On Sunday, October 18, I gave a sermon on the topic of gratitude at the Boston gathering of Sunday Assembly, a non-theist church. Here are my slides from the talk.
2. “a large body of literature has developed
showing that gratitude is related to a
wide variety of forms of well-being”
Wood, A. M., Froh, J. J., & Geraghty, A. W. (2010). Gratitude and well-being: A
review and theoretical integration. Clinical psychology review, 30(7), 890-905.
3. “when one views a partner’s offer in an
exchange as a gift,
then he or she is grateful and happy
in the marriage”
Alberts, J. K., Tracy, S. J., & Trethewey, A. (2011). An integrative theory of the
division of domestic labor: Threshold level, social organizing and sensemaking.
Journal of Family Communication, 11(1), 21-38.
4. “The adult who works hard to guide and
foster the next generation may make
sense of his or her strong commitment
[….] in terms of redemption sequences”
McAdams, D. P., Diamond, A., de St Aubin, E., & Mansfield, E. (1997). Stories of
commitment: The psychosocial construction of generative lives. Journal of
personality and social psychology, 72(3), 678.
5. “According to the Thank-You theory, an
act of paternalism is justified if the
subject is thankful that the act was done.
It is the subject's thankfulness that gets
the paternalist off the moral hook.”
Kasachkoff, T. (1994). Paternalism: does gratitude make it okay?. Social Theory
and Practice, 1-23.
6. “What are needed are new networks,
readily available to the public and
designed to spread equal opportunity”
Illich, I. (1970). Learning webs. Deschooling society.
7. “Community Memory terminal at Leopold’s Records, Berkeley, California"
Photo by Lee Felenstein, 1975
Source: Computer History Museum
10. Lampinen, A., Lehtinen, V., Cheshire, C., & Suhonen, E. (2013, February).
Indebtedness and reciprocity in local online exchange. In CSCW 2013 (pp.
661-672). ACM.
11. Lampinen, A., Lehtinen, V., Cheshire, C., & Suhonen, E. (2013, February).
Indebtedness and reciprocity in local online exchange. In CSCW 2013 (pp.
661-672). ACM.
“it feels a little like being a parasite”
“I assumed that I would be… a nuisance”
“I have not gotten a chance to return
the favor to anyone, so I still owe that favor"
12. “Offering small tokens of appreciation,
gratuitously accepting them, or
rejecting gifts as “kind but unnecessary”
is important for acknowledging one’s
exchange partner and managing feelings of
indebtedness”
Lampinen, A., Lehtinen, V., Cheshire, C., & Suhonen, E. (2013, February).
Indebtedness and reciprocity in local online exchange. In CSCW 2013 (pp.
661-672). ACM.
13. “Individuals tend to accept support from
those ‘of a kind they could themselves
return on occasion.’”
Lampinen, A., Lehtinen, V., Cheshire, C., & Suhonen, E. (2013, February).
Indebtedness and reciprocity in local online exchange. In CSCW 2013 (pp.
661-672). ACM.
14. “Athenian democrats
regarded gift and
gratitude as politically
dangerous. Elites
bound by reciprocal
services pursue their
own interests rather
than the common good”
Leithart. Peter. “The Dark Side of Gratitude.” First
Things, August, 2012.
17. “The sense of genuine
giving and receiving is
a part of love,
thus it is through gifts
that we express love”
Alberts, J. K., Tracy, S. J., & Trethewey, A. (2011). An
integrative theory of the division of domestic labor:
Threshold level, social organizing and sensemaking.
Journal of Family Communication, 11(1), 21-38.
18. “Sometimes couples
agree on the definition
of a gift, but…
a marriage may contain
two separate and
conflicting baselines”
Alberts, J. K., Tracy, S. J., & Trethewey, A. (2011). An
integrative theory of the division of domestic labor:
Threshold level, social organizing and sensemaking.
Journal of Family Communication, 11(1), 21-38.
20. “thinking about the absence of a positive
event [or person] from one's life”
Koo, M., Algoe, S. B., Wilson, T. D., & Gilbert, D. T. (2008). It's a wonderful life:
mentally subtracting positive events improves people's affective states,
contrary to their affective forecasts. Journal of personality and social
psychology, 95(5), 1217.
21.
22. Other References
Hochschild, A., & Machung, A. (2012). The second shift: Working families and
the revolution at home. Penguin.
Benkler, Y. (2011). The penguin and the leviathan: How cooperation triumphs
over self-interest. Crown Business.
Zuckerman, E. (2013). Rewire: Digital cosmopolitans in the age of connection.
WW Norton, Incorporated.
