The word “thanksgiving” does not appear in Adam Smith’s book, “The Theory of Moral Sentiments,” but he does discuss “gratitude” and its relationship to other human sentiments at length. So it is clear that he appreciated the key role of “thanksgiving” or “gratitude” in human society.
It isn’t clear that he links feelings of gratitude to the willingness of human beings to cooperate with each other. That such cooperation is key to a successful economy is becoming increasingly clear to many economists, even though, in the past two centuries, the discipline has placed much more focus on the importance of competition.
Smith certainly highlights the vital roles of individual self-interest and competition in his more famous book, “The Wealth of Nations,” published in 1776. Some people, especially libertarians, focus on this individualism and ignore everything else in Smith. But you cannot understand his ideas fully if you do not also consider his examination of “moral sentiments” from 15 years earlier.
Smith understood the complexity of humans much better than most of the economists who followed him and realized that human decision making is multifaceted. He recognized that we are not motivated solely by maximizing our own satisfaction and that rationality does not dominate everything else when we make decisions.
My personal view is that there are direct links between the capacity for thankfulness and cooperation. Thankfulness stems from recognizing that good things in life spring not only from one’s own effort or virtue but rather, in large part, are a gift from elsewhere. Whether you call that elsewhere “god’s grace,” “fate” or “society” is up to you.
If you believe that material and emotional satisfaction come in large part from outside of yourself, you are more likely to be empathetic to others and more willing to value aiding others or cooperating with others.
Yet where does this all spring from? Is it learned or is it innate, genetic?
I’m not clear on that myself. I consider myself a thankful person and an empathetic one. I value cooperation personally and think it vital for a just and productive society. But why do I think this?
All of this springs from my annual musing on what I have to be thankful for this season. This year seems poignant since it has been difficult. I was diagnosed with a neck cancer in April and went through surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. The radiation damaged my throat. So for five months, I have had very little sense of taste, other than bitter, and I have received most nutrition through a gastric feeding tube. Things are improving, but I won’t be able to enjoy most of our Thanksgiving meal.
And yet, in looking back, it has been a pretty good year. I have experienced pain and fear, but it seems that my ability to experience satisfaction, joy and serenity have increased in compensation. I am thankful for that. Moreover, the experience has made me more empathetic and open to helping others who face similar challenges.
Because of my faith, I attribute all of this to grace. But some psychologists and other social scientists argue that my reaction is a genetic one, developed over centuries through a socio-biologic process that naturally selects for levels of empathy and cooperativeness that make a group — family, clan or village — more successful.
Who knows? There are chicken-and-egg questions everywhere. Just as the past year has, on balance, been a good one, so has my entire life. Yes, I have had some very painful experiences, especially in my childhood.
However, I also have experienced great satisfaction and joy from relationships with family and friends, from opportunities to do new and exciting things and from very rewarding work. On balance, it has been a wonderful life so far with pleasure far outweighing pain.
Is there some objective truth that my pleasures really did outweigh my pains? Does that experience give me my basically positive attitude toward life and my sense of thankfulness? Or is it the reverse, that I judge that pleasures outweighed pains because of some innate aspect of my personality? Would someone else whose personality was wired differently and who had the same experiences reach the different conclusion that pain outweighs pleasure in life or that life is unfair?
Does this matter to anyone other than scholars dabbling in socio-biology and evolutionary economics? I think it does.
Attitudes about trust, about the reasons for life success and about the relative importance of competition and cooperation help determine whether a society prospers economically or not.
These attitudes, wherever they come from, are an integral part of culture. But culture is not immutable. Max Weber may have been right that Calvinism boosted economic growth 400 years ago. But that may mean little today. The values of the Syrio-Lebanese diaspora certainly contributed to their economic success in Latin America for a century after 1880, but that doesn’t mean all Syrians or Lebanese will be rich today.
In recent years, I sense that esteem for cooperation has been waning in U.S. society. There seems to be a level of truculent bitterness on both sides of the political spectrum that wasn’t there in the past.
Political divisions lie deeper than at any time in my life. There seems to be less willingness to give up something for the common good. Many sneer at compromise.
If so, this bodes ill for us as a society and as an economy. Perhaps it lies beyond our control. Perhaps a society either has a bent toward cooperation or it doesn’t. But in any case, it would be good for us to think and talk about it.