From the Bitter Comes the Sweet

Both speakers confirmed the centrality of gratitude for them, but in far different ways. Shapiro emphasized the public aspect of gratitude — i.e., the gratitude we owe preceding generations for the accumulated wisdom of which we are the heirs. Quoting a parable of G.K. Chesterton, he described the difference between progressives and conservatives as primarily a function of their attitude toward the collective wisdom of mankind.

Two men are walking in a field when they come upon a fence. The progressive can see no obvious reason for the fence to be there, and immediately decides to rip it up. The conservative, by contrast, asks himself: Who built this fence? For what purpose? Is there still a similar need today?

Peterson, however, addressed the issue of gratitude from an entirely personal perspective. He related that his mother-in-law had recently passed away from a degenerative neurological disease, which he described as an ongoing process of losing pieces of herself little by little over 15 years.

Her decline and eventual death over a decade and a half had no doubt been a tragedy. But as he noted, it had not only been a tragedy. It had also been an occasion of celebration — not of her suffering, of course, but of her husband’s devotion and sacrifice for that entire period. Peterson described how his father-in-law — “the life of the party” in his small town in Western Canada — had basically remained at his wife’s side constantly for the entire period and tended to her by himself.