Anyone that reads my blog consistently realizes that I have often praised Prager as a good and sagacious man. I have watched perhaps 50 of his 500 five-minute Prager U videos.
Perhaps his wisest, most eloquent and most inspiring video is the one that he personally narrates on gratitude. Without gratitude, a person will be neither happy or good.
People filled with ingratitude whine about and sincerely believe that they are victims. As "victims" they are angry, bitter and very unhappy (Sounds like Leftists, does it not?). Those that feel that the world has treated them unfairly feel entitled and justified in hurting others because they deserve a pass in being cruel. Unhappy victims need to lash out at others.
Dennis characterizes these ungrateful people as mean, unkind, unhappy and selfish.
Three responses. First, Dennis is 98% correct.
Second, his is using different concepts and different words but synonyms or near tautologous phrases to plug in here would be that the ungrateful have a bad attitude, and the grateful have a good attitude.
Third, notice that mean, unkind, unhappy, ungrateful, self-pitying persons are evil, and Dennis refers to them as selfish. There he goes again. This conservative altruist regards the self-sacrificing altruist as good and the self-serving egoist as evil and selfish. Of course, I concur with him here that most of the traits that he labels as evil are evil, and the ones describing those that are good as good are adjectives that I would so categorize too.
It is the altruist that is selfish, communal and evil, and it is the egoist that is unselfish, self-centered and good.
Prager sets things up rather well.
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