Tag: thanksgiving

Reinventing Thanksgiving- Counting Our Blessings- and Seeing Reality

Audio here!

Thanksgiving is a holiday rife with problems- historical revisionism, and denial, not to mention bizarre fetishistic overeating and gallinaceous debauchery.  In addition to nausea, the most common response to Thanksgiving among progressives is to both debunk and challenge the skewed narrative.

But because, Thanksgiving is not going away anytime soon, in addition to challenging the story line and presumptions attendant to Thanksgiving, an additional line of attack should involve a fundamental reinvention of the holiday- as a holiday that would actually diminish our arrogant jingoistic tendencies, and become a part of our efforts to create a culture which promotes progressive values and conveys naturalistic wisdom.

Building on the idea central to its name, Thanksgiving has potential to offer intrinsic humanistic value by reminding and inspiring us to practice what has in recent years been simply described as “gratitude.”  The evidence seems undeniable- engaging in activities which broaden our sense of gratitude has huge consequences for our emotional health and overall sense of happiness.

Continue reading “Show 264: Reinventing Thanksgiving w/ Arnell Dowret and Barry Schwartz”