Thanksgiving: Appreciation versus resentment

 Most years, I post some snarky thing about bating one's relatives on Thanksgiving, but actually, I like this ritual.  Instead of writing something snide about how to torment either the drunken, racist uncle, or the insufferably arrogant, woke college sophomore and the sudden peace between them as they find common ground this year upon discovering their mutual hatred of the Jews (you're welcome!), I have some observations about why this one is actually a useful ritual, cloistered among so much cultural detritus.

The giving of thanks.  To whom?  It does not matter, and perhaps we should broaden our conception.  Appreciation.  Appreciation has no person as the direct object, grammatically speaking.  Appreciation has, as its direct object, the thing one appreciates.  What is that thing?  We'll come to that.  It is the direct, logical opposite of resentment.  To appreciate having a thing-- physical or better yet, otherwise-- is the opposite of resenting others for having what they have and you do not.  To resent has a person or people as the direct object, and in the worst way.

Resentment is at the core of interpersonal, domestic political, and international strife.  You resent, and therefore hate a person for having what you do not, and believe that you should have.  You resent, and therefore hate people, plural, for having what you do not, and direct your political ire at them in a zero-sum conception of the polity.  You resent another country.  The results?  Well...

What do you have?  Compared to what?  Notice that I said, "what," not whom.  That is a different standard.  The United States of America in 2023 is wealthy, modern, free, filled with opportunity, and anyone who does not appreciate what that is does not understand the comparison.  Compared to what?  "Utopia" literally translated to "no place."  Nobody ever actually reads Thomas Moore, and few would want to live in his idea of Utopia, having never read it, but compared to what?  Look, empirically.

What do you have?  Quite simply, at the very least, you have a device capable of reading these blatherings, and the liberty to do so, including the luxury of time, which is the greatest luxury.  Do you have any comprehension of what that means?  Comparatively?  What else do you have?  Not, what do you want, that someone else has, but what do you have?  What else could you have, with work, given the structure of 2023 America?  I did not ask what you believe should be given to you, but what could you acquire, with work?

Compare that, cross-nationally and historically.

The better questions are what you have in non-material terms, of course.  Diminishing marginal returns, Maslow, put it in whatever terms you prefer if you don't want to say the cliche things of the day.  What do you have?  Do you appreciate them?  If there is more that you want, in the more important non-material terms, are you doing something about it, acknowledging what you could do?  Do you appreciate that opportunity?

Throughout most of human history, you would know perhaps 100 people in a tribe or village.  That is everyone, for your entire life.

Do you get that?

The inability to appreciate what you have-- and much of that is opportunity-- leads inevitably to resentment, because you believe that someone else has what you should have.  Friends, adulation, money and what comes with it, land, whatever.  Appreciation and resentment are in opposition.  In domestic American politics, each side is fueled by resentment.

Donald Trump is the personification of resentment.  That is all that he is, and if you need a demonstration that resentment and misery are essentially 1-to-1, look at Donald Trump.  There has never been a more miserable sack of shit in the history of humanity.  Never more misery, and never more feces.  Why?  All he does is resent.  He was born to wealth and privilege, even within the wealthiest country on Earth at a time of historic wealth, for inscrutable reasons, he has failed upward, and he is still what you see in the Oxford English Dictionary when you look up the phrase, "miserable sack of shit."  That is the direct and inevitable consequence of resentment.  He believes he is entitled to more because someone else has more, and he resents that.  Someone else has more money, so he isn't at the top of the Forbes list.  Someone else has more fame.  Someone else is more popular.  Someone else, someone else, someone else, and this drives him literally, clinically insane.

That resentment has fueled rightward movement in the GOP.  There's someone else getting it for free.  The anger about so-called "welfare queens" dates back to Reagan.  I want my country back, make America great again, all of these lines make claim to having lost that which is mine, and should be mine again.  It is too simplistic to say that it is all racism, because while there can be a racial tinge for some group, the broad phraseology allows it to appeal to anyone who resents for a lost something, whether or not you even had it in the first place.  Where is the appreciation for what you do have?  Nowhere.  That has no place in the grievance politics of Donald Trump and the modern Republican Party.

The Democratic Party is no more appreciative.  The party is constructed around a hodgepodge of resentments, from class-based resentments to racial resentment for wrongs done anywhere from decades to centuries ago to every other identity-based historical grievance.  Merely acknowledging progress is considered an unforgivable sin, dubbed "progressophobia" by Steven Pinker.  Appreciation is practically ideologically forbidden.  Who hates America more, Donald Trump or a critical race theorist?  I do not know.  What is clear is the misery all around because resentment and misery are one and the same.

At the international level, nobody should both-sides the war in the Middle East.  That would betray a stunning lack of moral clarity, although moral clarity is in rather short supply these days, despite having a production cost of zero in material terms.  True, it takes some mental effort, but if your brain cannot handle the strain, that's on you.

Hamas, attitudes towards Israel, and Jews more broadly have always been based on resentment.  Thomas Sowell had it right, as he usually does.  Why does anti-Semitism proliferate?  For the same reason we observe hatred of the Parsees, and other successful immigrant outsiders.  Initially, they occupy middleman economic roles, having been forced into those roles by discrimination.  They achieve success as a result, and are then resented for that success.  We see the same story across multiple groups around the world.  Hence, there is really nothing unique about anti-Semitism.  It is just resentment of a successful minority group.  Asked what Jews could do to reduce anti-Semitism, Thomas Sowell's answer was one word:  "fail."

Israel is that, writ large.  Most of the Middle East is a dumpster oil fire.  You have a bunch of countries, many of which are rich in oil, but total disasters.  They always will be.

(But their crime rates are so low!  Sure, unless you count Bashar al-Assad committing mass murder of his own population and everyone in the Middle East just shrugging.  As one example.  Permanent dumpster fire.)

And then there is Israel.  It is not merely the existence of Israel that so many cannot abide, but the prosperity of Israel.  Hence, resentment.

If anyone from North Africa to Pakistan gave a shit about the Palestinian people, they would take in refugees, care when Assad murders his own people, care about the slaughter in Yemen, care about Darfur, or really, care about the mass murder of any Muslims.  They plainly do not.  They merely resent.  They resent Jews for daring to be prosperous.  Thomas Sowell, still right.

What do you have?  Epictetus was challenged by his students on his claim that he could be grateful for anything.  What of injury?  What of death?

We're none of us Epictetus, but here, briefly, was how Epictetus answered the challenge.  Remember that this was a man born into slavery, permanently lamed, who never angered, never hated, and was a greater teacher than you could hope to have.  Hardship in any form is a trainer, to teach you equanimity, grace, patience, and assent.  You are grateful to have a trainer, are you not?  So why are you not grateful for the challenge posed to you?  If you are ill, you face illness with courage.  You will die anyway, so you face death with courage.  Did Socrates not benefit from the manner in which he faced death?  And us?  Did we benefit from the manner in which he faced death?

Sounds kinda religious, doesn't it?  Fun exercise:  read Epictetus's Discourses, imagining him as alterna-Jebuz, where he goes around berating his disciples, shitting all over them and saying they're not worthy.

Anyway, the point is that if you treat even a challenge as something to appreciate, even the greatest of challenges, then what is there to resent?  And if you do not resent, what then?

Acknowledge what you have, and appreciate it.  The most dangerous and destructive response to any situation is resentment.  Appreciation is its opposite.

Also, turkey is yummy.  Kids, help with the dishes, or I'll find out and flunk you.

KOKOROKO, "We Give Thanks," from Could We Be More.