On the Stupidity of Expecting People to Feel Grateful
“Now let me get something straight: you are not in my debt. You can’t be. Impossible-because I never do anything I don’t want to do. Nor does anyone, but in my case I am always aware of it. So please don’t invent a debt that does not exist, or before you know it you will be trying to feel gratitude-and that is the treacherous first step downward to complete moral degradation. [...] Gratitude is a euphemism for resentment.”
“Why, Jubal, I don’t resent you-that’s silly.”
“I hope you don’t… but you certainly will if you don’t root out of your mind this delusion that you are indebted to me. The Japanese have five different ways to say ‘thank you’-and every one of them translates literally as resentment, in various degrees. Would that English had the same built-in honesty on this point! Instead, English is capable of defining sentiments that the human nervous system is quite incapable of experiencing. ‘Gratitude,’ for example.”
“Jubal, you’re a cynical old man. I do feel grateful to you and I shall go on feeling grateful.”
“And you are a sentimental young girl. That makes us a perfect complementary pair. Hmm – let’s run over to Atlantic City for a weekend of illicit debauchery, just us two.”
“Why, Jubal!”
“You see how deep your gratitude goes when I attempt to draw on it?”
- From “Stranger in a Strange Land” by Robert Heinlein
