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In the summer of 1870, Amelia Long Newman and her husband, John, left Liverpool on the ship Idaho with a group of 180 religious minorities escaping sectarian discrimination. Two days into the voyage, Amelia gave birth to a baby boy—a memorable event on a challenging ocean journey.
That same day, a passenger noted in a journal [ [link removed] ], “The engine broke and caused a delay of eight hours. ... I began to be sick today. The vessel rocked terribly.” The ship’s engine failed [ [link removed] ] eight times over the two-week voyage. Mountain-high waves forced passengers to stay below deck much of the time. One night, a storm ripped railings off the stern and damaged a hatchway, letting water leak below deck. When the passengers finally disembarked in New York, one passenger wrote [ [link removed] ] that the luggage “was so terribly mixed up that I was all day straightening it out.”
Despite the hardships of that rough journey, Amelia and John Newman named their new son after the ship: “Samuel Idaho Newman.” George Romney, a leader among the immigrants, wrote in a letter, “The baby will be named Idaho, in remembrance of the good ship in which we have crossed the ocean.”
As a descendent of Amelia Newman’s sister, I found this story in my family history and chuckled at the unintended irony in Romney’s description. How could the Newmans name their baby after a “good ship” plagued by engine problems, damaging waves and leaky decks?
The Newmans left no record of their feelings about the ship, but perhaps they shared Romney’s optimism about the journey. He wrote that the passengers were healthy and “quite buoyant in spirit.” The captain was “a gentleman” and most of the crew “very good men.” Despite its shortcomings, Romney described the Idaho as “an excellent sea going vessel. She has braved the winds and the waves and brought us thus far on our journey in safety, for which I feel to thank the Giver of all good.”
Thankless Jobs
A century and a half later, the kind of gratitude that transforms a rocky voyage on a broken ship into a treasured memory seems rare, old-fashioned and quirky at best. Some people even consider gratitude a stumbling block that prevents us from demanding something greater.
Consider the sharp contrast between the passengers on the Idaho back then and world travelers today. The comedian Louis C.K. famously observed that “everything’s amazing today, and nobody’s happy [ [link removed] ].” We complain about minor flight delays or problems with the airplane’s Wi-Fi rather than celebrate the fact that we are, as C.K. put it, “sitting in a chair in the sky” and taking part in “the miracle of human flight.” Instead of thanking “the giver of all good” for a broken ship, we thank no one but ourselves and complain about the minor inconveniences of air travel.
In 2023, U.S. airlines canceled fewer flights and lost fewer bags than they did the previous year, but passenger complaints to the government rose by 13% [ [link removed] ]. A European agency received almost as many complaints [ [link removed] ] in four months as in all of 2021. Incidents involving unruly passengers have been taking off, too [ [link removed] ]. Former flight attendant Shawn Kathleen told The Washington Post [ [link removed] ] she has seen an increase in “entitled behavior,” with people acting as if they have the right to disrupt the flying experience of others by sitting in seats not theirs, or putting their feet up on the headrests of those in front of them.
A recent survey of more than 2,000 Americans found that many essential jobs are largely, and literally, thankless [ [link removed] ]. About 80% of survey respondents said they have never thanked a trash collector, teacher or construction worker. More than half said they had never thanked a librarian. Few of those who hadn’t expressed thanks felt any regret.
A few years ago, a longtime high school teacher [ [link removed] ] noted that thank-you cards and words of gratitude to teachers had slowed to a trickle. I have observed similar behavior among job candidates. Over the past 13 years, I’ve interviewed more than 50 people for various jobs, and I’ve noticed that fewer and fewer interviewees are expressing gratitude, either through email or handwritten notes, after their interviews. While this has never been a make-or-break factor on the search committees I’ve served on, the change has been obvious. On LinkedIn, some people discourage thank-you notes out of concern that it might seem desperate or old-fashioned, while others go so far as to say it’s the interviewers who should be thanking the candidates for deigning to apply for a job.
Even the Thanksgiving holiday has soured for some. The holiday’s critics rightly raise concerns about how we sanitize or glamorize the relationship between European settlers and Native Americans. But their critical analysis of Pilgrims often comes paired with antipathy toward gratitude itself. A journalism professor once called Thanksgiving a “white supremacist holiday” under a headline commanding, “Give Thanks No More [ [link removed] ].” Vogue writer Christian Allaire celebrated Thanksgiving with his Indigenous family as a child, but dropped the tradition in 2020 [ [link removed] ] after pandemic restrictions forced him to reexamine it, opting instead for an “anti-Thanksgiving” to reflect on the “hellscape” of that year.
What’s Wrong With Gratitude?
While the concept of gratitude is not endangered—most Americans still celebrate Thanksgiving [ [link removed] ], and Google searches about gratitude [ [link removed] ] have remained fairly constant over the years—it does seem to be going out of fashion, and what concerns me are the reasons why.
Narcissism, materialism and cynicism have been called the “thieves of thankfulness [ [link removed] ],” but today they’re treated almost as virtues. As psychologist Jean Twenge documents in her book “Generations,” one of the most profound changes of the past century has been an increased focus on the individual. Narcissism has been on the rise for generations [ [link removed] ], and it received a huge boost from social media, where constant comparison with others fuels self-preoccupation and materialism [ [link removed] ].
As for cynicism, declining confidence in institutions ranging from the Supreme Court to the local newspaper hints that Americans are having trouble finding the bright side of anything. For a decade or more, American politics have been dominated by complaint―on one side, social justice movements focus on grievances, while on the other, the MAGA movement is built on the belief that America is in decline. Gratitude and positivity in politics seem to serve no purpose but to distract us from wrongs that need righting.
From that perspective, some believe gratitude to be counterproductive or even wrong. Psychologist Susana Martinez-Conde warns of gratitude’s “dark side,” [ [link removed] ] arguing that expressing gratitude could have a “pacifying effect” on those with less power, making them less inclined to challenge hierarchy or authority. She suggests that people receiving food at a soup kitchen should not express thanks because ingratitude would help them “resist compliance and challenge socioeconomic injustice”—as though the volunteer serving them lunch were The Man holding them down.
The Bright Side of Gratitude
Martinez-Conde is not entirely wrong. Gratitude can become toxic when it is forced, or when used to try to absolve someone, past or present, of true wrongdoing. Consider the argument that slavery blessed Africans [ [link removed] ] by bringing them to a land where their descendants could live in freedom. That’s not gratitude; it’s tone deaf. But devaluing gratitude and advising people against it can have real consequences for individuals and communities. It also ignores the potential benefits of expressing gratitude.
Research [ [link removed] ] shows that gratitude increases our happiness and improves our health while mitigating problems caused by negative emotions and problems in day-to-day life. As we pay attention to what good there is in the world and express thanks to those who make that good possible, we feel better, and we create better feeling between ourselves and the people around us.
Martin Luther King Jr. understood the power of gratitude, and this attitude did not get in the way of his work for social justice. In his “Letter From a Birmingham Jail [ [link removed] ],” while he decried those who urged slow progress in civil rights, he also expressed gratitude for white allies who were awakening to the social injustice around them. “They are still all too few in quantity, but they are big in quality,” he wrote.
In his final speech, “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop [ [link removed] ],” he declared that he would choose to live in the United States in the 1960s rather than any other place or time in history, despite the tumultuous nature of the decade. “Now that’s a strange statement to make, because the world is all messed up,” King said. But he continued:
I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars. And I see God working in this period of the twentieth century in a way that men, in some strange way, are responding. ... I’m just happy that God has allowed me to live in this period to see what is unfolding.
King by no means bent to the will of powerful oppressors. He was not complacent or unafraid to demand that his nation right its wrongs and “rise to the true meaning of its creed.” But still, he looked for the light within the darkness and expressed gratitude for that light. More recently, King’s son, Martin Luther King III, has joined with the “Say It Now” movement, in which he and founder Walter Green [ [link removed] ] encourage people to say thanks now, to “express gratitude to people who’ve been important to you while they’re alive and well.” King III told students at a San Diego school, “We must become a better nation. And we become even better by saying it now.”
Back to That “Good Ship,” the Idaho
Gratitude inspired John and Amelia Newman to name their child after the Idaho, despite the challenges of their journey. After that 1870 voyage, the Idaho continued to carry passengers and cargo across the Atlantic until 1878 when it hit rocks in the Celtic Sea. Within about 20 minutes, every passenger and crew member was safely in lifeboats as the Idaho disappeared beneath the waves.
Even after losing all their belongings, riding in lifeboats for hours and spending two sleepless nights traveling, the 1878 passengers still managed to be positive. “The passengers speak very highly of Captain Holmes,” a newspaper reported [ [link removed] ]. “The most perfect discipline was preserved, the crew behaving with marked coolness and in many instances with positive bravery.” Even in disaster, the passengers found something to be grateful for.
In recording the tale, the newspaper referred to the ship as “the good ship Idaho,” echoing George Romney’s words from years earlier. For all its imperfections, the ship was worthy of praise and endearment because of its service to the lives of all the people who boarded, whether they were on their way to a short vacation or a new life in a new country.
Many people see today’s America as a sinking ship, facing polarized politics, economic inequality, social isolation and declining trust in people and institutions. The recent presidential campaigns highlighted each of these challenges and placed blame for them on the other side. But despite these many challenges, America can still be seen as a “good ship” that has brought many out of poverty and oppression into a standard of living higher and a society freer than our ancestors ever dreamed about.
If past generations could find praise and gratitude for a leaky, malfunctioning ship, surely we can find the good in our world, express gratitude for that good and magnify it. We need to thank those who serve us: librarians, teachers, garbage collectors, police and, yes, the people who volunteer at soup kitchens and other venues to serve those in need. We need to thank our neighbors, too, and rebuild connectedness in our communities. As Dr. King said at the conclusion of his “Mountaintop” speech, “Let us move on in these powerful days, these days of challenge, to make America what it ought to be. We have an opportunity to make America a better nation. And I want to thank God, once more, for allowing me to be here with you.”

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