(seen at Mark's Blog)

"As many scholars in the United States have noticed, postmodernism has moved young people from the alienation of the 1960s to the schizophrenia or multiphrenia (a legion of selves with no constant core of character) of the 1990s and 2000s. Having no point of reference, no overarching story, no master narrative, people don't know who they are. Constantly shifting their image of themselves to fit in with the fads and fashions of the times, young folks especially lack a nucleus of identity, a personality that has been formed by moral authority and mentoring models. Furthermore, since they have no sense of themselves, they are unable to make commitments to another person in marriage or friendship or to a job, a vision, a vocation, a religion. their subconscious cry often becomes, "Keep entertaining me, so that I don't have to face the absence of my self." Religion, in the form of pop spiritualites, is merely another technique for entertainment. Thus the postmodern condition has moved people from both the premodern confidence in authorities and the modern confidence in self (autonomy) to the decentering of both self (incoherence) and society (fragmentation) in contemporary culture."

Marva Dawn in A Royal "Waste" of Time: The Splendor of Worshiping God and Being Church for the World