The inversion of gratitude

An American Thanksgiving

I have just been in the US for a several weeks over the Thanksgiving holiday. After being Asia-based for nearly a decade now, landing there brought me both comforting familiarity and culture shock.

Pretty immediately I got sucked into a maelstrom of hyperconsumerism, caught in the obsession of buying things on sale. Incredible bargains! Limited time offer! This week only! Our biggest discount ever!

There’s nothing like urgency around spending money to jack up the nervous system to 11 out of 10. I felt like I was in a state of hyperarousal pretty much 24-7. The sense of scarcity — the idea that there are certain things I can only get while I’m in the US, so I have to “BUY NOW” — only heightened the intensity of all this.

Almost every day new packages arrived in brown boxes. The ceaseless steam of deliveries had a strangely numbing effect. Oh, yet another delivery. I can’t even remember what I bought or why I needed it. The fleeting hit of dopamine from clicking “BUY NOW” had already dissipated.

I was taught in elementary school that the original Thanksgiving was a community gathering of natives and pilgrims, sharing a feast in celebration of their harvest. (That story is likely more cartoon fiction than historical fact, but let’s not go there.) It was a nice idea at least, about community, abundance and gratitude.

It’s a mystery how we got from there to where we are now: with shoppers camping overnight outside store entrances; customers getting into fist fights over sale items; and bargain hunters screaming at each other in parking lots.

My theory: Toxic hyperconsumerism abounds because we stopped tasting our food.

At its core, gratitude is about connecting with the fullness of what is here. It is great-full-ness. It is a felt sense of satiety with who we are and what we have already.

Gratitude requires presence. It cannot exist in spaces where we’re functioning on autopilot: routinely scrolling, clicking, buying, discarding.

Collectively, we have been terribly spoiled by the instant gratification of global logistics and fulfillment. We live many degrees of separation from the sources of production of the things we consume. We have no idea where it came from, who made it, or how it got here. It is a complete abstraction to us — what went into creating that book, that game, that car, or that phone.

We are not present with what we purchase. We are not connected to the sources and means of creation. Every new acquisition quickly blurs into a numbing background of sameness, once the fleeting pleasure of acquiring it has flown.

We buy and buy, but never feel satisfied. We eat and eat, but never feel full.

As a general trend, most of us are probably overdoped on dopamine (and also, deficient in oxytocin and serotonin.)

Our brain biochemistry turns us into well-trained, remote-controlled consumer monkeys. We are prone to reward circuit triggers — with omnipresent marketing messages telling us we’re not good enough or we don’t have enough.

When we’re disconnected from what it takes to create the things we consume, it makes it easy for us to get caught up in the hamster wheel of hyperconsumerism. Because we’re not tasting our food. We mindlessly swallow it whole as we distractedly load up another forkful.

The encouragement of consumer buying behavior as a national priority, is embedded in American history. Did you know that in 1939, FDR caved in to pressure from retailers and officially moved the date of Thanksgiving to give people more time to shop for Christmas? True story.

It is ironic that the holiday that was created to celebrate gratitude, has been inverted to become a (now global) zombie ritual of excessive consumption.

How do we immunize ourself from this widespread dis-ease? How do we get back to resting in true connection or the contentment of simply being?

We start to taste our food again. We reconnect with the fullness of what is here already. We dial down the dopamine, and increase the oxytocin and serotonin.

Maybe we can start now… Put down your phone, slow down to chew your food fully, and take time to connect with whomever you are eating with.