Atheist's grace

I was recently reminded of the old Scottish grace, “Some hae meat that canna eat, And some wad eat that want it; But we hae meat, and we can eat, And sae the Lord be thankit.” Expressing thanks for one’s blessings is a wonderful practice – but what if there’s no one to be thanked?

In religious traditions with benevolent deities, one thanks them. Most children grow up with adults who provide us with what we need, and it’s easy (and evolutionarily prudent) for kids to thank them with gratitude. I can imagine how this attitude generalizes through anthropomorphism to gifts with less obvious givers, such as good fortune. (And for more ambiguous gifts, too: the Romans’ Fortuna was not only the source of prosperity but also the goddess of chance or lot.)

It's trickier when a religion doesn’t have deities, such as Theravada Buddhism. In my limited experience of that tradition, the practice of loving-kindness includes sharing one’s “merits” with others. Unlike providential blessings, though, merit arises through one’s own actions, either in this life or previous ones. It’s not clear to whom one should be grateful to regarding self-acquired merits. (Merit transferred from others is a straightforward act of generosity on their part.)

Giving often has reciprocal qualities. It can be transactional (cf. gift economies) or something deeper like Martin Buber’s I and Thou relationship. One can have an I-Thou relationship with inanimate objects, but in this case of giving I’m imagining it would be somehow reciprocated: the giver recognizes the gratitude of the recipient.

So, to whom can be grateful for blessings that don’t come from particular people, including good fortune and social benefits? An obvious path is to anthropomorphize institutions and pretend that they’re benevolent agents with whom one stands in relationship. If the institutions are in fact egregores (see Scious organizations), one isn’t pretending; they really exist.

Let’s assume at least some of these organizations are egregores, aka orgregores or o-gregores. The relationship one can have with them depends on their degree of consciousness. If an orgregore can recognize me as the recipient of a gift, then there can be reciprocity. If, in addition, it can experience feelings, the reciprocity could be emotional and not just transactional.

It is also possible (and perhaps more likely) that an orgregore would feel gratitude to another orgregore. They certainly operate at a transactional level (cf. inter-company contracts), but if one or both can “feel” then there could be emotional gratitude as well. However, such feelings are difficult, and perhaps impossible, for lower-level entities like us to observe.