Writer finds that gratitude is a feeling and an 'ethical choice'; but she says there's also a darker side

Gratefulness can be a 'spiritual practice.'

One writer didn't like the social implications of "gratefulness," but as she worked to embrace the practice, a different picture of what the experience is emerged. "For the author of a book on gratitude, Diana Butler Bass has what might be a surprising admission: Gratitude didn't come naturally to her," reports Erik Gunn of the Wisconsin Examiner. Bass published Grateful, her 12th book, five years ago. But before writing it, 'I would not have considered myself a naturally grateful person,' she says. 'I always struggled with cultivating gratitude, or even trying to understand why I should.'"

Exploring different angles of what she described as a "spiritual practice," Bass "came out of the experience 'realizing that gratitude is both a feeling — one that arises naturally as a response to beauty or wonder or an unexpected gift — and it's also an ethical choice'. . . . Nevertheless, writing the book pointed her to evidence that historically, gratitude has had a darker side. It has often been part of a system of hierarchy, she writes, that reinforces social divisions and solidifies power in the hands of a few at the expense of many. "

Bass has been a "leading liberal Protestant chronicler of contemporary American Christian thought as it intersects with culture, politics and generational change," Gunn reports. "Her research for Grateful began in 2015 and kicked into higher gear when she saw a survey reporting that 78% of Americans told pollsters they felt 'strongly thankful' in the previous week. That astonished her. She'd read research about the beneficial impact of gratitude. Yet in political surveys leading into the 2016 presidential election year, she saw little evidence of that sort of outcome."

The darker side of gratefulness exists from the transactional experience many Americans have of giving. "In American culture especially, . . . .'(w)e think about it as a transaction — somebody gives me something, and I have to do something in return. There's a real quid pro quo mentality that we've attached to gratitude. . .. . Besides being transactional, this sort of gratitude system also has a hierarchy. 'Benefactors are richer, better, more moral,' she says, acting out of a sense of obligation, with the implicit superiority that carries."

As the holiday season speeds past, how can gratefulness become an experience that isn't linked to hierarchy? Gunn writes, "Bass says, as a form of personal spiritual discipline, gratitude can be a call to social justice on behalf of everyone, everywhere, at a time when social ties are fraying and severed."