By Jim Geraghty
Wednesday, November 24, 2021
Yesterday’s front page of USA Today offered a
sweet sentiment:
“COVID-19 was all about death,”
says Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley. “This recovery is about a
renewed feeling of survival, a gratefulness for backyard barbecues, religious
services, or listening to live music. It’s a time of gratitude.”
Then again . . . does it feel like “a time of gratitude”?
Maybe if we remove the “gr” and add a second “t.”
Gratitude is incompatible with telling somebody else that
they’re living their life wrong, and that is what we have in abundance right
now.
This year, like other years, we get the annual deluge of
“How to talk about politics and the pandemic and get along with
your family at Thanksgiving and other holidays” stories. We get, “Here’s how to fact-check your family at the Thanksgiving dinner
table” or “Avoiding difficult discussions about race is a luxury we don’t
have.”
This year brings a new wrinkle, as Axios informs
us that we, “need to appoint a Thanksgiving COVID bouncer.”
We’ve been doing Thanksgivings our whole lives, Axios. I
think we can handle it, thank you.
I notice the advice rarely involves recommendations to
say things such as, “Uncle Louie, I wish you were vaccinated, but I’m really
thankful that you’re alive and have made it through the pandemic okay so far. I
know it sounds like I’m nagging, but I say these things because I care about
you and want to see you at these Thanksgivings for many years to come.” That
may not change Uncle Louie’s mind, but at least he’s likely to see the
disagreeing relative in a better light.
What Do We Really Want for the Holidays?
Speaking of gratitude, in case you’re wondering how
things are going over at Vox, now that most of its biggest names
have moved on to other publications, Terry Nguyen helpfully explains how the supply-chain
crisis and higher prices are actually good things that we should be more
appreciative of:
We know that our collective
consumption of consumer goods, from the creation of plastic toys to the fossil
fuels that ship them to our homes, isn’t good for the environment. Yes, on a consumer level,
our ability to control resource consumption is minimal, but that doesn’t mean
there’s no good in a holiday season where gift exchanges don’t require an
Amazon Prime account or transit via multiple shipping containers. Mindfulness
has its own benefits, especially for affluent consumers, which includes
America’s upper-middle class. The higher-income consumers among us use far more
resources than the less well-off and are responsible for influencing shopping
norms at large.
Right around here, I could go on a predictable tirade
about how progressives are making excuses for the fumbling and bumbling Biden
administration, how the media would treat empty store shelves and the Dollar
Tree raising prices to $1.25 as an abominable crisis if Donald Trump were still
president, and how environmentalists want you to make do with less to make
themselves feel better. But I presume you know that or have heard those
arguments before. So, let’s zig when the world expects us to zag.
The irony is that you could probably find quite a few
conservatives and right-of-center folk who wonder if, or believe that, American
society has grown too materialistic. They are unlikely to believe that the
right solution to excessive materialism is a supply-chain crisis and
out-of-control inflation; we want Americans to buy less because they’ve decided
they don’t need or want as much, not because they can’t afford as much.
But even the most ardent capitalist can recognize that
the “He who dies with the most toys, wins” philosophy doesn’t really satisfy
our souls. There is no one central authority that tells Americans what they
should want out of life. That gets shaped by our parents and families; our
schools; our churches, synagogues, and other religious institutions; and,
indisputably, some elements of our mass media and pop culture. When we see
someone famous and beautiful smiling at us from the cover of a magazine, and
the title of that
magazine literally declares them to be the embodiment of success, and in
addition to being a famous musician or pro athlete or Hollywood actress, they have a house overlooking the ocean,
worthy of international recognition for its striking and unique architecture .
. . of course lots of us look at that and say, “That’s what I want to be!
That’s what I’m going to work hard to become!”
But there are a lot of people who climb to the top of the
ladder, accumulate all that wealth, get that nice big house, drive that fancy
car, have all the trappings of success . . . and belatedly realize that none of
that stuff really makes them happy. We notice that celebrities, who would seem
to have every material need and desire instantly and ostentatiously satisfied,
keep developing drug problems, drinking problems, and other self-destructive
addictions. There’s a reason people say “money can’t buy happiness,” and it’s
probably not just as a consolation for the fact that they don’t have as much
money as they wish they had.
Mind you, this isn’t saying that wealth causes
unhappiness or that many of us wouldn’t prefer the problems that come with
being wealthy (higher taxes, envious friends, everyone asking you for money)
over the problems that come from not being wealthy (not being able to afford
the things we want, and in some cases, need). This is just observing that a
million dollars falling into our laps wouldn’t instantly solve all the problems
in our lives. It is likely to solve some while creating new problems.
Looking for statistics on the correlation between wealth
and happiness, I ran across this sharp observation from millionaire Timothy
Kim:
However, those who prioritize
accumulating wealth are left thinking “now what?” once they hit their goal,
says the millionaire. “If someone gives you $100 million and you don’t have to
work anymore, you’re going to quickly find out that life feels a little
meaningless and you have this hole.”
Kim notes that this is simply human
nature. “Most people want to add value to society,” he says. “They want to feel
productive. They want to use their brain.”
Though it may sound relaxing, Kim
doesn’t believe that people truly want to sit on a couch watching Netflix for
15 hours a day for the next 60 years or sipping martinis on the beach all day
long.
“[People] think that they want that
because they have so little downtime,” he says. “But it gets boring super
quick.”
In an appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast, Jordan Peterson
pointed out that many people’s vision of “the good life” or a happy retirement
is not really what would make them happy.
“I talked to one of the people that I was working with,
who had a vision for retirement,” Peterson began. ‘I said, ‘Well, what’s your
vision for retirement?’ ‘Well, I see myself on the beach, you know, some
tropical country, drinking margaritas.’ And I thought, ‘That’s not a plan,
that’s a travel poster!’ How long can you have a margarita on a beach? Like
maybe you can do that once every six months for ten minutes, something like
that. It’s not a vision, it’s this 16-year-old fantasy of paradise. It just
doesn’t work out. The thing that sustains people through life, really, is the
lifting of a worthwhile burden.”
This Thanksgiving, may all of your burdens be worthwhile.
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