(Do you speak German? I remember a nice passage from Thomas Mann on this topic.) — baker

No, I don't speak German, unfortunately. But I speak Russian and Kazakh, and I grew up in a culture of mutual immersion between Russian and Kazakh cultures. Perhaps this determines my thinking. Every day, when making decisions about behavior, a person here considers the experiences of both paradigms. This may seem complicated on the surface, but internally there are no contradictions. Everything always works out somehow.

Well, I admit, for me, the idea of ​​valuing the given becomes clearer with age. In my 20s and 30s, I didn't think about this, but over time, I noticed that some things no longer come as easily to me as before. Again, understanding through loss. Of course, if I start moralizing about this to my children, they simply won't understand, because they have everything ahead of them. However, these questions began to resonate with me. And, as you can see, I didn't turn to psychologists, but first came to philosophers.

I'm not arguing with you. I know some people who are so immersed in the concerns of today that they have no time for such questions. Indeed, I'm sure each of us values ​​something, otherwise we would quickly decline as a civilization. However, I'd like to clarify how exactly this valuing occurs. And what can philosophy offer here without religion?

I can't talk to philosophy or religion.

Gratitude, for me, is largely ineffable. It’s a blend of feelings; mostly an intuition that things could be otherwise, and therefore a recognition of the value in the comforts, strengths and control one (or a community) does have. Alongside this comes a feeling of good fortune and thankfulness, and perhaps, a quiet sense of relief.

I think it's also shaped by people I've known who constantly complained about not having enough, of all things being subpar and then eventually ended up sick, dying, or broke, only to learn the hard way that they had actually had it 'good' all along. Gratitude can often be a state of comparison.

I am frequently grateful: for clean water, heating, food, for living without earthquakes, fires, floods, for my (so far) robust physical health, and for any material comforts I have. — Tom Storm

To whom are you grateful for all these things?

Or do you merely appreciate them?

Expressing gratitude is quite popular these days (google "gratitude journal"), yet most often, what these people are talking about is appreciation, not actual gratitude.

Gratitude is painful, uncomfortable. To be grateful is to be grateful to someone, and this puts one into an inferior position. To be grateful means to acknowledge one's indebtedness. To acknowledge one's insufficiency, one's dependence. To be grateful means to acknowledge that one's position in the intricate web of dependecies is precarious.
With that, gratitude evokes a sobering emotion toward life, a disenchantment.




That has go to be a fake.

(Do you speak German? I remember a nice passage from Thomas Mann on this topic.)
— baker

No, I don't speak German, unfortunately. — Astorre

Earlier, I was referring to this passage by Mann, when I was talking about how things almost magically work out for some people:

Es gibt eine Art von Menschen, Lieblingskinder Gottes, wie es scheint, deren Glück das Genie und deren Genie das Glück ist, Lichtmenschen, die mit dem Widerspiel und Abglanz der Sonne in ihren Augen auf eine leichte, anmutige und liebenswürdige Weise durchs Leben tändeln, während alle Welt sie umringt, während alle Welt sie bewundert, belobt, beneidet und liebt, weil auch der Neid unfähig ist, sie zu hassen. Sie aber blicken darein wie die Kinder, spöttisch, verwöhnt, launisch, übermütig, mit einer sonnigen Freundlichkeit, sicher ihres Glückes und Genies, und als könne das alles durchaus nicht anders sein...

http://www.buecherlei.de/fab/split/thommy.htm

From: Thomas Mann: Der Bajazzo

It is an interesting thing, eh? But yin/yang is real. When we're sick, we feel so good upon recovering. Better than we did before we got sick. I don't like winter in New York, but it makes me appreciate spring and summer more. I doubt we are built to take joy in the good without the bad now and again to compare it to.

To whom are you grateful for all these things?

Or do you merely appreciate them?

Expressing gratitude is quite popular these days (google "gratitude journal"), yet most often, what these people are talking about is appreciation, not actual gratitude.

Gratitude is painful, uncomfortable. To be grateful is to be grateful to someone, and this puts one into an inferior position. To be grateful means to acknowledge one's indebtedness. To acknowledge one's insufficiency, one's dependence. To be grateful means to acknowledge that one's position in the intricate web of dependecies is precarious.
With that, gratitude evokes a sobering emotion toward life, a disenchantment. — baker

Interesting that you raise this. I was going to say earlier that for me, gratitude feels like an indebtedness to a mystery for this fragile state of good fortune, which could disappear in a nanosecond. There is in fact a vulnerability built into it, and a deep sense of precariousness. But I guess my experience of gratitude doesn’t accord precisely with the classical use of the word; there’s also, built into it, an appreciation.

Do you feel gratitude?

I was going to say earlier that for me, gratitude feels like an indebtedness to a mystery for this fragile state of good fortune, which could disappear in a nanosecond. — Tom Storm

Sorry, but I remain skeptical about your calling yourself an atheist.

Sorry, but I remain skeptical about your calling yourself an atheist — Astorre

You’re welcome to be skeptical, makes no difference
to my disbelief.

Of course. But I'll be watching closely and waiting for you to slip up. :razz:

Ha ha! Well if I'm going to go, let it be Zoroastrianism.

Interesting that you raise this. I was going to say earlier that for me, gratitude feels like an indebtedness to a mystery for this fragile state of good fortune, which could disappear in a nanosecond. There is in fact a vulnerability built into it, and a deep sense of precariousness. But I guess my experience of gratitude doesn’t accord precisely with the classical use of the word; there’s also, built into it, an appreciation.

Do you feel gratitude? — Tom Storm

I often thank people.
But I don't feel grateful for life, or for good weather, or that I didn't get electrocuted nor fell from that tree. To whom should I be grateful for these things? To whom could I be grateful for these things?
For me, losing or nearly losing something doesn't lead to appreciating it, it just leads to a painful realization of vulnerability and fragility. Sometimes, it leads to becoming disenchanted with the entire life project altogether.

I was going to say earlier that for me, gratitude feels like an indebtedness to a mystery for this fragile state of good fortune, which could disappear in a nanosecond.
— Tom Storm

Sorry, but I remain skeptical about your calling yourself an atheist. — Astorre

I think you have a very strange idea of what passes for "theism", such a low treshold that it seems meaningless.

To whom should I be grateful for these things? To whom could I be grateful for these things? — baker

This is why I believe it is important to have someone or something to thank.

Gratitude by its nature seeks relationship; it wants to move outward, to acknowledge a giver.

Otherwise gratitude becomes diffuse.

Theism transforms gratitude from a mere mood into a relationship.

And by the way this is why I believe theists tend to be happier than a-theists. Gratitude is the mother of happiness.

To tie this into the OP, this is also why I believe that theistic practices are just as much a method as they are a system of beliefs.

They are gratitude-creating methods, or should be, at their best.

This is why I believe it is important to have someone or something to thank.

Gratitude by its nature seeks relationship; it wants to move outward, to acknowledge a giver.

Otherwise gratitude becomes diffuse.

Theism transforms gratitude from a mere mood into a relationship. — Colo Millz

Exactly.

However, quite a bit depends on the type of monotheism in question.

For example, what goes on in the mind of a Roman Catholic when they feel thankful to God for something, while being fully aware that their salvation is not guaranteed?

Things seem straightforward enough for, say, a Jew or a traditional Hindu, ie. religions where there is no notion of eternal damnation and where mistakes on one's part are not eternally fatal. Also those Protestants who believe that by one act of faith on their part, their eternal salvation is guaranteed seem to have it easy.

But in a religion like Roman Catholicism or Islam where one's life and one's eternal destiny are always precarious -- how do their members and prospective members cope with the precariousness of their situation?
It seems hard to thank God when this same God is someone who could make you suffer forever.

This is also relevant for anyone contemplating conversion to a religion, but also to someone trying to understand religious people.

I didn't mean to be offensive when I said earlier that you have a low treshold for what passes as theism.

Your ideas of theism seem to be quite innocent and benevolent. Obviously, they are quite different from what many other people are used to understand by "theism" where God is the ultimate threat and danger. It's easy to understand that people who grew up around Western Christianity and Islam are uncomfortable about thanking God because it feels like thanking a monster.

It seems hard to thank God when this same God is someone who could make you suffer forever. — baker

I am a fan of David Bentley Hart's book, That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation.

Hart quotes St. Isaac of Nineveh:

It is not the way of the compassionate Maker to create rational beings in order to deliver them over mercilessly to unending affliction in punishment for things of which he knew even before they were fashioned, aware how they would turn out when He created them—and whom nonetheless he created. (64)

Christians must not simply hope for universal salvation but radically affirm it (66, 102-103, 149).

https://christianscholars.com/shall-all-be-saved-david-bentley-harts-vision-of-universal-reconciliation-an-extended-review/

Of course Universal Reconciliation is an official heresy but what can you do.

I am also a fan of Karl Barth's view:

“We may not say that all will be saved, but we may confidently hope that all will be saved in Jesus Christ.”

Then finally there is C.S. Lewis' famous phrase from The Great Divorce - "The doors of Hell are locked from the inside".

PS: There is also this:

If others go to hell, then I will too. But I do not believe that; on the contrary I believe that all will be saved, myself with them—something which arouses my deepest amazement.
— SØREN KIERKEGAARD,
AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL JOURNALS

Hart, David Bentley. That All Shall Be Saved: Heaven, Hell, and Universal Salvation (p. 198). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.

There are so many great quotes from DBH's book I'll see if I can find good ones.

No offense taken.

Perhaps you expressed yourself perfectly in context.

The thing is, I've never met anyone who truly doesn't believe in God (what they call transcendence by another word doesn't count), except perhaps philosophers who are capable of transcending these boundaries for a moment, after which they always return.

Most people, even when professing disbelief, often replace God with other "absolute" concepts: science, progress, morality, or personal mission.

A little later, I want to publish a post based on these ideas.

Of course Universal Reconciliation is an official heresy but what can you do. — Colo Millz

But it's not a religion. So what good is it?
Who is David Bentley Hart that we could put our trust in him as far as our eternal fate is concerned?

The thing is, I've never met anyone who truly doesn't believe in God (what they call transcendence by another word doesn't count), except perhaps philosophers who are capable of transcending these boundaries for a moment, after which they always return.

Most people, even when professing disbelief, often replace God with other "absolute" concepts: science, progress, morality, or personal mission. — Astorre

It's strange to equate belief in God with some other belief in some "higher entity" or some "higher power" and to then call the latter "theism". The worshippers of the golden calf are not theists.
Yes, people have highest principles etc. other than God, and they worship entitites or things other than God, but to call them "theists" is to render the term "theism" meaningless. If everyone is a theist, then nobody is.