Is self-sufficiency killing our gratitude?

As a society, we seem to be embracing technology as a — if not the — means of making life more bearable.  While I have my concerns about artificial intelligence and transhumanism, they are symptoms of a more basic problem: an underlying expectation that we can and should be living an unburdened life.

Such an expectation has implications for gratitude because gratitude assumes that there are such things as “gifts.” It assumes there are acts of kindness we don’t deserve and states of being we do not bring about on our own. In many ways, gratitude is linked to our conviction that we are dependent beings in need of undeserved favor from others.

As a society, we seem intent on moving toward efficiency, though it isn’t always clear what efficiency implies.  For instance, on a trip to Germany, I had the misfortune of renting a fully electric car (it was all the rental company had). As if I needed another reason to question the wisdom of so-called technological progress, every charging station had a different payment process, and, due to numerous charging issues, my wife and I decided to stay overnight at the Martas Hotel Lutherstadt in Wittenberg to charge the car. 

Unfortunately, the car wouldn’t charge at the hotel either. One member of the staff (who spoke excellent English) stayed after her shift to help me communicate with the repair man (who spoke as much English as I do German). When the technology failed, there were kind people who stepped in to help carry a burden that I was incapable of carrying on my own. 

Someone in the e-car industry (or just an e-car advocate) might say there is no need to question the so-called noble end of efficiency represented by the electric car. Instead, what is needed is the ongoing improvement of the infrastructure that will allow for a seamless user experience. Once the technology is perfected, the difficulties of making a four-hour drive will be eliminated. Yet, if there is no burden to bear does that mean there is no burden to share? Efficiency does not eliminate burdens or human interdependencies. It shifts them. When it shifts them, it often does so in a way that makes them less visible.

Technology (and the efficiency it serves) tends to make our dependence on others less apparent. As we become less aware of those dependencies, we become less capable of gratitude. As McCullough suggests, “Gratitude operates typically when people are the recipients of prosocial behavior.” He goes on to describe gratitude as a “moral barometer” that serves as “an affective readout that is sensitive to a particular type of change in one’s social relationship — the provision of a benefit by another moral agent that enhances one’s well-being.” Gratitude requires us to recognize the various ways other people have made our lives better. 

Not recognizing the way people have made our lives better does not mean they aren’t making our lives better. If efficiency makes our human interdependencies less visible, efficiency requires an implicit trade-off with regard to gratitude. In exchange for seamless experiences and a general sense of self-sufficiency and stability, we set aside the conditions that would cultivate gratitude. Self-sufficiency reduces our capacity for gratitude. As Solom notes, “if one believes that they do not need others to contribute to their well-being, then they should be less likely to appreciate the value of the benefits that others provide, thus decreasing the recognition of the goodness of the gift, and hence preventing the experience of gratitude.” 

Our commitment to efficiency will likely be detrimental to our capacity to show gratitude. We are less prone to be thankful for the work of faceless programmers and engineers than we are to be a. indignant when the technologies they create don’t work perfectly or b. insistent that the technologies they provide make our lives better. Having gotten the technology we feel we “deserve,” there is really no need for gratitude because we have simply (and finally) gotten that to which we were already entitled. Efficiency hides the burdens and dependencies that make much of our lives possible. As such, it also hides opportunities for us to cultivate gratitude. Because of this dynamic, we lose more than we gain. As John Milton suggests, “Gratitude bestows reverence, allowing us to encounter everyday epiphanies, those transcendent moments of awe that change forever how we experience life and the world.”

While efficiency and its technological helpers may make it more difficult for us to be grateful, that does not excuse us from pursuing a life of thanksgiving. We need to learn to see past efficiency’s obstructions to recognize the human efforts that have produced the various experiences and tools that have contributed to our well-being. In doing so, we will inevitably find that we are not only more grateful to and for our neighbors, but to and for the Triune God from whom we have received the gifts we use to serve one another.