On Gratitude: Staying Awake In A Lulling World
Ingratitude is not just the inability to give thanks. It is the special ability that allows you to take things for granted
The Evil of Banality—The Effect of Ingratitude—The Dangers of Comfort—The Struggle To Stay Awake
Forgive me reader if I have not wished you a happy new year. It is because I neither "feel" happy nor "feel" the new. What it feels like, is simply another passing day. While I acknowledge both the happy and the new as a matter of deliberate remembrance and gratitude, I do not feel it. Hence, I am not persuaded to transmit any of that to you. What I can transmit, however, is a consciousness and gratitude.
Moving on quickly, I should warn you: this essay is lengthy and it is, even to me, an unravelling of how I currently see the world. I am hoping to surprise myself more than I wish to surprise you. I begin.
First, a question: should you commend a fish for swimming? Before you respond, consider the fact that it is both in a fish’s nature and interest to swim. A fish being unable to swim will surprise us. We may be reluctant to call it a fish. Or we may call it disabled. But whatever we call it, we will always keep it in our minds as a necessary truth that fish swim even though there may be a few exceptions.
So, whatever your thought or response on praising fish for swimming, I want you to know that we should commend a fish for swimming.
Of course, this is not about fish. This is not about swimming either. The picture we are painting with the cliche of the fish is far more complex than we have in the epigram.
We are not concerned in our daily lives with fish that cannot swim. We are concerned with men. But if there is any chance that there are fishes that cannot swim, I am sincerely taking this moment to appeal to the Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault, and Bill Gates — fish capitalists and billionaires — of the aquatic world to establish research centers, collaborate with doctors of the aquatic world to open hospital departments, and with politicians and activists of the aquatic world to legislate laws to fight discrimination against fishes that cannot swim. Until then, I must stay on land where I am a man to discuss the issues of men who decided that the analogy of the fish represents our complex situations.
And so rewrite the question: should we commend men for being upright and for doing good deeds? (Where “men” is shorthand for “human beings.) First, a quick backstory.
Following my deep unexcitement about the turn of the year, I sought to numb myself — even though I was already numb. I was numb to exciting things. I needed to be insensitive to the distractingly good things that left me numb. I needed to “rectify my receptacles.” So I picked up essays by G.K Chesterton.
After reading about four of them, I found a catalyst, The Great Shipwreck As Analogy. While it was a fine essay where Chesterton used the tragedy of the Titanic to mirror the modern state, a particular reference struck me. Chesterton wrote of a certain phenomenon – the inability to conceive what a thing is like – which was typified by a specific woman; a feminist I believe. Chesterton wrote:
“But whether or no our unhappy fellow-creatures on the TITANIC suffered more than they need from this unreality of original outlook, they cannot have had less instinct of actuality than we have who are left alive on land: and now that they are dead they are much more real than we. They have known what papers and politicians never know—of what man is really made, and what manner of thing is our nature at its best and worst. It is this curious, cold, flimsy incapacity to conceive what a THING is like that appears in so many places, even in the comments on this astounding sorrow. It appears in the displeasing incident of Miss Sylvia Pankhurst, who, immediately after the disaster, seems to have hastened to assure the public that men must get no credit for giving the boats up to women, because it was the “rule” at sea.”
From the words boldened, I realised that I too have seen this in my time and age: the incapacity to conceive what a thing is like. I also realised that in different ways we all know what this phenomenon is. Some call it a lack of imagination, others call it a lack of curiosity, and some say it is a lack of empathy. But I know this thing in its darkest form—it is ingratitude.
Ingratitude is not just the inability to give thanks. It is the special ability that allows you to take things for granted. And this — ability, habit, or spirit — is the source of a decaying unconsciousness; the consciousness of the undead. It is also both the progenitor and consequence of the evil of banality.
When we declare something as banal, we say that it is boring. We say that it is not worth our attention. Essentially, we call it common. We call it by other names such as “cliche,” or as more learned men will call it, “truism.”
For one, the ability to take things for granted need not be cultivated. It is given. In fact, we take the ability to take things for granted for granted. Oh! I remember one term: “familiarity.”
Now, for side quest sake, a truism is not the same as a moot point. And it surprises me that people I know are intelligent don’t get it. A truism is often labelled so and dismissed for its basicness and banality. That is, we consider it so obvious that we don’t think it is worth mentioning. But a moot point is a topic, a fact, a piece of knowledge or even a discussion which carries no practical relevance even though you may enjoy referring to it in a discussion.
For instance, saying human nature does not work well with communism in practice is a truism. But whether a foetus is a baby or a parasite is a moot point. Whether the foetus has a heartbeat or the thumping sound in the ultrasound is just machine amplification is a moot point, a fanciful display of scientific knowledge that is utterly irrelevant to the morality of abortion.
And as I wrote in The Data Test: Okay, then What? data is largely irrelevant in moral discussions. Fanciful to the person that says he loves data and science but useless to real considerations.
I have strayed too far on my side quest but let us stay on course. Yes, I commend a fish for swimming. To show you why I must first show you particular instances where ingratitude is evil.
Take a marriage —between husband and wife— where the woman cooks all the meals, while the man never cooks. But where the husband always drives the wife wherever she wants to go, while she is a perpetual passenger princess; she never drives. (Let’s call them Mr and Mrs Cheffeur — Mr Chauffeur and Miss Chef.) If they manage to sustain this routine for years, it becomes by natural order, given. The husband expects his food to be ready on time and the wife expects the husband will always be ready to chauffeur. “Expect” is the prevailing principle. Let’s even say that they never had an official agreement to these roles. It just happened that they found themselves doing this over the years and it became routine. Let’s then add that they are so lucky that no tragedy has forced them to review this arrangement; they just keep sailing smoothly. I expect that both of them will come to see it as a given.
To an external observer, this couple has a contract to live like this. But to the couple themselves, this is no longer a contract. It is an obligation — as if ordered by God; quite natural in creation. This is not a contract where they have to review their terms from time to time. Because, well, there are no terms. With the state of mind that beholds this arrangement as if it were natural, it becomes normal. The husband would not refuse to drive and the wife would not refuse to cook. So they both think of the other. But by reason of “expecting,” something sinister lurks in the corner: a sense of entitlement.
A sense of entitlement borne from looking at things as ‘normal’ or given is the voice that cheers us on to demand others to perform their duty to us that we shall immediately take for granted by asserting that a good deed, because it is expected, is not worthy of praise.
It may always be in the nature and interest of a fish to swim. But it is not always in the nature and interest of man to be upright. Man is a complicated deal. And it is the danger of seeing the goodness of man as given and common that we take it for granted.
Without miring ourselves in debates of free will or determinism, we can easily tell that every man in every situation has a choice to make. If not, there would be no such thing as temptations. We are tempted because we have a set of options no matter how oblique to choose from. Sometimes in two directions and at other times, in multiple directions.
It is only someone who by forgetting that man has a choice — maybe by dismissing it as a truism — can say that someone who does a good deed is not worthy of accolades. However, this forgetfulness is not a cognitive problem. It is the decay of character. Because our cognition records facts. But it is our wills that determine what we do with those facts. In other words, our minds have a lot of idle information. But we choose what we will do with them. To dismiss a boring but true statement proves that you assess value based on vivification or shininess. And you may get away with this way of thinking because you apply it to values and ideas rather than to material items. For if you knew someone who valued people based on their shininess, you will call him terms such as “materialistic,” “gold digger,” “social climber,” “classist,” or the likes.
Let us then revisit Miss Sylvia Pankhurst from G.K Chesterton.
Anyone with good sense knows that what the men did—giving the boats to women—whether willingly or by coercion was a good thing. But for someone to say that the men get no credit because it was a rule at sea strikes me as stinking ingratitude. But that’s the far-reaching judgment. The easier judgment is that the speaker is necessarily shallow: she cannot see that “rule at sea” is meaningless without people obeying it. “She cannot see,” Chesterton wrote, “that wills and not words control events.” What we have in Sylvia Pankhurst is a thoughtless human. But that was Chesterton’s day. What about today?
Today is rife with people who spit on their partner’s fidelity or regard it as common because “that is what is expected; you don’t praise a fish for swimming.” Or with parents who take their children’s good behaviours and good grades for granted because that is what they expect them to do. Or employers who take an employee’s diligence for granted because “that is what I pay him to do.” Expectations have now killed gratitude.
In the case of Mr and Mrs Cheffeur. Every time Mrs Cheffeur cooks, and Mr Cheffeur drives, they drift closer to receiving these gestures as common, as normal, or as expected. This means—but they cannot see it—that every good deed they do for one another increases the tendency to be shocked and in conflict the day anyone falters.
Have you not observed that a broken routine throws you off balance? The more intimate you are with a routine, up to the point where you don’t think about it yet still expect it, the greater the shock you experience when the routine fails.
One failure is sufficient to upset the balance. And this is not just the case with the Cheffeurs but it is the case with us all. Banality—things taken for granted—breeds comfort. Comfort yields insensitivity. Insensitivity means that our ability to sense both good and bad things dies. Eventually, when danger looms, we cannot tell. This is a form of being undead.
We may refuse to praise the fish for swimming because we don’t want it to get to his head. Or so we say. But have you ever considered what will happen if every time Mrs Cheffeur serves Mr Cheffeur his meal, he thanks her profusely, taking every meal as sacred? Or if Mrs Cheffeur thanks her husband every time he drives her to her destination?
I know it is a complicated matter. Of course, if you pay attention, it is not so complicated. You should commend a person for doing their duty. Leave it to the person to remind himself that he is just doing his job.
It is not the external observer’s job to withhold commendation because of duty. It is the job of the person with the duty to ground themselves in the fact that they are doing a thankless job. You see, different roles. It is ok if you have the money to tip a waiter. It is not okay for the waiter to demand a tip.
There are more serious cases, however. For example, take women’s safety. I have no doubt that women are vulnerable and are at the mercy of wicked men. And I as well understand that their instinct for self-preservation kicks in and sometimes takes the form of anger and fierce protestations calling for men to do the right thing.
Nevertheless, it is in the thoughtless fashion of Sylvia Pankhurst that some women among us today say that men who are law-abiding, who have no intent to harm anyone, and some who play the role of protector to their loved ones deserve no commendation. Why? You ask. They say because it is other men who put women’s lives in danger. I did hear someone say that a father in a household who puts himself on the line to defend his family from other male assailants deserves no commendation because, well, the assailants are male. Again, thoughtless.
It is people who fail to do the demanding task of thinking who assume that words, not wills, move the world.
The criminal does not care for my placards with the inscription “Do not kill.” It is because he does not care for those words (and perhaps my specious pious look) that I appreciate the policeman whose job it is to protect my life. Through the instrument of gratitude, I exalt a “common” police officer as a hero for saving my life. I will be stupid to look at the police officer who just saved me and say “Well, good job. This is why I pay taxes.” But this stupidity if I so exhibit it, is not because I am unintelligent. It is because I am morally and spiritually bankrupt.
That we are expected in a family to sacrifice one for another, or as Jesus put it, “to lay one’s life for your friends,” does not mean I should go demanding that my brother make sacrifices for me. It may be the duty of your brother to sacrifice for you, but it is not your place to demand such sacrifices.
This does not mean that we don’t feel hurt or disappointed; especially when we truly need a good deed. What it means is that we must approach the world with goodness regardless. We must free ourselves of the weight of resentment.
I recently said that those who are awake in this world look, if you observe them, like they are asleep. How? We think of people who forgive wrongs easily as moronic, docile, or even hypocritical because they might be putting up a show for the world. But if these people truly forgave the wrongs done to them, it is you who judged poorly; you have taken their tranquillity for unconsciousness. What you don’t see is that they are privy to something that you aren’t.
If you observe the opposite, the undead, you will notice an unusual activity rate among them. They have a woeful agitation, and they keep making demands. Demands! They demand brains zombie-style. It is one request after another; they are always asking you to appease them. They are as restless as hungry babies. They want what they want and they believe strongly that you owe them. They don’t like that you are at peace because your peace—according to them—means you have everything going well for you which might just mean that you have surplus peace while some abstract person has no peace.
These undeads hate that you can, every morning, sit on your porch and chat and drink coffee with your husband before going to work. They don’t care about anything else about you. They just hate that you have peace. They want you to pick up a social justice project to show that you have concerns for someone suffering somewhere. Your peace, to them, is zero-sum: you only have peace because someone else is in turmoil. But remember this, friends: zombies always come wanting to devour the brains of the living because they no longer have theirs.
Take one look at people who while not living in luxury, experience peace and joy. Their life discounts the zero-sum theory of peace of the undead. Peace is cultivated not allotted.
Finally. Banality, ingratitude, and comfort make us blind to both good and bad, to good and evil. But I am afraid that calling things banal is more indicative of our mental or spiritual states. Wise people know that wisdom, although discovered afresh, has always been around. Wisdom may not carry the novelty of scientific discoveries. But it holds the power to help us stay awake in a world that is lulling us to sleep. The world lulls us to sleep by singing the lullaby titled “That Is Normal.”
As my friend said to me as I wrote this essay, “It (staying conscious) is tedious to the human psyche.” No doubt it is tedious for the human psyche. But as we say, nothing good comes easy. Banal and cliche, I know. Building muscles requires that you stretch them. In the same vein, staying awake in a world that dulls your sensibility by asking you to take things for granted requires work. But the work may just be easier than usual.
The one work you have to do to stay awake in this world of “that is normal and expected” is the work of gratitude.
Where sacred is the opposite of common, you may sacralise common moments by giving thanks. Sacralise every meal, every drink, every dance, and every conversation, by giving thanks. Both giving thanks to God and giving thanks to everyone around you. Remember, even when there is a contract, gratitude keeps the terms fresh.
To the lovers, the husbands, and the wives, to Mr and Mrs Cheffeur, when next you read Ephesians 5, the husband is to skip verses 22 through 24. He should continue reading at verses 25 through 30. The wife should ignore verses 25 through 30 and focus on verses 22 through 24. Both parties may rendezvous at verse 33 if they so wish.
I suggest so because of a silent problem: the husband knows too much of what his wife’s role is and knows too little of his. The same goes for the wife. By knowing just too much of what the other person ought to be doing, our fingers wag so much outwardly, actively, and restlessly like the undead. The undead never point inwards. All their demands are other-directed. However, harmony comes when everyone is intimate with the knowledge of their own duties and is grateful that the other person performs theirs.
If you wish to stay awake, unnumbed, in 2023 reader, you must give thanks. Give thanks.
Clear thinking is the mark of a brilliant mind. But gratefulness is the mark of a thoughtful mind.
Give thanks.
“At the end of all our striving,” we rejoice in our being and offer thanks. It is then, eating a meal among those we love, dancing together at a wedding, sitting side by side with people silenced by music, that we recognize our peculiar sovereign position in the world.
Roger Scruton.
This is a much-needed reminder to be thankful for the littlest of things. Excellent as usual.