I figured someone would start a thanks giving thread today.

The number one way that we show thankfulness though is through giving back to the ones who have given. We need to remember those whom we are indebted to. — MountainDwarf

Yes, that's the heart of it.

As for the organizations that look after the poor in the world... They try. That's something. NGOs do good work in many cases, but they are grossly insufficient. Their efforts are garden hoses where an Amazon River is needed. Even governments like the US, Europe, or China can't solve the problems of the world's poor, because there are, for one thing, too many people and there isn't enough to go around. There is less to go around because North America, Europe, and China/Japan (the industrialized G20 countries) get most of what there is, and we aren't going to give it up. I don't want to give up my share, you probably don't either, so there we are.

But still, gratitude is a good thing and a lot of us have a great deal to be grateful, thankful, for.

How do we act with true gratefulness? — MountainDwarf

By living un-harmingly, considerately and peacefully..

How can we be thankful to a deity or deities (depending on the religion) that look at the world with such apathy?

This universe is only one of infinitely many possibility-worlds, and this life is only one of infinitely-many life-experience possibility-stories. And because i claim that those consist only of abstract facts, they have an insubstantiality, etherealness, open-ness and lightness quite contrary to what Materialism would imply.

And life is only one form of experience, along with sleep, and deep sleep--nightly, and welcomly and deservedly at the end of lives. ...the peace, contentment, un-needfulness and completeness that is the background of the eventful, risky life-experience possibility-stories.

So, isn't there a feeling of something to be grateful for?

Worlds and lives aren't safe, but, for whatever reason, we needed or wanted one, or were in some way subconsciously inclined or pre-dispossed toward one. And, once in life, we're not done till we're done. ...till we've satisfactorily completed it.

(It happens to be the nature of this particular societal world that we're in, that its completely rock-bottom degenerate rulers have a stranglehold on it, and on its other inhabitants. That's just the way it is. A famous person once said, "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's". The rulers own this societal world, this planet, really, and they think that they've won, because they think that this world is all that there is.)

Sorry to end on a negative note, so disregard that paragraph, because this life and this world aren't all that there is.

Michael Ossipoff

Thankfulness is fundamentally a respect for another person's treatment of oneself, and thus it does not make sense to say "I am thankful for this meal" as there is nobody to thank. Still, thankfulness is a virtue, because it stems from one's acceptance and identification of virtuous actions.

How do we act with true gratefulness?

Well, simply put, we recognize moral virtues when we percieve them, and recognize the unique, morally positive conditions we are in.

I know it's a common thing that people say, that is, that we should be thankful, but if you don't believe there is a God (Christian God, for e.g.), then why should we be thankful? I'm not saying we should go around being depressed, but I don't see the need to be thankful, thankful to whom and for what? I don't find a need to be thankful in order to appreciate life, or what I have in relation to what others have. I do think it's important though to help others less fortunate than yourself, but thankfulness is not apart of the equation. This tends to come from a particular kind of religious view, that for example, what we have is a blessing, but I don't see it that way.