Is this behavorial change generational?

Behavorial change has started for many Americans since the onset of this economic downturn labeled the Great Recession.  For many, gone are the days of splurging on exotic vacations, luxurious homes, expensive toys, eating out regularly and shopping til you drop weekends.  People have had to let such items go and many have started to adopt a new lifestyle of less is more, save over spend, conserve rather than waste and be happy with what you've got.  Clearly, children of such households are adapting to this new lifestyle change and are making some mental notes for their adult years.  But much of what our culture has become overextends this isolated short-term despair likely diluting the true behavioral change agent it would be.

For the most part, people are creatures of habit or conditioned behavior and certainly products of their environment.  It takes considerable will power to avoid doing something that is appealing or satisfying even when the longer term consquences are not favorable.  Smoking is a classic example as we all know the health risks long-term.  Also, overspending and not saving or investing can play havoc on one's retirement years.  Unfortunately, our society is centered around short-term thinking, materialism and going to the extreme at all levels for the moment without regard for the longer-term impact.  This includes our governmental policies.

Generally, it takes severe loss or great pain to actually break free from unwanted, unhealthy or destructive behaviors including those that come from short-sited governance.  To change a culture or a nation of people, and for that matter future generations, significant pain and suffering across nearly all facets of society must be endured.  This is the stuff that molds future generations and alters policies of whole nations if not a world.

The Roaring Twenties was a fabulous time for most Americans of that era only to be forgotten a few short years later with the great equalizer of all the Great Depression.  It's been nearly 80 years since such a fate hit on such a mass level.  However, the impact for those that endured those times and even the children of children that survived held onto the strong behavioral changes that took place for generations to come. 

Today, it would seem that this is an important process once again to offset the imbalances and excesses that have been floating about within our society chiefly from poor govermental policies and self-interest.  If it gets that far, it will be like a Tsusnami that is impossible to stop. I only hope that our leaders of this nation and for that matter the world can figure out how to regulate and govern for the common good and not what has come of the past.  I'd hate for our children to endure something as so tragic as children and families did of the 1930's.