I started thinking about stories that teach lessons, morality plays, fables and tales with morals today. The Bible is the obvious answer when you ask the class for examples of such things. Aesop’s Fables, the Grimm Brothers Fairy Tales, pretty much every Greek and Roman myth (“don’t sleep with any gods” being the primary lesson there – okay, check.) We’ve gotten weirdly reductionist about this in all our advanced, modern advanced-ness. It seems, at least to my eye, like the only lessons that we’re receptive to any more are all of the “if you do this bad this, this bad thing will happen to you” variety. What gives? I’d always thought that positive reinforced learning was the more difficult to extinguish. Are we getting denser about learning life lessons?