Gratitude is about delighting in and feeling satisfied with what you’re already experiencing. The advertising industry aims to undermine this by convincing you that you’re missing something. On a website for marketing professionals, the advertiser’s Law of Dissatisfaction is described like this:
The job of advertisers is to create dissatisfaction in its audience. If people are happy with how they look, they are not going to buy cosmetics or diet books…. If people are happy with who they are, where they are in life, and what they got, they just aren’t customer potential — that is, unless you make them unhappy.
Most cosmetic advertisements feature beautiful women, igniting the promise that you too can look like a drop-dead glorious model if only you use the product. This approach is based on showing an ideal that the audience will undoubtedly be unable to stack up against. The audience, after seeing what they could look like, is no longer happy with what they do look like, and they are now motivated to buy into the promise of change.10
Each year, more than four hundred billion dollars are spent on advertising that pushes the message “buy this, and your life will improve.” Yet even though people in materially rich countries buy many more things than they did fifty years ago, surveys show they are less happy (see Box 3.1).11 Depression has reached epidemic proportions, with one in two people in the Western world likely to suffer a significant episode at some point in their lives.12 The consumer lifestyle isn’t just wrecking our world; it is also making us miserable. Can gratitude play a role in our rehabilitation?
Box 3.1. Ponder Point
More resources have been consumed in the last fifty years than in all preceding human history.13 Yet we’re not any happier, and depression has reached epidemic proportions.
In looking at what drives materialism, researcher Tim Kasser identifies two main factors: feelings of insecurity and exposure to social models expressing materialistic values.14 Gratitude, by promoting feelings of trust, helps counter insecurity. By making us more likely to return favors and help others, it also encourages us to act in ways that strengthen the networks of support around us. As Polak and McCullough point out, “Gratitude alerts us that there are people out there with our well-being in mind and it motivates us to deepen our own reservoirs of social capital through reciprocation.”15
Gratitude and materialism offer different stories about what we need in order to feel secure. With materialism, security is based on having the right things: we know what these right things are by keeping an eye on our neighbors and on current fashions. Insecurity grows when we feel we’re falling behind, and pressure builds to “keep up with the Joneses” in a way that further drives consumption.
Gratitude pulls us out of this rat race. It shifts our focus from what’s missing to what’s there. If we were to design a cultural therapy that protected us from depression and, at the same time, helped reduce consumerism, it would surely include cultivating our ability to experience gratitude. Training ourselves in the skill of gratitude is part of the Great Turning.
TRY THIS: OPEN SENTENCES ON GRATITUDE
Read the following beginnings of sentences, and see what words seem to naturally follow. You can think this to yourself, or put it in writing, or try it with a partner, taking turns to speak and listen. It is worth devoting a few minutes or more to each sentence. Whenever you’re not sure what to say, come back to the beginning of the sentence and see what naturally follows — it may be different each time you do this.
Some things I love about being alive on Earth are… A place that was magical to me as a child was… My favorite activities include… Someone who helped me believe in myself is or was… Some things I appreciate about myself are…
BLOCKS TO GRATITUDE
At times gratitude comes easily. If you’re falling in love, having a run of good luck, or just generally delighted with how things are going, appreciation and thankfulness might feel natural. But what if there isn’t so much to feel happy about? What about the times when relationships go sour, you experience injury or violation, or the landscape of your life looks bleak?
If you’re facing a tragedy in your life or in the world, searching for reasons to be grateful might initially feel uncomfortably close to denial. But you don’t have to feel thankful for everything that’s happened. It is more a case of recognizing there’s always a larger picture, a bigger view, and that it contains both positive and negative aspects. To find our power to see the hard parts clearly and respond constructively, we need to draw on resources that bring out the best in us. Gratitude does this. It’s a resource we can learn to tap into at any moment. Here’s an example.
Julia had just seen the news. She felt outraged. A school in a refugee camp had been bombed, children killed, she was so full of fury she could hardly speak about anything else. Then, for a moment, she thought of the reporters who covered this story. They had risked their lives so that she could be kept informed. The news editors may also have stuck their necks out, choosing to include this item rather than the latest celebrity gossip. As she thought about the steps they had taken, she felt grateful. Her gratitude reminded her she wasn’t alone in caring about what happened.
When violations and injustice occur, trust is often a casualty. Loss of trust makes it harder to experience gratitude; even when help is given, the distrustful part of us may wonder what the hidden agendas are. Trust levels are falling; surveys show that people are about half as likely to trust others as they were fifty years ago.16 Will it be possible to turn the tide? Trust and gratitude feed each other: to deepen our capacity for thankfulness in difficult times, we need to learn from those who have mastered this quality.
LEARNING FROM THE HAUDENOSAUNEE
In autumn 1977, delegates from the Haudenosaunee, Native Americans also known as the Iroquois Confederacy, traveled to a UN conference in Geneva, Switzerland. They had a warning and a prophecy to share, presenting it alongside a description of their core values and view of the world. Their “Basic Call to Consciousness,” as it is known, contained the following paragraph:
The original instructions direct that we who walk about on the Earth are to express a great respect, an affection, and a gratitude toward all the spirits which create and support Life. We give a greeting and thanksgiving to the many supporters of our own lives — the corn, beans, squash, the winds, the sun. When people cease to respect and express gratitude for these many things, then all life will be destroyed, and human life on this planet will come to an end.
The Haudenosaunee regard gratitude as essential to survival. From the perspective of Western individualism, that view might seem hard to grasp. In the Business as Usual story, self-made success is among the most highly prized of victories. If we can stand on our own two feet, why give thanks to the beans and the corn? Yet the notion that we can be completely independent or self-made denies the reality of our reliance on other people and on our natural world.
The Haudenosaunee see humans as interconnected parts of a larger web of life, where each being is uniquely valuable. Crops, trees, rivers, and the sun are respected and thanked as fellow beings in a larger community of mutual aid. If you have this view of life, you don’t tear down the forests or pollute the rivers. Instead, as their “Basic Call to Consciousness” describes, you accept other life-forms as part of your extended family. “We are shown that our life exists with the tree life, that our well-being depends on the wellbeing