And another thing: Seductive Shamelessness, Destroyer of Gratitude
“In a world of self-interest and force, blind to the transcendent, gratitude has no place”
The audience always applauds Edmund in Lear. While I identify more with Kent in that play who is so honest and loyal, Edmund is fascinatingly evil. I first encountered the character when a college friend who would become a lifelong friend charmingly (and perhaps too convincingly) played the role in 1970. Edmund is a villain that interests us. And he is the paragon of shamelessness.
Many people know his infamous peroration, “Now gods stand up for bastards”, but his more revealing line in that same speech is a protest of the limits a society has played upon him because of his status as a bastard son of a Duke: “Wherefore should I Stand in the plague of custom…?”, Edmund complains. In other words, why should I obey the rules and follow the norms of this society? Why should I ever feel shame? His decision not to follow ‘ custom’ is not political; he doesn’t establish the ancient society for the enfranchisement of illegitimate sons. It’s all about him and his adulterous murderous liaison with two of Lear’s daughters arises from their shamelessness. Edmund betrays in horrible fashion his half brother, his father, and his king. He’s a bad boy.
Margaret Visser in ‘The Gift of Thanks — the Roots and Rituals of Gratitude’ also thinks that this rejection of custom is the key line for this character as she states that the nature which Edmund has declared to be his goddess constitutes “a world of self-interest and force, blind to the transcendent; Gratitude has no place in it.” Sound familiar? “All with me’s meet that I can fashion fit” (read ‘Anything goes!’) becomes an assertion that shame has no meaning for Edmund. As Visser notes, “He succumbs to no pity, feels no remorse, and cannot see what makes a human being greater than the undeniable fact that he is at bottom what Lear describes as “such a poor, bare, forked animal.’”
This rapaciousness can be seen in the individualistic statements of our own crop of billionaires; some will call them bastards as well, but that’s not my purpose here. Instead, I find it important to highlight further how their mindset of ‘Anything goes as long as it serves me well’ leaves little room if any for gratitude or its cousin kindness. As Visser states decrying the world of the Utilitarians and the modern Social Darwinians, “Ingratitude has fangs that tear at the human heart and rip apart the fabric of family and society.”
Is there a different path forward for us given the prevalence and even celebration of shamelessness? I know far too much about change movements and organizations to think that some organized initiative will have people all of a sudden thinking, feeling, and then even acting differently. In the reality TV universe that we now occupy, our TikTok civilization, the incentives for individualization are both incessant and inciting. They constitute a feedback loop like apples ripening. Once the first ripens, it exudes ethylene gas (C2H4 for the chemists and botanists reading). As the ethylene wafts over the apples near the first bloom they and produce ethylene, and so on and so on until quickly the whole harvest is ripe. This feedback loop is nature being ingenious but eventually you do get a bunch of rotten apples, which also marks the feedback loop of influencers and insurrectionists, yellers and yahoos who just can’t stop their overripe comments and demonstrations on the internet.
One observation of Visser does suggests a possible albeit improbable movement away from this endemic shamelessness: humility. She writes that, “what is important here is to recognize that humility is an essential component of thankfulness…. Grateful people are not affronted by the idea of admitting that somebody else has done them a favor, or of accepting an indebtedness to them, even should that debt turn out to be unequitable. They are unlikely to suffer, as a recipient of favour, from the feeling that they are ’one down.’ and they’re actually pleased to receive a benefit (another part of gratitude is pleasure), even if a thing given should not be to their taste, or a service less than magnificently performed.”
One mark of an increase in our own humility might be forbearance of automatically responding and ridiculing every statement of the ‘other’ side. More importantly, we might resist characterizing their every utterance let alone action as evidence of evil. Visser quotes Thomas Aquinas on this front: “It is the mark of a happy disposition to see good rather than evil.” If shamelessness is defined as ‘destitute of feelings of modesty; impudent, audacious, immodest; insensible to disgrace’, what would embodying the opposite of those attributes feel like and effect?
Later in her book, Visser tells the tale of Achilles and King Priam as an illustration of the importance of gestures in conveying gratitude. For those who have forgotten or never knew their Iliad (and also missed Brad Pitt in one of the movie versions), Achilles in revenge for his best friend’s death in a battle of the Trojan War has slain the son of Priam, Hector. Now that king has come to Achilles tent to beg for his child’s body for a proper burial. The Trojan King and the Greek champion are enemies in the bloodiest and fiercest sense. Yet Achilles humbled by a grief that matches his own for his best friend Patroclus, sits Priam down to a meal. As Visser notes, “all the meanings implicit in a meal eaten together are included in this action: balance and common humanity,… Relationship and agreement, a reestablished equality, and resignation and communion in the face of relentless fate.”
Achilles and Priam in this moment both show their humility and humanity, words that arise from a common root. Almost five thousand years ago, our ancestors speaking what we now call Proto-Indo-European had a word ‘ghomon’ meaning literally ‘of the earth’. Recognizing our humanity should also engender feelings of humility. Realizing that common bond and source should give us not only gratitude for still being around despite our many missteps and misadventures, but also sufficient humility to recognize change starts with ourselves.
Toward the end of her book, Visser again connects gratitude and humility: “Deeply felt gratefulness is a species of awe, and as such requires humility. It implies a sense of one’s littleness before the wonder of the universe, of the earth and all of nature, of one’s own life — and before the goodness of others. Awe, like gratitude, is the opposite of what we call’ taking things for granted,’ which is receiving and not seeing why one should be grateful; it pays intense attention to something beyond oneself and one’s immediate self-interest.” Her next sentence seems dismayingly to nail our current situation: “It is the proud and the self-centered, after all, who are anxious to be unimpressed, and it is the voracious who have no use for beholding without snatching up and consuming or exploiting. Gratitude, like awe, is a matter of looking, and ultimately of insight.”
Writing this add-on essay was a way of organizing my own looking, of encouraging a new discipline of beholding for myself, and while those reading it may not consider it much of a gift, my appreciation of what Margaret Visser taught me in this book is what I have to offer right now.
