考研阅读精选：假日精神无从感激
Holiday spiritThanks for nothing
假日精神无从感激
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NO HOLIDAY is safe from the scolds. Independence Day? A celebration ofthe American exceptionalism behind our bogus claims to legitimacy as a"benevolent" neo-imperialist global hegemony. Christmas? A sickeningdisplay of consumerism run amok and a case study in Christian mythologycrowding out pagan good cheer. (Take your pick.) Memorial Day? Anexercise in the elevation of those who kill and die for the statewithout asking too many questions about it. Veterans Day?Ditto.Labor Day is all right, I guess, if you're red.Columbus Day? Aska Seminole. Now here we are on the cusp of Thanksgiving. Other thanlamenting the white man's plundering, murdering, colonizing ways (ask anIroquois) what else is there to say to take the fun out of the nationalday of gluttony here in the home of the bravely obese? Plenty!
Before you stuff yourself to the gills with the flesh of innocent birdsfattened in disgustingly inhumane conditions, please read this discourseon "Thanksgiving as 'System Justification'", by Jon Hanson, the AlfredSmart Professor of Law at Harvard. In a nutshell, "system justification"is the socio-psychological process by which turkeys come to welcometheir impending slaughter. Every society is rife with injustice. Systemjustification is how we convince ourselves it's all for the best.
"Manifestationsof the system-justification motive pervade many of our cognitions,ideologies, and institutions", Mr. Hanson says. For example, HarvardUniversity might be said to make extremely privileged people comfortablein their mostly unearned wealth and prestige by helping them develop asuper-classy shared vocabulary for expressing their mildly guiltyfeelings about it. Mr Hanson, demonstrating how this is done, worriesthat Thanksgiving, as Americans celebrate it, is but one more propshoring up the corrupt current dispensation.
No doubt, expressinggratitude is generally a healthy and appropriate practice. Indeed, mysense is that Americans too rarely acknowledge the debt they owe toother people and other influences. There ought to be more thanks giving.
Nonetheless, the norm of Thanksgiving seems to be to encourage aparticular kind of gratitude — a generic thankfulness for the statusquo. Indeed, when one looks at what many describe as the true meaning ofthe holiday, the message is generally one of announcing that currentarrangements — good and bad — are precisely as they should be.
Mr. Hanson goes on to detect in Thanksgiving speeches from GeorgeWashington to George W. Bush the message that America's prosperity is amanifestation of divine providence, evidence that God reserves a specialplace in His infinite heart for us Americans. "From such aperspective", Mr. Hanson observes, "giving thanks begins to look like ameans of assuring ourselves that our current situation was ordained bysome higher, legitimating force. To doubt the legitimacy of existingarrangements is to be ungrateful."
In response to a blog postsuggesting that true spirit of Thanksgiving means we should be "thankfulno matter what our situation in life", Mr. Hanson asks "should we alsobe thankful for unfairness or injustice? And if we are to be gratefulfor our sorrows, should we then be indifferent toward their earthlycauses?" I should say not. We must never allow ourselves to lapse intoindifference toward politicians. Not to say that one must be deranged byconstant outrage over the world's injustices and their causes. Justdon't breathe too easy. Don't relax too much. If you think it's onlyhealthy to set aside politics now and then and bask wholeheartedly inthe warm love of family, you're probably part of the problem.
Mr. Hanson concludes:
If your inclination on Thanksgiving is to give thanks, I do not mean todiscourage you. My only suggestion is that you give thanks, not for thestatus quo, but for all of the ways in which your (our) own advantagesand privileges are the consequence of situation, and not simply yourindividual (our national) disposition. Further, I’d encourage you togive thanks to all those who have gone before you who have doubted thestatus quo and who have identified injustice and impatiently foughtagainst it.
Happy Thanksgiving!
But not too happy. Have a totally thrilling Buy Nothing Day, though!And may your occupation of Christmas be bright.
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