The problem with "gratitude"

 Gratitude is not a virtue. Stop promoting it.

Now, before I elaborate on why I hate the concept of “gratitude,” let me clarify what I’m NOT talking about.

If someone gives you a present or does something nice for you, thank them. Don’t be a churl.

Many religious and spiritual traditions include the practice of gratitude to a Deity for Creation as a whole. This is good and is not what I’m talking about.

Having a sense of wonder and appreciation for the world is also good and not what I’m talking about.

The “gratitude” I’m talking about is centered on being “grateful” (to whom/what? It’s rarely, if ever, specified) for having things that others don’t. Be grateful for your house, because others are homeless. Be grateful for your food, because others are starving. Be grateful for your health, because others are sick.

Be grateful that it’s someone else suffering, and not you.

This is just schadenfreude repackaged as a virtue.

This kind of “gratitude” also positions inequality as the result of random chance, or perhaps even the will of a Deity for some “greater good,” in which case the most we can be expected to do is be glad we’re on the fortunate end of this lottery of fate.

But inequality isn’t random, and it isn’t God’s will. Resource allocation is the result of human choices in human societies. If you have a home, or food, or medicine, and others don’t, that is because the human society you live in allocated resources to you, and denied them to someone else. You shouldn’t “be grateful;” you should try to change your society’s resource allocation.

Instead of “I’m better off than other people are, so I’m grateful,” say “I’m better off than other people are, and that’s wrong. Let’s change it.”

Pandemic edition

 How not to be an ableist (or otherwise bigoted) menace during COVID-19:

1. Don’t argue that it’s okay for disabled people to die. Don’t argue that COVID “only” kills elderly people (false anyway). All people are at risk, disabled people are at extra risk.

2. Speak up against healthcare rationing on the basis of disability.

3. Reject the narrative that “productive” people or “workers” are more worthy of healthcare or financial assistance than disabled people who are not in the workforce.

4. Remember that disabled people have been advocating for flexible work and school arrangements for decades. Ensure that disabled workers and students still have access to these arrangements after the quarantine is lifted. (Also remember that work-at-home and school-at-home are actually inaccessible for many people with executive functioning or learning disabilities, and can add additional labor to parents and caregivers, especially women. Accessibility isn’t one-size-fits-all.)

5. Disabled students deserve the same quality of education -- whether in a classroom or in their homes -- as abled students. Reject distance schooling options that don’t include equal access for disabled students.

6. Don’t be an ecofascist. Stop saying that “humans are the virus” or that mass human death (of disproportionately poor and disabled people) is somehow good for the world, the ecosystem, or society as a whole.

7. Technology and automation are good. Don’t be a primitivist. We don’t need “a return to simpler times.” We need readily available food, medicine, and technology to be accessible to everyone.

8. Stop romanticizing the idea of subsistence farming (“growing your own food”). It’s fine that you have a garden. You are not “growing your own food,” nor is it good or desirable for the global food supply to be broken up into individual backyards, but the narrative that individuals can or should “grow their own food” is used to justify denying poor and disabled people actual access to actual food sources.

9. Stop romanticizing the idea of “self-reliance” or reliance on “family” or “community” in general. This gets disabled people killed. Disabled people deserve the right to food, housing, medical care, and other necessities of life without having to rely on (often abusive) families or local communities to choose to provide it for them.

10. Support no-strings-attached housing first as a universal human right. Homeless people deserve housing. Not shelters. Not halfway houses. Not group homes. Not treatment centers. Housing. With the same rights to bodily autonomy as residents of any other housing.

11. Be highly suspicious of far-reaching “emergency” police powers “to combat COVID-19” that will be used during and after the pandemic to police marginalized and disabled people, such as forced institutional sheltering of homeless people, which will absolutely be used post-pandemic to force disabled homeless people into institutional “treatment.”

12. Reject pathologization of body size. “Obesity” is not a medical condition, nor can it logically be a “risk factor” for COVID. Diabetes and hypertension affect people of all body sizes. And stop complaining about “getting fat” during quarantine. There is nothing wrong with being fat, but the relentless cultural pressure to lose weight is stigmatizing to fat people and harmful to already-stressed people with eating disorders.

13. Keep disabled people in mind when making judgments about what services are and are not “essential.” Not everyone has the resources or ability to cook their own food, so prepared food is an essential service. Mobility assistance is essential. Accessible transportation is essential. Allergy-safe food is essential.

14. Stop saying that people who break quarantine deserve to die for being “stupid” or referencing “evolution at work.” People who break quarantine are endangering the lives of others, not only themselves, and contagious diseases don’t care about who “deserves” to die. People who recklessly endanger others aren’t genetically inferior; they’re making a harmful choice.

15. Disabled people have been telling you for years that institutional settings and prisons are inhumane, and it’s now undeniable that they’re also disease vectors. Cancel institutionalization, and keep it canceled. Demand that all inmates of group homes, nursing homes, psychiatric facilities, immigration detention facilities, “troubled youth” homes, and jails, as well as all convicted prisoners who do not pose a violent threat to others (that’s the overwhelming majority of them) be freed immediately and provided with safe, secure, no-strings-attached housing.