Gratitude Has Amnesia

The following exchange takes place in Chapter 2 of my forthcoming thriller The Italian Venture, which provides a good introduction to the subject of this post:

“I can’t avoid the impression that Clement is a crook. How did you meet him, Amilcare?” Milton inquired.

“I once helped him to acquire a valuable Salvatore Rosa painting by substituting a fake for it. I thought he appreciated that.”

“Gratitude has amnesia,” Joe observed.

“That’s a very clever bon mot, Padre, or did you pilfer it?” Milton asked.

“It’s my own bon mot.”

“Some writers, like Chamfort, whom Schopenhauer highly valued, managed to squeeze a whole volume into a bon mot, while today you can rarely find the sense of a bon mot in a whole volume.”

“Very well said, Milton.” Joe remarked.

In this exchange Joe raises the problem of ingratitude, which we should take to heart on the occasion of Thanksgiving, our national holiday, when gourmandizing and watching football, we are enjoined to give thanks to the Almighty for our blessings.

We all at some time have experienced ingratitude from children, family members, and friends. All of these instances are painful, but the most painful of all is ingratitude on the part of our children. We even read or hear of parricides and matricides by ungrateful children whose parents have frustrated their excessive demands.

I recall an old radio show named The Shadow, which was introduced by the words What evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows. Lamont Cranston (The Shadow) was no optimist as regards human nature.

As Shakespeare expressed it:

Blow, blow, thou winter wind, Thou art not so unkind As man's ingratitude.

(As You Like It, Act II)

Shakespeare tells the dreadful story of three ungrateful daughters in King Lear

In Father Goriot, Balzac grippingly describes how the ingratitude of two daughters brings a loving father to ruin.

Immanuel Kant went so far as to say. Ingratitude is the essence of vileness.

Ingratitude is especially repulsive when someone high and mighty turns his back on people who succored him in the past.

Gerard Calvin was a poor man who could hardly feed his six children, among them John, the future religious reformer. When the winter was severe and bread was dear, the noble family of Mommors took the Calvins in and gave them food and shelter. Besides food and shelter, the good Mommors even provided their own tutor for John, who taught him classical languages and laid the foundation of his future education. When the memories and associations of childhood had been forgotten, John Calvin referred to that house of charity as a “frightful nest of papists.” Let us remember that aspect of his character when we read his Institutes of the Christian Religion

Is it our fault that our children are often ungrateful? Did they get the example from us?

We ought to have a care never to show ingratitude to our benefactors. There are so many of them. It costs so little and pays off so handsomely. A kind word – thanks, a greeting card, an email message, a visit to someone sick are all it takes. The word thanks is like rain that falls on dry soil and makes the flower of friendship blossom. People are like unwatered plants thirsting for the rain of kindness and remembrance. Mother Teresa said, We cannot do great things, but we can do small things with love. How little it takes to make the world a better place.

When we recover from an illness or when something that we have planned is successful, we usually do not feel gratitude. We think that we should always be healthy and that things should always go our way. We are not naturally grateful creatures. After all, we are the center of the world, aren’t we?

According to Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics, virtue (e.g. gratitude) is a disposition to act in a certain manner, but this disposition is not subconscious or a natural instinct Rather, it has to be impressed upon us from without until it becomes a rationally inculcated habit. When this stage is reached our moral compass goes on autopilot, so to speak. Right action becomes second nature to us.

Seneca remarked, Every day is an opportunity for us to do some good.

How can we reach this enviable state? We must take our example from great men and women who traveled this path before us. Many of them, such as Marcus Aurelius, kept journals of their progress. In a subsequent post, I plan to describe Benjamin Franklin’s way to virtue.

We lack so much. We enter the world as sucklings, who lack everything. Later, we depend on animals and plants for food, on our kin and fellow humans for clothing, shelter and protection. Let thank you be constantly on our lips.

Make every day Thanksgiving Day. Make every day Memorial Day. We owe so much to parents, siblings,

Gratitude raises us above barbarism. Friedrich Schiller remarked that there is a nobility in the moral world. Gratitude ennobles us. It is, in Baudelaire’s beautiful words, Cette gratitude infinite et sublime,/Qui sort de la paupiere ainsi qu’un long soupir (That sublime and infinite gratitude,/Which glistens under the eyelids like a sigh.) .

relatives, friends, and the soldiers who protect us and the civil servants who make our life in a civilized society possible. Let us not forget them.

Gratitude raises us above barbarism. Friedrich Schiller remarked that there is a nobility in the moral world. Gratitude ennobles us. It is, in Baudelaire’s beautiful words, Cette gratitude infinite et sublime,/Qui sort de la paupiere ainsi qu’un long soupir (That sublime and infinite gratitude,/Which glistens under the eyelids like a sigh.) .