Gratitude in the Givenness of Life
Recently, I had a long and productive discussion with my family about politics.
Yes, such a thing is possible.
There are many important issues on which we disagree, and it still hurts me to think about some of them. But my sisters were willing to listen and help me sort through exactly what I believe and hold dear, at a deeper level than the current issues of the day; and I truly appreciate that. Beginning from there, I have sorted out more thoughts and connections that might be helpful to express.
I would call myself a conservative. But the trouble with that word, as with any label, is that it can be interpreted many ways based on people’s individual experiences. So here is what conservatism means to me: a posture of gratitude amid the givenness of life. Hopefully I can make clear what that means and why I hold to it.
Givenness
Modernism and postmodernism hold one creed in common: everything must be chosen and controlled. The only difference is in who they claim should be in control and have the right to choose what the world looks like. To the rationalistic modern, the people in control should be the rational ones, the experts, the enlightened minds that can make the best decisions for everyone. And the things that should be controlled include everyone. There is no margin for the undefined or unknown, no allowance for difference or denial of the leaders’ ideals. This is the terrifying future that C. S. Lewis warned against in “The Abolition of Man”, human beings setting themselves above other human beings in order to decide what human beings should be. For the postmodern person, any such structure is oppressive; how dare anyone tell anyone else who they are or how to live? Every aspect of every person’s life should be dictated by themselves, from identity to activity to reputation. At the extreme, this leads to a denial of physical biology and nature, as people become transgender, trans-able, transspecies, and trans-age (I think that’s the word), demanding that everyone accept them, not for who their bodies might present them as — after all, they didn’t choose their bodies — but rather who they feel they are inside, or who they want to be. The individual self’s choice governs everything about their lives and identities, including how other people are allowed to speak about them or even think about them.
Both of these systems run up against one simple truth: total control of or by human beings is simply impossible. We are finite creatures, limited by physicality, mortality, unconsciousness, and ignorance. We are mysterious beings, who still don’t fully understand why we feel and act the way we do. No matter how we try, there are things about ourselves that we will never have control over. No one gets to decide when and where they come into existence, or what genetic code will come together to make them. No one gets to decide what condition the world will be in when they are born, or what happened in history before them. We cannot choose these things, and we cannot earn or deserve them. They are given.
A crucial part of conservatism, as I see it, is acknowledging the givenness of life; the things that we have no choice about, that we cannot control. It also includes the acknowledgement that some people’s givenness is more or less pleasant than others. There are privileged people and oppressed people. Conservatism should not be the movement that claims everyone deserves everything they get; everything they’re given. As I said, no one can earn the way they’re born or the state of the world at the time. But it is the movement that recognizes the impossibility of undoing what is already given. We can’t go back in time and erase the evils of history, no matter how much confession or reparation we put forth, or how many statues we tear down. We can’t twist and mold the nature of humanity into something genderless and godlike; and if we ever succeeded, such a thing would not be humanity anymore. What we can do is attempt redemption. We can take what we have now, what we have been given, and use it to improve the lot of current and future generations as much as we may.
Gratitude
Another shared factor in modernism and postmodernism is a sense of entitlement and pride. The rationalistic modernist claims to have earned or deserved every good thing that comes to them; and if bad things happen to people, they must have deserved that somehow, too. Hard work and ethical (i.e. rational) behavior will always lead to success, in this view. Whatever someone gets, they are entitled to it and allowed to be proud of it. The postmodernist, of course, decries this attitude as oppressive and cruel, recognizing (rightly) that human cruelty and greed lead to many undeserved outcomes. And yet, they still set up another system of assuming entitlement. For the postmodern, the victim classes are now entitled to everything good, and the oppressors to everything bad. This is still true even if the people in the class labeled oppressors are guilty of nothing but their ancestry, being related to people who did terrible things in the past; or of nothing but loose association with people who do terrible things in the present. Anyone with an ounce of privilege is urged to be ashamed of it, and anyone with an ounce of grievance is encouraged to build their life around resentment.
But again, many of these things — these privileges and traumas or grievances — are things that we did not choose and cannot control, any of us. Let us take what is perhaps an extreme example: I live in the town where the largest mass hanging in US history took place. Thirty-eight Dakota warriors were executed all at once, and many more of their people were displaced, imprisoned, and mistreated in many other ways during and after the Dakota Conflict of the 1860s. I regularly drive past the prairie land that was bitterly fought over, costing all of those lives, and I see it thick with corn and soybeans. I cannot change the facts of history; and I cannot change the fact that those farms exist. (At least, it would be extremely difficult and probably illegal to try and force them out of existence.) All I can control is my attitude and response to them. So what should be my attitude? When I drive past those farms, should I see only the blood of the Dakota people and the thievery of their home? Should I allow my anger to drive me to destruction, say, burning down the cornfields to restore the hunting grounds? Or should I see the millions of people and animals, and people again, that those fields feed and nourish? The farming and farm equipment industry, also full of people, that they prop up? The agricultural innovations that they make possible? Should I not rather be grateful that in spite of such great evil, good can still flourish?
Such gratitude should not be misconstrued as approval or celebration of the sins of the past. There was great evil done to the Dakota, and to the settlers, and by the Dakota and by the settlers. It was a horrible time, and people are still living with the repercussions of it today. Conservatism should not deny that, and should seek to improve relations and circumstances that have been damaged by that history. But perhaps the core of conservatism is the recognition of all that is good in the world, in spite of — and even sometimes because of — all that is wrong. The situations and systems that we have been given by our past are far from perfect. But there are things about them that are good, valuable, and beneficial to humanity in many ways. There are things, in fact, worth conserving.
Reasons, Ramifications, and Responsibility
I believe in the ultimate goodness of ultimate Being; that is, of God. I believe that He is in control of all things, including history and us, and is working all things toward the redemption of His world and His people. I believe that He can and does bring great good out of great evil; that in fact, there is no evil that He cannot turn to good, in ways beyond our imagination. In view of all this, I believe that He has a good purpose for putting each person where they are in the world and in history, and allowing each event that occurs. Therefore, when I look around at the givenness of life, the circumstances beyond my control, I can have contentment and gratitude. Contentment affirms that what He has given me is exactly what I need. Whatever limitations I may have because of these things — limitations that, say, a man or a person born into more wealth might not have — I accept them and work within them, like a painter with a single canvas or a poet with a form. Gratitude affirms that what He has given me is good; and, conversely, that all good things come from Him. My unique strengths and privileges are nothing I can take credit for, and nothing to be ashamed of. They are gifts. Undeserved favors from someone who loves me simply because He is good.
I am still left with a responsibility: to use those gifts in ways that honor their Giver and promote His goodness and grace in the world. But givenness affects how I do that, too. I am only one person. I cannot fight every injustice in the world, or even know about all of them. With the hyper-connectedness of the internet and social media, a powerful illusion has been created: that anyone can know everything about every issue out there and do something about them all. Yet the truth remains that each of us is only one person, limited by having only one brain and only twenty-four hours in the day (less with the necessity of sleep and breaks). Because of this, we organize ourselves into groups, communities, companies, and organizations to accomplish specific goals. The American Diabetes Association, for example, is working to make life easier for people with diabetes. It’s not looking for a cure for cancer, or a way to prevent birth defects, or policies that will make housing more affordable. There are other organizations for that. In the same way, I can’t solve police brutality, immigration reform, abortion, racism, sexism, unemployment, Covid-19, and all the other “thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to”. I can only find my own few things to focus on, and do the best I can on them with my limited resources and energy.
Even then, givenness affects what those few things will be. Each of us has issues that get under our skin, or pull at our heartstrings, automatically. This is often due to our own individual personalities and experiences, things we didn’t choose and can’t control. So it is not hypocritical, as some claim, to address one injustice and not others. It is not erasure of other people’s suffering to focus on the good that is being done, or the good that can be done inside the structures of the current world. People will have different priorities and causes to champion, and that’s a good thing. That’s why there are so many of us, so that we can all do something about something and many things will get done.
Let us take a few controversial examples, the ones where my family and I differ. There was a protest in the Twin Cities recently. A large group of Trump supporters came together, in defiance of state Covid-19 restrictions, to put forward the claim that the 2020 election had been handled fraudulently and the results were invalid. My family, and many others, despise Trump supporters for doing things like that. They argue that protecting people from Covid-19 is more important than disputing the results of an election that no one has yet proven to be fraudulent. This impulse is akin to the disregard and shaming aimed at anyone who protests that things like lockdowns and other restrictions will harm the economy. What does money matter, is the demand, when lives are at stake?
The truth is, injustice is injustice, and suffering is suffering, no matter who is experiencing it. In this election, a large portion of the country has become persuaded that the electoral system is rigged against them. Whether that persuasion was perpetrated by real fraudsters or by scaremongers, it was harmful and unjust, and addressing that injustice is legitimate. It is something that can be someone’s priority. If people are more afraid of being defrauded and disenfranchised than of catching or spreading Covid-19, that is something they cannot control. No one ever stopped feeling their feelings because they were told they shouldn’t. And economic suffering is real, too. “The economy” doesn’t mean just the corporate CEOs day trading and buying private jets. It means the tea shop down the street that might have to close down, the minimum wage workers whose jobs are getting sliced and diced, and the people who can already barely afford rent when everything is normal. Their suffering is just as real as the suffering caused by the virus being spread. Is there a way to relieve the one without causing the other? We’ll never know if all we do is ignore or discount one group of sufferers as unimportant, and the people who prioritize them as hypocrites.
Conclusion
Before I quit Facebook this year, there was an interesting post from Dr. Jordan Peterson. It was interesting in itself and in people’s reactions to it. He proposed that in an environment of growing despair and anger, it might be beneficial to focus instead on positive things that were happening in the world. Toward this goal, he asked people to comment with uplifting, optimistic news stories or personal experiences. I found one to post, a company that is working on an innovative way to clean plastic out of the ocean. But as the day wore on, I would estimate about three quarters of the comments on that post were either despairing or angry. The despairing said things like “I wish I could come up with something, but all the pain and injustice in the world is just so overwhelming that it seems pointless.” And the angry said things like, “How dare you ignore people’s suffering?” and “How could you think anything about the current system/state of things is good, when it got here by people doing bad things?” It was sad and ironic; and the entire point of the post was lost.
I hope the point will not be lost entirely. Indeed, I have hope — and faith — that things like joy, love, and gratitude will continue to exist, no matter how rage-driven clickbait continues to escalate the heat of division. And I, too, have my grievances with the world as it is; but though my story might not have a happy beginning, that doesn’t make me who I am. It will not drive me to anger or despair. I choose a posture of gratitude toward the givenness of life.