Gratitude? Screw That!

Gratitude. That lovely word people love to toss around every November like it’s the fix for everything wrong with your life. “Count your blessings,” they say. “Be thankful for what you have.” Yeah, okay. How about I just go ahead and gag? Let’s skip the empty platitudes, shall we? Here’s a fresh take: To hell with blind gratitude.

I get it. It sounds radical, ungrateful even. But let’s cut the crap for a second—is gratitude always a virtue? Absolutely not. In fact, gratitude’s the perfect tool for keeping you in line. The powers that be love gratitude. They’ve been using it for centuries to pacify the masses, to get you to shut up and stop asking for more. Got crumbs? Oh, be grateful! Meanwhile, they’re up there dining on the whole damn feast, laughing behind your back.

Need proof? Let’s take a quick trip back to those happy little pilgrims, who supposedly sat down and broke bread with the natives, kumbaya style. You know, the whole “first Thanksgiving” fairytale. They were grateful all right. Grateful for the land they stole. Grateful for the resources they plundered. Grateful for the cultures they wiped off the face of the earth. Yeah, that’s what gratitude gets you—justifying the horrors you inflicted because, hey, at least you said thanks!

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying you need to walk around like some miserable curmudgeon (though it works for me), spitting in the face of every good deed. There’s a place for appreciation, sure. But let’s not confuse that with blind gratitude. The kind of gratitude that’s rammed down your throat to keep you quiet, to keep you from standing up and saying, “Hey! Maybe I deserve more than these leftovers.”

What they don’t want you to know is that questioning is your power. You think the people who changed the world got there by being grateful? Hell no. They got there by demanding more. By refusing to accept the scraps. By saying, “I’m worth more than this, and I’m not afraid to fight for it.”

Dissent is what drives progress, folks. The moment you stop questioning, the moment you stop pushing back, is the moment they’ve won. They want you complacent, they want you to think that gratitude is enough, that you don’t need to ruffle any feathers. But here’s the kicker: freedom isn’t found in compliance.

So this November, when everyone else is busy counting their blessings and drinking the gratitude Kool-Aid, I say count something else. Count the ways you can challenge the system. Count the ways you can fight for something better, demand more, and break out of the cycle of complacency.

Because in the end, the biggest act of rebellion? It’s not just refusing to be grateful. It’s thinking for yourself. And that’s something to be damn proud of.

Now that is something worth being grateful for.