I also feel the generational thing is an over-generalisation. But I do believe that we see local cycles of hardness and softness in our community attitudes.

I've participated in a World Cafe event, and I'd recommend it to anybody. To witness free dialogue in a room of hundreds coalesce into a short list of prevalent themes, without group-think or persuasion, is quite miraculous.

I think we're just as capable at (ie hard-wired for) individualistic competition as community collaboration, but it's a matter of what we get used to.