AMMDI is an open-notebook hypertext writing experiment, authored by Mike Travers aka mtraven. It's a work in progress and some parts are more polished than others. Comments welcome! More.

Thus, under the spell ofthe morality of custom, man despises first the causes, secondly the consequences, thirdly reality, and weaves all his higher feelings (of reverence, of sublimity, of pride, of gratitude, of love) into an imaginary world: the so-called higher world.

Well, and what is freedom? First of all, freedom seems to mean the absence of external restraint, the freedom to play. When we are free from external tyrannies, we seek freedom from our inner limitations. We find that in order to play we must be nimble and flexible and imaginative, we must be able to have fun, we must feel enjoyment, and sometimes long imprisonment has made us numb and sluggish. And then we find out that there are, paradoxically, disciplines which create in us capacities which allow us to seek our freedom. We learn how to rid ourselves of our boredom, our stiffness, our repressed anger, our anxiety. We become brighter, more energy flows through us, our limbs rise, our spirit comes alive in our tissues. And our gratitude is immeasurable for all the hours of labor that carry us forward.

gratitude

30 Oct 2021 - 30 Nov 2025

Nov 27th, 2025 is Thanksgiving and whatever you want to say about the specifics of the American tradition, it's kind of nice to have a holiday dedicated to gratitude in particular. Gratitude is not exactly an emotion, more of a stance I guess. Not an easy one for an irreligious modern to achieve, because of the obvious question of gratitude to whom exactly?

It doesn't matter. Gratitude to a specific agent isn't really gratitude, but a kind of indebtedness, it's measured, in the realm of economics. Real gratitude is based on gift economics, not exchange economics.

That is to say, it involves gracious acceptance of something that cannot be repaid (if it is repaid, it is not a gift) and not earned or deserved. True gifts have no true giver.

God has many disabilities relative to man, and one is an inability to express gratitude. The "to whom" question in his case is even more fraught. To himself I guess? Doesn't make much sense, doesn't seem like it could be true gratitude.

But for the social contract tradition that inaugurated liberalism, society and authority are artificial rather than natural. And they arise only by way of a kind of contract, analogous to the kind of contract that might exist between buyer and seller or employer and employee. On this picture, one’s country is like a homeowner’s association one has joined rather than a family one has been born into, and governing authorities are like security guards one has hired or a lawyer one has retained. And gratitude is simply not the sort of thing one generally feels toward one’s homeowner’s association, employee, or lawyer.