Ingraining the ‘parable of the workers at the vineyard’ has been phenomenal at engraining gratitude for my kids. American’s default view of ‘fairness’ can be incredibly corrosive.
Hearing that parable at Sunday mass multiple times as a youngster is one of the reasons why I stopped going to church at age 14 and have never been back.
>American’s default view of ‘fairness’ can be incredibly corrosive.
Can you elaborate on what this default view is? For example, Americans seem to have no problem with someone becoming a near-billionaire overnight from winning a multi-state lottery (Powerball, Mega Millions).
One level of the parable is around eternal gratitude. Probably the idea of gratitude didn’t cause you to stop, but catechesis in the US post WW2 was poor (to say it charitably), so your response wasn’t out of the ordinary.
American’s view of fairness breeds envy. Across every income level a vast majority want 10% more to be ‘happier.’ Once you have this ego death of sorts, it lets you easily step off the hedonistic treadmill, thus improving one’s life :)
