Word: ethically
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...sense, the peasant ethic of the villagers is an anachronism, a relic of the past which is out of step with the 20th century. Many of the villagers are reasonably well off, but they are so used to working that they can never take the time to enjoy their profits. The Vallets have a large bank account, but they are always too busy working to spend the money. The work ethic is so deeply ingrained within them that they simply can't bear to be idle, to work less than their full capacity...
Still, the 20th century is slowly creeping into Moras En Valloire, transforming the village. The peasants have kept their work ethic as a legacy from their ancestors, but many of them own modern conveniences very much at odds with their traditions. The Vallets, for example, own a TV, and while eating dinner we often watched detective shows (Kojak and Mannix were Vallet favorites). Two tractors stood outside the house, but the Vallets used them only when machinery could do the job better than a person; and that was rare...
...young who are most responsible for the changes in Moras En Valloire. They retain the peasant work ethic, for that is too deeply rooted in their psyches to discard; but generally they tend to be impatient with tradition. Instead, they prefer the future with its glittering promise of a new and better life ahead...
...hiring of young people, especially women and blacks. But when the law finally went into effect on New Year's Day, the worries had substantially diminished. Many employers now think the law will have little effect at all, beyond raising the spirits and incomes of those work-ethic veteran employees who decide to hang around...
...bottom, merely to survive its collapse. The will to build a better society, however, survives, along with traditions of localism, selfhelp, and community action that only need the vision of a new society, a decent society, to give them new vigor. The moral discipline formerly associated with the work ethic still retains a value independent of the role it once played in the defense of property rights. That discipline-indispensable to the task of building a new order-endures most of all in those who knew the old order only as a broken promise, yet who took the promise more...