Naturally, even on Thanksgiving, it is impossible to
ignore the graceless whining of the identity politics crowd. No longer are we allowed to
celebrate a national holiday without hearing an army of scolds remind us of how
badly we treated indigenous peoples.
Giving thanks for our blessings, giving thanks to God for an
abundant harvest … these no longer matter as much as having the chance to
self-flagellate for our ancestors’ sins.
Given how obsessed we are with our Selves, we refuse to
accept the generosity offered by others, and certainly not the generosity
offered by God. We are no longer grateful because we no longer want to feel
that we depend on anyone but our Selves. We are so independent and autonomous,
so thoroughly atomized, that we refuse to enter into the most elementary
transactions with other people. We trust no one. We rely on no one. And we
cannot figure out why we are so isolated.
David DeSteno explains the force of gratitude in the New
York Times:
Research
by the psychologist Sara Algoe has
shown that when we feel grateful for other people’s thoughtfulness, we
consider that they might be worth getting to know a little better. Gratitude
pushes us to take the first steps in forming relationships with new people. And
once we know people better, continued feelings of gratitude strengthen our ties
to them. Feeling grateful to one person for a favor also makes us more likely
to “pay forward” favors to others we don’t know — a phenomenon
identified by the psychologist Monica Bartlett — which, in turn, can
lead them to want to get to know us.
As for our loss of social connection, Joel Kotkin
lays out the sad story in a recent column. Evidently, the loss is most evident
in the young:
Most
Americans, according to a Templeton Foundation survey, feel they receive little
gratitude at home or the office. The feeling of gratitude appears to drop with
age. Today’s millennials are the least grateful. This is not surprising given
the new generations’ low levels of interest in the very things we are likely to
feel grateful for, such as family, religion or America itself.
It is a symptom of a society that is fragmenting, where
citizens are at war with other citizens. We have lost our sense of
togetherness. Feeling more alone, we are also more vulnerable:
This
loss of gratefulness, not unique to this country, is tied to the decline of
critical social conventions that long held society together. The religious
nature of the Thanksgiving was self-evident to the Puritans who settled New
England, but it was also deeply communal, a shared experience between family,
neighbors and congregants. “We must delight in each other, make others’ own,
rejoice together, mourn together, labor and suffer together,” as colonial
leader John Winthrop put it.
We have lost religion. Since religion turns isolated
individuals into a community, losing it is hardly inconsequential.
Religion,
for all its undoubted spurs to divisiveness, underpinned their sense of
gratitude that extended well beyond the Puritans. It later inspired even
outsiders, such as Jews, Latinos and African Americans, to celebrate the New
England experience. As Americans, we all embraced the notion that we were all
fortunate for the blessings of home and family, even when paltry, that divinity
bequeathed to us.
With
the decline in religious observance, Thanksgiving, not surprisingly, seems to
have lost its spiritual essence. It is a holiday now more identified with
football and gluttony than anything of spiritual value.
Mary Eberstadt has analyzed the problem. Kotkin explains her
analysis, whereby the loss of patriotic loyalty has forced people to cling to
factions, to identity groups, based on victimhood and grievance:
With
family and community ties weakened, Eberstadt notes, more people, again
particularly the young, seek to embrace not the overall community, but an
“identity” group. These are often based on grievance ideology built around
sexual preference, race, gender identity or physical disability. Such
identarian ideology is particularly common in our key intellectual centers such
as Manhattan, where a majority of households are single. The hotbeds of
identity politics — San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle and Boston — all have
among the lowest rates of family formation in the nation.
At root, Americans have lost their patriotism. They have
lost their national pride. That loss became particularly marked during the
Obama years. Would you be surprised to read that leftist students and
Obamaphile Democrats were leading the march to deconstruct American love of
country and American pride in country?
This
loss of faith is particularly marked among the young. Nearly 40 percent of
young Americans, for example, think the country lacks “a history to be proud
of,” less than half the average for boomers. One-third of young Americans,
according to one recent survey, have a favorable view of communism and most
seem ready to jettison the market system essential to America’s evolution.
Kotkin issues a wake-up call:
If the
Puritans, freezing in the New England fall and simply relieved not to be
starving, could feel gratitude about the world, perhaps we, living in
unimaginable physical comfort and freedom, should take the hint and emulate
them.
5 comments:
To quote Orwell:
"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control,' they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink.'"
More evident today than ever.
Baruch atah Adonai, eloheynu melech ha'olam, shehecheyanu, v'kimanu, v'higyanu, lazman hazeh.
Baruch atah Adonai, eloheynu melech ha'olam, shehecheyanu, v'kimanu, v'higyanu, lazman hazeh.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Never in the history of the world have people been given so much as modern Americans have. My wife and I are solidly middle-class, but we live like Roman kings, I just received a full hip replacement and now have 100% mobility and no further pain. I eat Spanish almonds while drinking South African wines, with access to a library larger than Alexandria at my fingertips. Tiberius couldn’t dream of the life I lead.
I pray our gratitude is sufficient to warrant our blessings.
"these no longer matter as much as having the chance to self-flagellate for our ancestors’ sins."
Candidly, I enjoy watching the Left self-flagellate. I bask in their pain.
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