There’s a growing body of research on the benefits of practicing gratitude. Improved mood, feelings of peace, less anxiety - weirdly, there’s even some evidence that being grateful can make you exercise more often.
“… and for leg day I do 4 sets of saying grace to failure”.
You’ve probably noticed that keeping a list of things you’re grateful for has become popular advice in recent years, but it’s hard to know how to start. Whenever you think of things to be grateful for, you tend to come to the same, repetitive answers. You can only sit and write “I’m grateful for my loved ones” so many times before it begins to feel mechanical. It starts to feel less like a mental health practice, and more like marking a tally on your prison cell wall. “Wow, I’ve been thankful for my health 286 times! I wonder what the outside world is like now.”
I find it beneficial to add variety by changing the target of gratitude. It can be helpful getting specific, and trying to muster up some awe for the everyday things we take for granted. It’s one thing to be grateful for what’s wonderful, like our family, it’s another thing to be grateful for the ordinary.
The Library of Alexandria in our Pockets.
If you’ve ever watched an episode of Black Mirror, you might have realised that while many of us think phone good, it turns out that actually phone bad. Phone very bad. Phone make us narcissistic, and self conscious at the same time. Phone take us away from present moment. Relinquish phone! Return to pre-phone era!
Whoa. Makes you think.
Now, obviously I’m poking fun. Phone addiction is actually awful, and I’m glad I was able to get out of childhood before they really took their hold of us - but as is the case with most tech, there are some wonderful things phones can do.
The other day I was reading a blog post from Tommy Blanchard. He covers a few topics, but makes a brief case for Physicalism on the grounds that Dualism violates conservation of energy. I, a Dualist, thought “Hmm, I should really have a answer for this charge”, and started doing some research. Not only did I find replies to his argument instantly, I found multiple. Tell me, if this was the 90’s, what chance would I have of strolling through a random book shop and finding a Dualist response to Conservation of Energy arguments? I’d probably be told “No, but we just had Infinite Jest come in? - also how about that Seinfeld show! I love how racially sensitive Kramer is”.
I rarely take the time to reflect on how great it is we have all human knowledge follow us around. Philosophy is one of my favourite things to read and write about, and I have zero formal education. The only reason I’ve been able to learn what I have is because of the wealth of material on the internet. If you know what to look for, we all have a free university, for all subjects, right in our pockets.
We Can Kind of Teleport
In Shogun, John Blackthorne travels to Japan from the UK (This is all barely spoiler territory because it happens in the very first scene). Most of the crew are dead or close to it, and while they’ve almost arrived, the captain sees no end in sight. John insists to him they’ll make land, and the captain replies:
“No. Not me. 5 ships when we began. A crew of over 500 hundred. We are now barely a single vessel. At my age, you draw your line.”
He then gestures to John’s pistol, asking for it to end his life.
I’m also going to Japan in a few weeks. After getting on the plane, I’m going to take some sleeping pills, pass out to Pacific Rim Uprising, and wake up in Tokyo - yet somehow, I still have it in me to dread the flight. I’ll have to stand in a few queues, eat some bad airport food, and sit in a small chair (presumably next to a crying baby). My life is so hard!
“Let me at the Air Marshal’s pistol! I can’t take it anymore!”
John Blackthorne would think me so entitled. It’s incredible that I can, in principle, see the entire planet we live on. It wasn’t that long ago that you had to live your entire life in a 50 mile radius and marry your cousin. Now I can sit on a train and complete in 40 minutes a journey that would’ve taken me 11 hours to walk.
Transportation introduces so much more novelty into our lives that often goes unrecognized. Even if you haven’t traveled abroad, you’ve probably still seen some different scenery. If you’re reading this, I imagine you’ve seen a skyscraper, a forest, and a beach - which would have been unheard of 400 years ago! (There weren’t a lot of skyscrapers back then, but you get the point).
It’s Good to be Free
Most readers of my blog are from the UK or North America. I don’t think it has much reach elsewhere. Obviously, there are lot of problems with our countries. Growing political divides, absurd housing markets, increasing income inequality - utopia’s we are not. Still, I don’t think it’s inaccurate to say we live in some of the best countries in the world.
I don’t mean best in the sense that I’m particularly proud of our history (plenty to be shameful of there) I mean best in the sense that they are the best to live in. It’s become popular to talk of all the ways in which our countries are failing, and there’s a growing sentiment that things have gone to shit, but I think this is missing the bigger picture. Yes, they might have more maternity leave in Scandinavia, and Luxembourg has more money per capita, but we’re still doing pretty well on the global leaderboard.
For one, I can type “Rishi Sunak is a twat” 10 times in this blog and fear zero backlash from the government. Look!
Rishi Sunak is a twat. Rishi Sunak is a twat. Rishi Sunak is a twat. Rishi Sunak is a twat. Rishi Sunak is a twat. Rishi Sunak is a twat. Rishi Sunak is a twat. Rishi Sunak is a twat. Rishi Sunak is a twat. Rishi Sunak is a twat.
I get to live in a country where I don’t really have to watch what I say, which is really lucky. Most people throughout history have not had such a privilege. You might think “Not with the wokes! Now you can’t say nothin’ no more!”, and yes, there is a sense that we have to be more sensitive than we were 20 years ago - but it’s not like we’re being threatened with prison. People who think freedom of speech is being threatened when someone asks them to say “Native American” instead of “Indian” don’t know what unfreedom is actually like.
I have a friend who’s from a not so free country. She once told me that whenever she visits home, she has to make a conscious decision to filter everything she says out of fear she might become a political prisoner. That’s insane! Having to analyse and edit everything you say out of fear of incarceration, or worse, death, must introduce a level of stress into your life that we couldn’t comprehend. When our general elections come and go this year, take a moment to reflect on how lucky we are to have a (somewhat) functioning democracy.
You’re in the top 0.000000001%
A common talking point on the left is the 1%. We take a look at our nations wealth and despair at how much of it is being held by just a few billionaires - and I think that’s fair. I’m not a political philosopher or an economist, but it does seem a bit weird for one person to control such a comically large amount of resources. Still, if we zoom out further, we’ll see how lucky us non-lizard people are. If you earn $60,000 a year (after tax), you are in the global 1%. Most of us don’t make that much, but you’re probably still in the top 5%. That’s like hitting a 20 in blackjack!
We can go further though. We can get the numbers to be far more impressive (and depressing). We’re assuming you were born as a human in present day. Around 100 billion humans have ever lived. I think it’s safe to say that almost all of them have lived lives that are worse than ours. Most of them lived in a time when we amputated legs without anesthetic, treated women as property, or died from smallpox. So, globally, and across history, you’re probably in the top 0.1%.
Let’s zoom out more. You’re in the top 0.1% of lives of humans, but most living things are not human. You are so exceptionally lucky to be a human. About 100 billion land animals are killed in factory farms every year. About 130 million people are born each year. So, there’s some sense in which you only had a 0.0013% chance to be born a person instead of an animal living in a actual horror show (assuming you were born this year, which would be weird, but I imagine the numbers are somewhat similar for adults too).
One more level! Most animals aren’t in farms. Most of them live in the wild where they die from starvation, disease, cold, or being eaten alive. Honestly, it’s not an overstatement to say that 99.999999999% of sentient beings have not lived lives worth living (at least on Earth). This is horribly depressing, but also - phew! If you’re able to read this, like me you’ve hit a bullseye within a bullseye within a bullseye. That’s something to be enormously grateful for. At the very least, it takes the edge off of having to wake up early for work in the morning.
“Thank fuck I’m not a locust”
Well said! It’s so easy to forget how great we have it. The farm animal’s “horror show” is such a gut-punch and accurate way to describe their terrifying journey. 🥲
Great post. I love the point of contextualizing our luckiness both globally, historically, and specially (I wrote that word meaning "of species" then realized it's the word specially and now don't know what to replace it with).
I was surprised to learn you don't have any formal training in philosophy given your other posts! Have fun in Japan