Stop pretending to be thankful
We live in an age ruled by resentment
BY KATHLEEN STOCK
. Thank you for your country. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty)
Kathleen Stock is an UnHerd columnist, former professor of philosophy and Founding Faculty Fellow at UATX.
Docstockk
November 24, 2023
It’s Thanksgiving week in the US and, taking time off from their usual diet of gloom and uneasy foreboding, various American media outlets have been asking readers to list things for which they feel grateful. I don’t know about you, but personally I thank my lucky stars that the British are too self-conscious to have any national ritual of gratitude on our books. Against a secular backdrop, trying to conjure up a feeling of thankfulness towards no one in particular has always seemed to me a bit like attempting to experience remorse for something I know I haven’t done. In both cases, all I can do is make what I hope are vaguely appropriate facial movements, and pray I get away with it.
There is also a worry that vague statements of gratitude, launched diffusely into the void, perversely make it less likely that we will give credit to real human benefactors where it is actually due. It’s so much less effort to mentally thank the universe than to thank a friend out loud, after all. But such misgivings seem to put me in a minority. Along with kindness, the bland social capital of unfocused gratitude has been surging for a while now — much beloved of yoga teachers and Instagram influencers, and perfect for a humblebrag when you want to show off about that new kitchen extension without making it seem obvious (#grateful).
In a similar vein, various academics and medics frequently extoll the benefits of a daily “gratitude practice” for things such as combatting depression and boosting the immune system. We are presented with psychological case studies like that of the unfortunate “Susanna”, described in one influential journal article from 2013. Immediately after her husband had a terrible motorcycle accident and went into a coma, Susanna discovered that he had been having an affair with her friend for years. And that wasn’t all — she also found out that he had been secretly addicted to gambling and had emptied their bank account. Still, luckily for her, the article reported that Susanna was able to shift “to a context of thinking about all she still had in her life, as well as a stance of gratitude for the opportunities that remained open to her”, and so was able to continue functioning despite these crushing blows.
https://unherd.com/2023/11/stop-pretending-to-be-thankful/
