Thanksgiving Does Not Equal Dead Turkeys and Drunk Uncles
By: Lydia Bates
Tags: Gratitude, Thanksgiving, Existentialism, Global Warming, Turkey

Apart from the tragic history of colonialism and our invasion of native land, Thanksgiving really doesn’t have a whole lot of “meaning” beyond dead birds and drunk uncles in today’s American society, does it? From what I can see, Thanksgiving has been turned into the same thing any other holiday has been whittled into: more stuff to buy.

The history of Thanksgiving is actually fairly substantially different than the stories we were told in grade school. It was a festivity that took place only because of the generosity of the Wampanoag tribe, not because the pilgrims worked hard and then experienced the bounty of their harvest. Somewhere quickly down the line, white people got really confused about what it means to survive due to sharing and thought an easier method of survival was through taking.

Lol.

Fast forward homies, and 2020 is looking pretty dismal. Your white man colonialism tricks are coming back to bite you and it’s looking more and more like no one is getting out of this alive, save those who have the capacity to learn how to, you know, share.

How ironic.

If the Native Americans had it right, and all this sharing business is what we need to get really good at if we are to survive this 6th mass extinction I keep talking about, then we need to take a few steps back. We need to start by acknowledging the complicated, tangled web we’ve spun ourselves into as a culture, no, as a whole society. Thanks to global capitalism, we now have to think on this level: the level of whole societies. I’m not saying it’s convenient but this what we have. Most people give up on thinking about solving our problems because the scale is just too big.

But here’s the good news, you don’t need to act on that scale.

What I mean is you are one individual human being. You don’t have the capacity to change the whole system, no one does, not presidents, not CEO’s, not a single human being has the capacity to change the system at this point. Here’s the thing about it, even if one person could, like say, another Adam Smith comes along and invents some system that fixes the problems capitalism created, you guessed it, there would still be more problems. The problems would just be new at that point.

Being alive is about solving one giant problem after another. We come here to planet earth and we have to produce work, we have to solve problems. There is no way around it.

So, let’s back up for a minute.

Let’s get back to this point about dead turkeys and drunk uncles. In other words, let’s talk about what America, or capitalism, or whatever you want to call it, has morphed Thanksgiving into. At its heart, thanksgiving is a tradition that celebrates the survival of our white colonial presence, which, in the context of the story, exists because a group of magnanimous Native American humans welcomed a bunch of sick and dying idiots to their land, taught them how to survive, and then threw a big party with all the plenty their land provides.

I don’t mean to call the pilgrims idiots out of some disrespect, I simply mean they were ignorant in the ways of surviving off this particular land. They were actually starving to death. It’s not a judgement. It’s just, you know, real. In the same way that the humus of our soil is dying at scale and carbon emissions are leading to global warming, this stuff isn’t meant to make you feel offended. It’s just, you know, real. You can do whatever you want to pretend like the pilgrims were really cool, brave white people and therefore you, as a white American, are really cool and brave now because of that (which is such a logical leap I’ve never understood about the “America First” ideology), but the reality is that the pilgrims were starving to death and the other reality is that we are now in the midst of the 6th mass extinction.

We can talk about the the literal genocide of these same magnanimous people by “cool pilgrims” but that’s beyond the scope of this work. What we need to talk about today is dead turkeys and drunk uncles because that’s where we are at right now at this time in history. We are facing the existential cliff’s edge. We can actually see it coming closer and closer with every news headline. There’s a lot going on.

We’ve got some work to do about all of this stuff, most certainly, so let’s start by talking about what the Native Americans did. Let’s talk about sharing and abundance for a little bit.

Native American culture and practice was largely about living in harmony and balance with the land. Land wasn’t “theirs” from an ownership perspective. Private property is a human invented system which exists as a complete and total separation from natural systems. Within natural systems, no one “owns” anything. The land and all the natural systems inherent in it create an abundance which never needs to be, nor can be, “owned.” The minute you try owning things, the balance shifts. Shift the balance for long enough and the whole system falls apart.

So, back to the Wampanoag tribe and the pilgrims. It’s only natural that when a bunch of white settlers came to shore, they were ready in waiting to offer the abundance of the land. They didn’t have any reason not to teach others how to tap into the abundance, they simply wanted to share what was already there. There was plenty of it, why not?

Fast forward today and let’s think about this for a minute. Why is it that as soon as you think “Thanksgiving” you think about dead turkeys and mashed potatoes and seeing your drunk uncle? Is it because you’re about to give thanks for the bounty you have? I mean, maybe. But really, are you?

I’d like to explore this idea of giving thanks, or a much better and less bastardized word, is probably gratitude.

Let’s start back with that dead turkey.

How much gratitude do you really have for that dead turkey? Do you have gratitude for it because you get a full belly and a bunch of fun times with your favorite family members? Probably. But is that really gratitude? Are you really, actually thankful for the turkey or are you just doing what every other American does on this particular holiday: eats dead turkeys?

Listen, this isn’t a diatribe about how you should stop eating dead turkeys but it is meant to get you to at least think, really think about that dead thing that you’re eating. If you’re really interested, as I am, in staying alive through the 6th mass extinction, then, as it turns out, you’ve got to start thinking about the turkey. You’ve got to wake up, in a sense.

You’ve got to get to the heart of this whole gratitude thing.

So, let’s talk about the turkey and let’s talk about why you should actually be really thankful for that dead animal. I could start with why you’re thankful for your drunk uncle but that’s too easy, he’s a freaking hoot and being with him brings you joy. Humans are inherently social creatures so gratitude for other people is usually pretty straightforward. Gratitude for dead turkeys, that’s on a whole different level. But, as it turns out, it’s that level of gratitude, and even deeper levels than that, which will bring us out of this pressing 6th extinction.

I’m sorry I keep hammering this whole “extinction of living systems” on the planet thing, it’s just we really don’t talk about it enough, you know?

So, that turkey. If you stop to think about all of this, that turkey has it’s own little system doesn’t it? To some organisms, like bacterium and viruses, that one turkey’s system is a macro system but to us, it seems really micro at first. Perhaps we think, about the turkey coming out of an egg and then doing its turkey thing and then someone kills it and then we eat it. But there is so much more going on than this!

Gratitude.

If you really want more of it, you need think about what else is really going on with the turkey. I don’t mean you need to sit around and just think and don’t do other things, like provide for your family and spend time with them, but I do mean take a minute to put your stupid phone down, stop playing candy crush, and think about the turkey. Think about everything that goes into the system here.

There is a system by which the turkey makes more turkeys; there’s another system by which the turkey has enough food which produces enough energy so that it’s cells can replicate and grow; that food is being grown by a whole other set of systems; that turkey lives for long enough to grow just the right muscle mass which some CEO puts the stamp of approval on and off the turkey goes to the slaughter; the turkey goes through a facility which plucks it’s feathers and cuts off its head and then shoves some of it’s guts back up its dead carcass so that you can have “tasty” gravy; the dead turkey then gets on the back of a truck and gets shipped to your grocery store and gets put in a cooler; the cooler stays on because someone drills oil or digs up coal or whatever the grid system is fed off of; you drive to pick up the turkey with your oil guzzling vehicle.

And now you’re sitting there having turkey dinner with your family and I want you to do yourself, and all of us, a big favor and listen, really listen.

I am NOT writing a diatribe of values here. I am doing my best to simply write down systems. It’s up to you to put value on those systems, good, bad, ugly, it’s your choice.

But when it comes to gratitude, what I want you to understand is that you cannot truly have it without actually going this deep in the system. You cannot actually give thanks on thanksgiving without doing this much work. And we most certainly cannot get out of this impending extinction without doing this much work.

The good news that I am truly grateful for on this Thanksgiving is that I am starting to believe this level of work is possible. I believe, for the first time in my life, that people are more than capable of having this level of gratitude. I didn’t believe in people for a long time because I also didn’t have this level of gratitude. I skipped through life doing my sad hipster thing and smoked cigarettes and thought about how fucked everything is.

But then, one day, I decided that I wanted to get curious about this whole gratitude thing and now I think a lot about what it takes to make turkeys and I suddenly see solutions in front of me instead of just emptiness.

You can do this too.

This kind of work takes time and serious effort but if you come to the proverbial table with true thankfulness, you begin to feel so much gratitude for everything, right down to the system that gives you air to breathe.

I want you to know that I am so thankful for you, whoever you are. I am so thankful you chose to hang out with me through this entire article.

If, after having read this, you believe we can make it through the 6th Mass Extinction even a little more, then surely you know you can survive this weird 2020, Covid Thanksgiving, even if you have to skip hanging out with your drunk uncle or your sober one or your parents, or whoever matters a lot to you. Being alone, as it turns out, can provide exactly enough time it takes to think deeply about dead turkey systems and about how thankful you are for everything.

We can make it out of this weird 2020 “new normal” but only if we go deep. If we don’t, it’s going to get weirder, I can promise you that.

Even though we are apart, I’m with you. Together, let’s dive into the depths and figure out how to be really, actually full of gratitude.