Thanksgiving Day is Every Day
A (late) holiday reminder to give thanks, and to distrust those who will not
I spent much of yesterday alone, writing a piece about male versus female friendship dynamics and beginning a review and analysis of the film ‘Silence’ (2016) and the original eponymous novel by Shusako Endo. Consequently I didn’t write a ‘Thanksgiving’ message-but I truly hope all of you had a happy and fulfilled holiday.
Gratitude is a primary element in any positive worldview and we should be skeptical of those who seem to imply that we should not be grateful or those who try to constantly redirect our consideration toward the negative and flawed. According to these ideologues we should feel aggrieved, offended, and marginalized. Most people could probably find some pretext to feel aggrieved… but most those same people have many things to be grateful for. Gratitude is more fulfilling, more accurate, and more productive for real social change.
Gay Americans now live in a society with abundant opportunities and protections, and widespread social acceptance, even cultural celebration. Despite the existence of large racial disparities in many social and economic metrics generally our society now regards racism with the utmost abhorrence. Large black immigrant groups routinely outperform white Americans and the status quo now is one of complete equality before the law, plus a number of generous credits and bonuses available to prospective black employees and students. You can take a number of views of race in the U.S. but I don’t think it’s easy to avoid the realization that it’s better to be black in this country than in almost any other. Millions of black Africans immigrate to the U.S., or want to. I’ve ever heard of a single black American moving to Africa to leave racism behind and improve his or her life. Women now have complete legal equality before the law and dominate many lucrative and professional fields. Their freedoms and opportunities are simply not constrained by their sex whatsoever. Compared with their sisters in Iran or Pakistan or Afghanistan their situation is downright utopian.
The Left never makes these comparisons. It’s not because they disagree with them (they’re difficult to dispute) but because they don’t want to imbue their fellows with gratitude or perspective. Nor do they really want to help black people… or their program would include fixes for the massive problem of contemporary African slavery. (Or the adoption of some basic hiring/funding reforms to improve disastrous black public school student metrics). Nor do they really want to help women… or they wouldn’t stay silent on the issue of misogynist oppression in Iran (and even refuse to be associated with organization’s fighting for Iranian women’s rights). Rather, they imagine that the only real path to a better society is through radical change, and grateful and contented people do not as a rule become revolutionaries. Remember: this utopian path only exists in their minds and it is based purely on vague theory and faith. NONE of their most important proposed changes have ever been tried before. The many historical precedents of the implementation of their program and values strongly indicate that a dismantling of hierarchies and institutions in the US would lead to the death of a significant percentage of our population, the collapse of our economy, the ceasing of all technological progress, and the widespread emergence of inter-group suspicion and violence and the deployment of brutal force against huge categories of ‘enemies’ by whoever ends up in control of the tattered remnants of our state apparatus. Ironically this program is almost exclusively supported by some of the wealthiest and best educated people in our already wealthy society.
How much better our society would be if the Left advocated reform without fantasies of nihilist institutional erasure and acknowledged the progress and blessings of American life? How much more effective would their program be if it included a sense of history, and perspective, and gratitude? They would be much happier as well. Instead they nurture their unhappiness and envy and imagine that these are worthy catalyzing agents for the great upheaval upon which they pin all their hopes (but which they oddly cannot describe or explain).
Gratitude is a mature moral attitude which notes the ways which things might be worse. Like honesty or clarity, it is a prerequisite for wisdom and for making effective change in the world. Anyone consistently leading you away from it likely doesn’t want you to be happy-they want to use your unhappiness to fuel their movement.
Instead, enjoy the food, freedom, comfort, and boundless and historically unprecedented levels of tolerance and opportunity which we all now enjoy.
