The
Trouble With Thankfulness
By
David Swanson
22 November,
2007
Countercurrents.org
Like
most Americans, I'm appreciative of all the wonderful people and experiences
in my life, and I like the idea of taking a day off from lamenting all
the painful, tragic, and humiliating experiences in my life and the
many more in the lives of so many people around the world impacted by
my government (even if we are now losing an innocent life in Iraq alone
at the rate of one every 10 minutes, or 144 in the day I take off to
"be thankful").
And in fact,
I never thank my wife, my son, my parents, my friends, my employer,
my allies, my heroes enough. A day set aside to phone and write and
visit those people to thank them would be a holiday above all other
holidays. But that is not what Thanksgiving is. At best, that is what
Thanksgiving might someday become.
For theists,
Thanksgiving is an opportunity to thank "god." For
muddleheaded atheists Thanksgiving is an opportunity to thank... [blank]
(there's no conclusion to the sentence). And for clear thinking atheists,
it's a holiday that does not fit. One cannot be thankful to nothing.
If you're going to be thankful, not for what your loved ones do, but
that they exist, you must be thankful to "god" or to some
nameless mush standing in for "god."
Well, what
- after all - is so wrong with that? What's wrong with nice warm humble
feelings, even if they make no grammatical sense? I think there are
two major things wrong with it, one fairly obvious, the other a little
less so.
The obvious
problem is the panglossian blinders required. Rather than appreciating
my loved ones, I am supposed to feel a sense of "thankfulness"
for them that is inevitably directed at the same divine fate that gives
the world such overwhelming misery, pain, and death. In short, "god"
has so much to answer for, that before I would consider summoning an
ounce of gratitude for the beautiful trees and squirrels outside my
window, I want to know what good can come of the precarious situation
that is providing this summer weather in November, I want to know why
a neighbor was recently murdered, I want to know why so much of the
world has to live in such horrendous poverty for the benefit of a gluttonous
minority, and I want to know what war is for. Thanking anyone or anything
who runs this spectacle strikes me as presenting an award to a mass
murderer because he polishes his knife so beautifully.
The less
obvious trouble with thankfulness can be seen when we move beyond blaming
"god" for the world's misery. After all, if you don't "believe
in god" you can't blame "god" any more than you can praise
him/her/it. And if you cannot blame "god" then the truly painful
thought arrives: we must blame ourselves. In fact, we and nobody else
bear the responsibility for what goes well and poorly in the world.
We get no credit for the squirrels. They simply evolved. But we get
credit for maintaining a world they can live in, or blame for destroying
it. We acquired this responsibility when we gained the power to destroy
the world. That doesn't mean a key to preserving the world doesn't lie
in refraining from trying to control it.
Children
who die from preventable diseases, workers who die from unsafe working
conditions, and families who die in wars all die with their blood on
our hands and nobody else's. We, humanity, and we, Americans in particular,
are the ultimate cause of tremendous suffering. Far from thanking some
primitive fantasy for the state of things, we should be standing, speaking,
and acting to change things. Instinctive acceptance of the status quo
as at least partially "right" is the most dangerous result
of vestigial theism, and the last thing we have time for is a holiday
that promotes it.
This Thanksgiving,
go out of your way to thank somebody who is working for radical democratic
change in the world. And, this holiday season, thank your loved ones
for who they are. Don't thank anybody else for them. But put your generosity
where it belongs: in actions aimed at benefitting those in the world
who have it worst.
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