Word: pettier
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...notion that the past was better, more straightforward, more honest. The fact is that in freewheeling 19th-century America, high-level fraud was far more spectacular than today, when business, trade and politics must function under rigid controls and searching publicity. What has increased is the opportunity for the pettier kinds of cheating, largely because of the growth of communities and of population. In the urbanizing world in which crossroads are turning into shopping centers, towns into cities, and cities into megalopolises, nobody knows his neighbor's name-or feels responsible to him. The impersonality of the supermarket...
Before 40, one adds and feeds to gorge the ego; after 40, one subtracts and simplifies to slim the soul. With the final image of one's existence even faintly in view, the self seems pettier and the words "service," "love of others," "compassion" not only creep into the middle-ager's vocabulary but add meaning to his life. In church work, social work, community fund drives, culture centers, middle-agers are always at the fore. Sol Linowitz, 52, chairman of the executive committee of Xerox Corp., defines his abiding purpose: "I want to leave the world...