Thankful to Have So Much to Lose
Atlanta, GA
November 24, 2022
Three years ago, on Thanksgiving Day in 2019, we inverted the script, put our tongue in our cheek, and derided all the things for which we’re eternally ungrateful.
A few months later, those annoyances would seem like quaint irritants of a naïve age. Since that time, it’s as if we’ve been under perpetual siege.
By last Thanksgiving, the customs, culture, and comforts to which we’d become accustomed after centuries of societal development, scientific advance, industrial progress, and ingrained habits were being disparaged and disposed. The assault came from every angle, and was relentless. As much as our rulers wanted us kept apart, none of them would leave us alone.
What food we ate, medication we consumed, fuel we used, businesses we patronized, events we attended, opinions we expressed, friends we saw, and family we visited were erstwhile liberties that had become state-sanctioned luxuries.
My wife (like many others) suffered separation from her dying father because bureaucratic nitwits thought he might get sick. And most Americans were just fine outsourcing these routine risk assessments they’d always made, and forfeiting their freedoms for the façade of feeling safe, virtuous, or vain.
Since the height of the madness last year, the pressure seems to have eased. But that may be because we’re in the eye of the storm. As we predicted the other day, the trailing edge is on the way, bringing a digital dystopia that’ll allow meddling world-improvers to more deeply embed themselves in everyone else’s business.
The next decade will be rough, a time to batten down the hatches. They’re coming for our fuel, our finances, and anything else that facilitates our freedom. As Doug Casey often says, it’ll likely be worse than I think it’s going to be. We may soon think one of Aldous Huxley’s characters was onto something when he wondered whether the earth isn’t merely some other planet’s Hell.
But because it’s hard to be optimistic doesn’t mean it’s impossible to be grateful; it makes gratitude more important than ever. After all, the first Thanksgiving wasn’t offered in an hour of ease.
Things may be precarious, but at least we have a lot to lose. There are many to whom we must give thanks. If nothing else, we should praise the past for providing us resources to endure the present.
We’re indebted to our ancestors, whose innovation, insights, and industry gave us the wisdom and resources to suffer our contemporaries. Our predecessors bequeathed social habits, cultural norms, rules of thumb, and codes of behavior that make civilization possible and (we hope) resilient.
Our forefathers knew neither they nor their parents were perfect. But they understood they had something to offer, and lessons to learn. Unlike their supercilious descendants, they recognized their own flaws, and didn’t expect those who preceded them to live down to their capricious standards.
Let’s raise a toast to the engineers, inventors, craftsmen, and capitalists who provided the technology and infrastructure enabling the lives we’ve been lucky to lead. Decades of lengthening lifespans (a trend that recently reversed) owed as much (or more) to improved sanitation, technological innovation, manufacturing feats, and engineering marvels as to drug development and pharmaceutical patents.
We pay homage to miners, drillers, and divers who descend depths we’re unwilling to go, so that the rest of us can rise to heights our predecessors couldn’t fathom. From rock, sea, and soil they pull gas, coal, and oil…the lubricants and lifeblood of human flourishing.
And despite our tendency to dwell in despair, flourishing remains feasible. People do it every day. Millions made their way thru the last few years. They maneuvered or migrated…sometimes over great pain or distance… to start a career, sustain their family, or inspire us. We appreciate their reminder that success is always intentional, rarely an accident, and still within reach.
It’s the height of hubris (and historical ignorance) to tell ourselves times have never been so tough. And I say this as one who frequently succumbs to this self-pitying shackle. It’s easy to think it’s always winter, but never Christmas, and to see armed Greeks peering from every wooden horse. Yet bad as things may sometimes seem, we must always remember almost everyone who preceded us (and most alive today) had it worse. Often much worse.
We have problems…serious self-inflicted ones that are mostly a function of not realizing how good we have it and how we got it. But this isn’t (not yet anyway) St. Petersburg in 1917, Nanking in 1937, Berlin or Hiroshima in 1945, Atlanta in 1864, Paris under the Terror, or eastern Europe on the cusp of the Khans. Granted, we’d like to think our standards are higher than this, but the point is clear.
Those were real crises, existential events for those who endured them. Carbon dioxide, manageable upper-respiratory germs, and the prerogatives of men dressed as women were the least of their worries. But they survived, revived, and rebuilt…to leave us the legacies we risk today. We appreciate their efforts and their bequest.
Outside, the world swirls. But in here I have a warm bed, a roof over my head, and a fantastic family with a wife I don’t deserve. Today, I am thankful to be with them. Our sons are home, the refrigerator is full, and a turkey’s in the oven. The darkness may outnumber the stars, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be grateful for the light.
JD
