How did we all get so petty?

I have had this idea bouncing around in my head for the last couple days at least, so here goes. How did our society become so petty? What is pettiness? I guess I think it is being small minded, short-term thinking, making sure I get what I got coming to me, not being able to overlook an offense. It just seems to me, possibly erroneously, that people were less petty in the past. I have to really fight it myself. When I have watched our kids all day and my wife comes home late from work(boy that sounds backwards) I naturally crab at her. When I am trying to read to my daughter and her active imagination takes her away from my story I snap at her. When someone cuts me off in traffic I ensure through hand gestures and explitives that they understand that I don't approve, because of course we all know that: 1. the offending driver is confused about whether I like being cut off, and 2. they can certainly hear me over the other traffic while all my windows are up.
Now I certainly feel that Jesus challenges me to leave my pettiness behind and ocassionally he helps me to live up to that. But I think our culture tries to encourage us in not so obvious ways to be petty. See if you can spot some of these ways and better yet ask the Holy Spirit to help you overcome them.

Lord help me to spot and overcome my pettiness.

On the Pinto front, I have a heater only Pinto and so I had to remove the blower motor to make room for the turbo in my car, as they were trying to occupy the same space. I finally decided today to keep the heater core and ducting even though I won't have the blower so that I can still defrost the windshield though only through the radiant heat of the core. I'm going to buy a piece of sheet metal to seal shut the hole into the passenger compartment where the blower motor went.