Gratitude

"Flora told me, 'Being thankful is not controversial. Nor is it rocket science. It is simple. Everyone agrees that gratitude is a good thing. Gratitude, like other positive emotions, has inspired many theological and philosophical writings, '" said the Moon after delivering Basmalah and Salaam.

"'According to Al-Ghazali,' said Flora, 'there are five good traits that we should adopt and nurture within ourselves. The first is tawbah (repentance); the second is khawf (fear) and the third is zuhd (asceticism), the fourth is sabr (patience). The fifth is shukr (gratitude).

Ibn Masood, radhiyallahu 'anhu, said, 'Imaan is of two halves; half is patience (sabr) and half is being thankful (shukr).' Ibn Qayyim, rahimahullah, wrote that Patience—or patient perseverance—is obligatory, according to the consensus of the scholars, and it is half of faith (iman), the other half of which is gratitude (shukr). Both Ibn Qayyim and Al-Ghazali agreed that Knowledge is the first pillar of Gratitude. Of course, how can you be grateful if don't know how to do it? When you have acquired knowledge, you can progress to the state of being joyful, reverent and subservient. Gratitude is usually followed by the second pilar, action, for instance, thanking someone who gave you a favour.

Psychologists have preferred the language of emotion in speaking about gratitude.One of the earliest psychological treatments of gratitude as an emotion appeared in the writings of William McDougall. McDougall viewed gratitude as a secondary, or blended, emotion that includes awe, admiration, reverence, envy, resentment, embarrassment, and jealousy. The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard suggested that, in thankfulness, a person’s relationship to God and others gives birth to a self-awareness that constitute his being. Experiences and expressions of gratitude thus shape identity. Given that gratitude is a fundamental attribute of human beings and a potential key to human flourishing, we should endeavor to learn as much as we can about its origins, its forms of expressions, and its consequences for individual and collective functioning.

Ours is a commercial age, one driven by the impulse of selfinterest. Adam Smith understood this well when he noted in The Wealth of Nations that it is not benevolence or love of our fellow human beings that brings food to our table. We receive our daily bread by appealing to the self-interest of the baker and offering something in return that is needed.Two factors lay behind Smith’s defense of self-interest over benevolence. First, he believed that self-interest was a more steady passion than benevolence because the unintended consequences of self-interest could be calculated and projected into the future. We can rely on the self-interest of others more readily than we can their benevolence or love. Second, Smith believed that an appeal to self-interest was also an appeal to the dignity of the individual. Only a beggar depends on the benevolence of others for everyday subsistence, and even then only on a limited basis. In contrast to benevolence, self-interested exchange was predicated on the idea that individuals could enter into market exchanges and affirm their existence as free and autonomous human beings.

Given the central role of self-interest in Smith’s economic theory of commercial society, it is tempting to conclude that Smith believed—as all too many of his twentieth and twenty-first-century counterparts now seem to believe—that humans are at heart self-interested creatures who care little for the concerns or interests of others. As any reader of his Theory of Moral Sentiments soon discovers, however, this would be a serious mistake. To be sure, individuals are driven by self-interest. But, according to Smith, they are also capable of love, compassion, pity, self-sacrifice, resentment, and gratitude. Smith the moral philosopher was less concerned with trumpeting the triumph of self-interest in commercial society than coming to terms with the proper balance that should exist between self-interest and other passions and virtues.

Far from believing that a commercial society could flourish solely on the basis of the drive of self-interest, Smith argued that a certain moral capital was needed if a society was to flourish. For contracts to work, people had to keep their word. Property had to be respected for exchange transactions to take place. People also had to be willing to respect and tolerate one another, particularly on divisive matters. The values of friendship, family, and love had to be preserved and promoted. Individuals had to be willing to sacrifice their own good for the good of the whole, particularly in times of war where the nation’s very existence was in question.The individual championed in Smith’s moral theory as well as his political economy was not simply an isolated utility maximizer. He or she was a social creature linked closely to others in the community through passions and affections. What Smith recognized as obvious, many social, political and economic theorists consider today to be a heresy.

Adam Smith is often identified with the so-called moral sense school of the eighteenth century. Responding to rationalist philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes or John Locke, moral sense philosophers such as the first Earl of Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson, and David Hume rejected the idea that morality was based solely on reason, arguing instead that morality was ultimately derived from emotions and feelings. Morality was something felt, and not just a conclusion of reason. If one wanted to understand moral norms, including gratitude, one had to understand the moral sentiments.

Not all eighteenth-century philosophers had the insight or ability of Adam Smith to explain the interrelations between self-interest and gratitude in modern commercial societies. His contemporary Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the great eighteenth-century critic of the modern commercial order, seemed at a loss to explain either the positive features of self-interest or the role that gratitude continued to play in modern society.

The first—and, for many centuries, the only—great treatise on gratitude in Western thought was On Benefits, written by the Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca. Addressed to a friend, Aebutius Liberalis of Lyons, the work is longwinded and repetitious. But it raises many of the concerns that would define how later thinkers conceptualized the problem of gratitude. The importance of understanding the place of gratitude in human society was stated clearly in the first paragraph, 'Among the many and diverse errors of those who live reckless and thoughtless lives, almost nothing that I can mention, excellent Liberalis, is more disgraceful than the fact that we do not know how either to give or to receive benefits. For it follows that, if they are ill placed, they are ill acknowledged, and when we complain of their not being returned, it is too late; for they were lost at the time they were given. Nor is it surprising that among all our many and great vices, none is so common as ingratitude.'

Identifying ingratitude as our most common vice is intriguing. It may be because it is such a common vice that we do not properly understand its complexity. Throughout the treatise, Seneca tried to provide a perspective for sorting out the complexity underlying the problem of gratitude.

In their analysis of the sentiment of gratitude, McCullough, Kilpatrick, Emmons, and Larson conceptualized gratitude as having three morally relevant functions, that of a moral barometer, a moral motivator, and a moral reinforcer. Feelings of gratitude to God motivate proper behavior toward the one who is giving thanks, which means obeying His commandments and loving Him.

The idea that gratitude to other human beings is one pathway to developing an attitude of gratitude toward God, was elaborated on at length by Bahya Ibn Pakuda, the tenth-century Spanish Jewish author of one of the most influential of Jewish devotional treatises, Chovot HaLevavot [The Duties of the Heart].

Gratitude seems out of fashion in modern life. It is not that modern people do not know how to be grateful. Nor is it true that we rarely express gratitude for acts of kindness and other good things that come our way. After all, parents still teach their children to say please and, especially, thank you. And U.S. citizens take a day off in November to get together with their families for feasting and football viewing, ostensibly for the purpose of thanksgiving. But when was the last time you were really impressed by a heroic act of gratitude? When was the last time that a national leader made news by suggesting that the key to future prosperity and happiness is being thankful for what we have? How many self-help books, inspirational speeches, or television talk shows urge us on to higher and greater levels of thankfulness?

Gratitude has so little cachet in modern life that it does not even warrant a footnote in William J. Bennett’s authoritative and popular Book of Virtues. Drawing from a wide range of traditions, Bennett brought together inspiring moral stories illustrating ten human ideals: self-discipline, compassion, responsibility, friendship, work, courage, perseverance, honesty, loyalty, and faith. Why not gratitude? One could argue that gratitude is subsumed under one or two of Bennett’s top 10 (say, faith?). Or one might suggest that, important though it may be, gratitude does not inspire great moral stories. But it is hard to dismiss easily a third line of reasoning concerning gratitude’s second-tier status in modern life. That line goes something like this: Gratitude is nice, but nice is not enough. Nice is not enough for meeting the most pressing psychological and social demands of modern life. Nice won’t get you a good job, a decent income, a loving spouse, happy children, a valued place in the community—to say nothing of fame, fortune, or personal fulfillment. As heir to the Enlightenment, cultural modernity values autonomy, achievement, efficient productivity, creative innovation, clear-headed rationality, and the expansion and actualization of the self. In a softer and more interpersonal vein, modern life also holds up romantic love, marital commitment, close friendships, care of children, and civic responsibility as ennobling ideals that enrich life and contribute to the well-being of society writ large. Although gratitude is not inimical to any of these pursuits, one is hard pressed to see how it is explicitly integral to many of them. The modern response to gratitude may even shade from mild but unenthusiastic endorsement to occasional ambivalence. In the modern market economy, one does not expect to pay for goods and services with gratitude. It is surely nice if the customer offers token or even heartfelt words of thanks to the salesperson at the close of their negotiations, but the customer must still expect to write a check for that newly purchased home appliance. Gratitude will not yield even a dime of discount. Excessive gratitude may be viewed as ingratiating.When a person offers repeated and effusive thank yous, the beneficiaries may begin to wonder what the grateful individual really wants.

Sometimes, people receive gifts and, for complex reasons, they react with ingratitude. The act of giving and receiving a gift can be fraught with a widely diverging assortment of perceptions, psychological states, and conflicting emotions. The dynamics of giving and receiving, the relationship between donor and recipient, perceived motivations of each, and their prior histories in similar situations influence the degree to which gratitude is felt, as well as the way in which gratitude is expressed. Sometimes gifts bring joy, at other times they come with pride, and, if certain circumstances are present, they can also bring envy, hatred, greed, and jealousy.

Gratitude requires that a giver give not only a gift but also a gift dear to himself—a 'pearl of great price,' as it were. For the recipient to be grateful, in an emotional sense, he must know that the act of giving caused the giver to lose something, to forgo some opportunity, to part with something of value, or, at the very least, to make a real effort.

This is why the amount of gratitude we feel when we receive a gift has next to nothing to do with how much the gift cost. The wealthy businessperson who asks their assistants or personal shoppers to buy expensive gifts and then send them on to various recipients won't generate significant gratitude from those on their gift list. The recipients simply know the gift cost nothing in terms of effort and that the loss of money involved meant nothing to the giver. They may actually feel more grateful to the harried, underpaid assistant who chose the gift than the actual giver, a judgment that the assistant's effort cost him more than the money and supervision cost the 'generous' donor.

The degree to which we feel gratitude always hinges on this internal, secret assessment of cost. It is intrinsic to the emotion, and perfectly logical, that we don't feel all that grateful for the gifts we receive that cost little or nothing to the giver. Yet, there is another important factor: our degree of gratitude is influenced by our perception of the motives that underlie the gift. Given the pleasure that accompanies gratitude, it may seem that ingratitude is a denial of pleasure, an anhedonic act, presumably motivated by the urge to punish or harm the self and the other. A desire to harm the self and the giver through ingratitude is a significant obstacle to feeling and expressing gratefulness.

But there are other, less psychologically complex impediments to gratitude. First, the negativity bias. In some respects it may be natural to ignore one's blessings, or even to complain about them. This might come as a surprise to most people, in that most of us believe that we are grateful for the benefits we have received. This should not be unexpected, though, given that psychologists have identified a natural tendency of the mind to perceive an input as negative. This 'negativity bias' means that incoming emotions and thoughts are more likely to be unpleasant rather than pleasant. Furthermore, the negativity bias appears to be a very real phenomenon with a solid neurophysiological basis.

Next, the inability to acknowledge dependency. Charles Dickens's novel Great Expectations is a timeless story where gratitude and ingratitude are set in bold relief as central elements in the human condition. For most of the novel, Pip, the protagonist, takes for granted the benevolence of Joe Gargery, his brother-in-law who has been his constant friend and protector throughout his life. Any smattering of thankfulness that Pip might have is driven out by his selfish ambition. Toward Magwitch, Pip's secret benefactor, Pip has nothing but contempt. Even in the scene of profound revelation when he learns the truth about Magwitch, his initial response is not one of gratitude but one of disgust and disappointment.

Closely related to an inability to admit, that we are not self-sufficient are internal conflicts that we experience over expressing intimate, positive emotions. As the research by Sommers suggests, this is more an issue for men than it is for women, at least in American culture. Given our culture's general emphasis on the containment of emotional expression, coupled with a natural tendency to seek expression, it is not surprising that individuals become ambivalent over emotional expression.

Another obstacle is inappropriate gift giving. The gift relationship has been referred to as one of the most morally laden relationships that human beings have. Gift exchange is governed by the law of reciprocity, and gratitude calibrates the desire to make an appropriate return. Gifts have many meanings, and the risk for unintended outcomes is high. Gifts can be unwelcome burdens. Gifts may be used to control the receiver and to guarantee his or her loyalty. A gift that is lavishly disproportionate to what is appropriate to the relationship between giver and receiver will produce resentment, guilt, anger, a sense of obligation, or even humiliation.

Another obstacle is that we need to choose our comparisons wisely. Epicurus wrote, 'Do not spoil what you have by desiring what you have not; but remember that what you now have was once among the things only hoped for.' Gratitude is the realization that we have everything that we need, at the moment.'"

"Just before our time was up, Flora ended our conversation, 'Gratitude requires taking time out to reflect on one's blessings. As daily life is increasingly frantic, frazzled, and fragmented, gratitude can be crowded out. Events, people, or situations that are apt to evoke gratitude can easily be taken for granted or shunted aside as one contends with life's daily hassles and struggles to regulate intense negative feelings such as anger, shame, and resentment.'

And she waved at me as she sang,

So goodbye yellow brick road

Where the dogs of society howl

You can't plant me in your penthouse

I'm going back to my plough

Back to the howling old owl in the woods

Hunting the horny back toad

Oh, I've finally decided my future lies

Beyond the yellow brick road *)

Before she's gone, the Moon concluded, "Gratitude is defined as 'the quality or feeling of being grateful or thankful.' Be grateful to those who do good to you; be grateful for your blessings.This is something that we teach to our children at the youngest of ages. Gratitude is an important dimension of life as we interact with one another in our everyday affairs. It is impossible to imagine a world where individuals don’t receive and give gratitude regularly. Gratitude is one of the building blocks of a Civil and Humane society. And Allah knows best."

Citations & References:
- Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyyah, Patience and Gratitude - An abridgement of his original work entitled, “Uddat as-Sabireen wa Dhakirat ash-Shakireen” translated by TheVista, Taha Publishing
- Imam Abu Hamid Muhammad Al-Ghazali, The Forty Principle of the Religion, translation by Nasir Abdussalam, Turath Publishing
- Robert A. Emmons & Michael E. McCullough (ed.), The Psychology of Gratitude, Oxford University Press
- Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D, Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier, Houghton Mifflin
- Ellen Vaughn, Radical Gratitude, Zondervan

- Doğan Göçmen, The Adam Smith Problem - Human Nature and Society in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations, Tauris Academic Studies
*) "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" written by Elton John.

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