An 8-year-old boy found an envelope containing more than $600 and returned it to the bank whose name appeared on the envelope. The bank traced the money to its rightful owner and returned it to him. God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world. Right? Wrong. As a reward, the man who lost the money gave the boy $3. Not a lot, but a token of his appreciation nonetheless and not mandatory. After all, returning money should not be considered extraordinary. A simple “thank you” is adequate. But some of the teachers at the boy’s school felt a reward was not only appropriate, but required. Outraged at the apparent stinginess of the person who lost the cash, these teachers took up a collection for the boy. About a week or so later, they presented the good Samaritan with a $150 savings bond, explaining they felt his honesty should be recognized.
Evidently the virtues of honesty and kindness have become commodities that, like everything else, have succumbed to inflation. What dollar amount would be a sufficient reward? A reward is a gift; any gift would at least be met with the presumption of genuine gratitude on the part of the giver. What does this episode say about our society? It seems our role models are more confused and misguided about values than their young charges. The young boy did the right thing. Yet doing the right thing seems to be insufficient motivation for action in our materialistic world. The legacy of the ’80s has left us with the ubiquitous question: what’s in it for me? The promise of the golden rule – that someone might do a good turn for you – has become worthless.
Kids want money for a good report card. Arguelles argues that “doing well is its own reward.” When pregnant she read this advice in child-care books: don’t bribe your child with ice cream to get him to eat spinach; it makes the spinach look bad. Our moral taste buds have been dulled by an endless onslaught of artificial sweeteners. A steady diet of candy bars and banana splits makes an ordinary apple or orange seem sour. So too does an endless parade of incentives make us incapable of feeling a genuine sense of inner peace (or inner turmoil).
The simple virtues of honesty, kindness and integrity suffer from an image problem and are in desperate need of a makeover. One way to do this is by example. I fear that in our so-called upwardly mobile world we are on a downward spiral toward moral bankruptcy. Like pre-World War II Germany, where the basket holding the money was more valuable than the money itself, we too may render ourselves internally worthless while desperately clinging to a shell of appearances.