When Does Gratitude Turn Into Gloating?
We have a family tradition that at certain holiday meals and birthday celebrations we go around the table and ask everyone to say what they’re thankful for.
When our kids were younger and at home we’d have Friday night dinners together. At those dinners we always followed the Shabbat prayers with the thankfulness rotation. When the kids had friends over, they were not spared from participating.
One night when it was his turn, my son Andrew came up with this answer: “I’m thankful for the thankfulness tradition.”
Well played, Andrew, well played.
And while I smile remembering my son’s sardonic humor, I also think he made a point about how expressions of gratitude can sometimes be performative and hollow.
I think this is especially true when your hardships are scarce and your blessings are abundant. To take a bow, even privately, can then seem smug, greedy, spoiled. You might also be tempting God and Satan to do a remake of the Book of Job with you in the starring role.
Dwelling on the many things I’m grateful for could also be viewed as a lack of self-awareness, a form of narcissism. A sort of blinkered blindness, gazing and reflecting on my self-admired self-image.
Pillaging and philanthropy
To compensate for a feeling that much has been given to you, a natural impulse is to give back to people less fortunate. But that too can be performative and a way to apply an extra layer of gloss to your self-image.
In medieval times, after an episode of pillaging, a noble warlord might build a chapel and hire clerics to pray for his soul. Today, we have billionaires who publicly announce that they will be giving away a majority of their wealth when they die. They publish public letters pledging to do so and stating why. ( The Giving Pledge)
I’ve come to question whether our modern American world of philanthropy is as much a part of the problem as a part of the solution. An evil necessity.
Building chapels made it seem 1less costly for your immortal soul after you went pillaging. Giving money away to alleviate suffering can make you comfortable about leaving intact the underlying causes of that suffering. And leaving intact the power of those who have vs. those who have not.
Complacency
When you’re wealthy and generous and cultivating your self-image of noblesse oblige, I think you risk complacency, a sin specially reserved for those of us who are especially privileged. By complacency I don’t mean inaction but rather failing to interrogate your roles, motivations, and activities in the communities where you are present.
I expressed this thought at the very end of
’s recent interview with me.Anne: So you must be happy!
Me: Yeah, most of the time. But when you say I must be happy, the first thing that comes to my mind is, "My goodness, am I complacent?”
The Dread Philanthropist Roberts
Worrying about complacency can seem like the ultimate wealthy person’s issue. But unless you’ve allowed the idea of your wealth to burrow inside your brain and turn you into its puppet (as a parasitic wasp does to its prey), no amount of wealth can eliminate existential dread if that’s where your mind tends to wander.
Too much dread can poison but just enough can spur you to ask some tough questions. An inoculation against complacency.
If the giving that my wife and I do, our noblesse oblige, is more palliative than cure, what must follow is a questioning of the sufficiency of our actions. Shouldn’t we be trying in some way to change the underlying causes that regularly and predictably produce the wounds we seek to bind.
Healthcare inequality, healthcare as a business
The phrase “Medicare for All” used to provoke in me a skepticism bordering on derision. My mind was closed to the inherent unfairness of how Americans access and pay for their healthcare. In part, I’m sure, because I have access to and can afford excellent healthcare. Why change what works so well for me?
But over the past few years I’ve opened my mind to new information that I can’t dismiss.
Here’s what I now believe:
American healthcare should be a right available to everyone, not a privilege. It should be a public good, not a category of for-profit business.
That’s a huge topic and I don’t know how or if I might be able to shift the narrative to make a difference. But I want to try. Writing about it is a start.
To be continued next week––including transparency as to what privileged healthcare looks like to me.
Happy Thanksgiving weekend. If you’ve indulged in a lot of turkey I hope you’re in a pleasant tryptophan-infused stupor.
Job is a righteous man blessed with great wealth, a loving family, and many friends. Satan challenges God by telling him that Job is only righteous because he has it all. God can’t resist the challenge. He takes away Job’s wealth and kills his family. Job remains faithful to God although he does ask God “WTF?” God answers by telling Job it’s not Job’s place to question God. But at the very end God doubles Job’s previous wealth and gives him a new family.
You are my favorite wealthy person ever ! I have the odd but not unusual perspective of the well educated, hardworking but poor. I grew up pretty poor because my mom had to raise me alone after divorce. Even working three jobs most of the time she barely made it. I went to a very good school and did very well in my first career but some serious health problems hit in my early forties and I haven’t quite dug out from the fall out of not being able to work full time for years while trying to support my aging mother. I’ve gone without necessary healthcare for years. I live in a dangerous neighborhood that I cannot yet afford to move out of. I struggle to pay the basic expenses. It’s hard for me to be around people who throw money around like it’s nothing or who don’t understand why I can’t afford a new reliable car and don’t have any overseas vacations to talk about. Life is just different for those of us one emergency away from eviction. Fortunately I’m incredibly good at navigating systems - once I got 10k in medical debt written off because I qualified for charity care and I spent hours pursuing it. But most people don’t have those skills and going to the hospital for one night could destroy them. I’d love to start a nonprofit to help others who don’t have those skills navigate the systems and rescue their families. I’ve been on Medicaid too and was once denied a full course of antibiotics for a respiratory infection so I had to go into my food money to pay for the rest of the medicine. Most people wouldn’t know how important it is to finish the course of antibiotics but I have a masters in public health and I do. And I consider myself fortunate to have been able to come up with the $25. I love how you think about wealth and that you are conscious of the issues you write about. I’m sure you tip well. No matter what I always tip well if I have to take a cab or something because I know how much even two extra dollars means to those of us who count every penny. All the best to you and your family.
American individualism is at the root of most societal ills. It fuels an economic system that allows a handful of individuals to amass incalculable wealth, more than one person/family could use in a lifetime. It's obscene that in the United States people don't have enough food to eat, a place to live, excellent public education, and healthcare when they are sick, and yet an individual can amass billions of dollars. There is a mindset that we are not interconnected as human beings. Billionaires (and multimillionaires) truly believe that they "earned" their wealth, when in reality they've just been able to manipulate public systems to their advantage. The legacy of colonialism and slavery needs to be addressed and reparations made. America prospered because it committed a genocide against native peoples and built an economic system based on free slave labor. Legalized racism prevented Black people from buying government subsidized houses and participating in the GI Bill post WWII after they fought in the war. The first step is acknowledging that the reason some people have so much is because others have so little.