering, are we there yet? For those that don't know it it was a fictional future story about schools becoming war zones between teachers and students released around 1981 or 82. In a way it's based on the increase of personal freedoms to a point where "I do what I want" becomes anarchy.
Then I got thinking about Orwell's 1984 which is the exact opposite with regard to personal freedoms.

When I compared those to todays world, it seems we have the worst bits of both. Decreasing general public freedom and increasing govt abilities to spy on the populace courtesy of a war on terrorism that seems to have no end in sight. Even relatively minor stuff like spanking your kids puts you at the mercy of the govt.
Then you have people (in the west at least) taking personal freedom to the point they will exercise their right regardless of how it impacts society around them. The "I do what I want" attitude is becoming more prevalent and not just among the young. As in the movie, usually when 2 people with this attitude have a disagreement, it turns into violence.

My theory is that people have become so self centred they don't even try to see another persons point of view anymore. People are so focussed on justifying their own actions they don't consider the other side of the fence at all. In a bigger sense, that same self centeredness is behind the general apathy that exists towards government. We vote for complete strangers (how many of us know our local and federal MP's personally?) to control every aspect of our daily lives yet we don't really care what happens with regards to laws or taxation or who does it as long as it doesn't hit us personally too hard.

Where do you think we are going?