We are surrounded by benefactors, people who give to us of their own free will to make our lives better. Do we take them for granted? Absolutely. There’s something about our times—maybe it traces to a lack of moral training or just a collapse of values—that has given rise to an epidemic of ingratitude. Maybe it is prosperity. Maybe it is cultural spoilage. It’s something, and it is a problem.
Think of all your benefactors: parents, siblings, employers, coworkers, teachers, pastors, bakers, butchers, brewers, painters, publishers, groundskeepers, financial advisers, entrepreneurs—you name it. They have all done something for you that would not exist in the proverbial state of nature. They are all contributors to your well-being.
Are we aware? Do we feel gratitude? It depends.
Here is a typical pattern we observe. The first round of benevolence is met with wild appreciation. The second one elicits a nod of awareness. The third bakes in an expectation that it will always be there. When it ends, the result is resentment, anger, even fury. This is odd because the third was the same as the first, and its absence is merely a reset to the status quo ante. The next stage in the trajectory is the one that Dante Alighieri named as the worst sin: the betrayal of one’s benefactors.
Why are we this way? It has something to do with awareness and expectations. In times of great prosperity by any historical standard, the consciousness of what we are given, in material terms or just opportunities, recedes in our mental space and is replaced by a kind of expectation that this will always be there, followed by a demand that it must be so.
Perhaps all living things are this way, which is why people say you should not give a stray cat milk. He will show up the next day and the next, wanting the same. I once knew an older couple who drove three miles daily to give milk to a pack of feral cats and kittens under a bridge. They spent lots of money doing this and kept it up for years. It made the couple happy, so there is that. It made them feel needed.
My main point is that animals are naturally this way. This is how we train them. Dogs, horses, cats, pigeons, and squirrels can do amazing things with just the one incentive of a bit of food given on the condition of performance of repetitive actions. We say that such animals are “trained.” We don’t expect them to feel gratitude; we know they are operating by instinct, even if dogs can often create the illusion of emotional attachment to benefactors.
Humans are different. With rational faculty and the capacity for moral and ethical choice, we expect them to have a sense of appreciation for what would be in the absence of benefaction. That requires thought and some degree of abstraction from the here and now. The human can be mindful of conditions that would not be there in absence of charity and grace. Feeling gratitude means appreciating the sacrifice that others are making on your behalf.
Ingratitude is the attitude of a spoiled child who imagines that all blessings are baked into the fabric of existence. They find out otherwise in time: when they fail a test, don’t make the team, don’t get the job, get dumped by a girlfriend, get fired from a job, or otherwise have their sense of entitlement thwarted. That is deeply painful.
Pain might be, mostly certainly is, a prerequisite for character growth. The main reason is that it cultivates a capacity for gratitude, a realization of what would happen in the absence of benevolence. No one wants pain, but we need it to right our sense of who and what is essential for us to live a better life.
My father directed a church choir. I recall the stresses with which he dealt every Sunday, wondering who would show up. I recall his frustration and even anger when key singers skipped rehearsals or dropped out.
When I followed in his footsteps—interesting how that happens!—he gave me an important piece of advice. He said he regrets every bit of anger that he ever felt when people did not participate. He said it is much easier and better to feel genuine appreciation for any service that anyone provides. If a crucial singer drops out, you don’t get angry. You thank them profusely for all of their past service and wish them well.
He was correct about this. That is precisely what I did. And you know what? More often than not, the person was genuinely shocked to experience my gratitude. And that inspired them to come back at the first opportunity. That experience taught me the value of gratitude. It is rare, and when it genuinely flows toward another, they always remember.
Not that gratitude must always be expressed. That can come off as flattery, and nothing is more obviously insincere and manipulative. It is better merely felt. Your words and your nonverbal communication will reflect the gratitude that you feel in your heart. That is a wonderful path to forming genuine human bonds between people.
Remember the flow of funds that fell on the population during the COVID-19 pandemic response? Did people feel happy about it? Sure. Everyone likes money. But gratitude? Not so much. If anything, it set the stage for the opposite. When the money stopped, people were angrier than ever, especially when they found that their existing earnings were worth far less. Their purchasing power was stolen in the form of inflation.
The end result was a population of people who were filled with fury. It didn’t really help in the end. That’s the problem with free stuff: It is loved at first, expected in the second round, and demanded in the third. When it stops, the result is retribution. There’s a lesson in life here. Part of it is that the welfare state is not a reliable path to a happy populace.
I’ve known very rich men who left it all to institutions, and not children, when they die. Why do they do this? Because long experience of “trust fund kids” suggests that entitlement does not feed excellence, but just the opposite. It subsidizes sloth, lethargy, apathy, and, ultimately, misery. These are not good mental frameworks for achievement, which is the only real path toward self-respect. The fathers who do this are showing love even if the kids would prefer a different path.
That’s not to say that passing great wealth onto family is always a mistake. But when it happens, the beneficiaries need to cultivate an awareness of the sacrifices that the father made on their behalf, lest they fall victim to the entitlement mentality.
The mental habit of believing that we are all deserving of endless bounty (whether material or emotional) is a regrettable one that probably comes with all forms of prosperity. Still, it should be resisted. When people are kind to you, take note. Respond in kind. Be conscious that this might not have happened. Even if the benevolence flows and flows, we do well to think of each round as the first and respond with proportional thanks and appreciation.
