> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://rabagas.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # I Thought I Deserved Some Gratitude - URL: https://rabagas.ghost.io/i-thought-i-deserved-some-gratitude/ - Published: 2026-10-17T12:31:56.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-17T12:31:56.000Z - Description: We like to think of ourselves as good people, but what happens when our good deeds go unappreciated? Ragna Tunseth reflects on generosity, moral vanity, and the uncomfortable possibility that we understand neither ourselves nor the times we live in as well as we think. - Author: JTV - Tags: Human Nature, Philosophy, History, Society **I gave a few coins to a beggar today. I don't usually do that, so it had been a while.** > *By Ragna Tunseth | RABAGAS Magazine* **This time, I had broken my austerity regime to buy four apples and a litre and a half of sparkling water, which I intended to use to liven up my orange juice. So I was a little surprised when my donation wasn't met with any particular gratitude.** Perhaps I had chosen the wrong beggar. Maybe I should have picked someone who didn't look as though this was their livelihood. The worst part was that I didn't get that warm feeling you're supposed to get from giving something to someone else. I felt cheated instead. It's a rather embarrassing thing to admit. I had given the money voluntarily. Nobody had asked me to do it. And yet, I walked away feeling that the other party had failed to honour their side of the bargain. > **I had given a few coins. In return, I expected something.** Not money, obviously. I'm not entirely unreasonable. Just a smile, a nod, some small indication that I had done something nice. A confirmation that I was the sort of person who did nice things. I got none of that. So the transaction had been a failure. Perhaps the beggar was having a bad day. Perhaps they had been standing in the same spot for hours, tired of dealing with strangers who expected gratitude for a handful of coins. I have no idea. I went home with my apples and sparkling water, and at least I had something to think about. Because it's remarkable how little it takes for generosity to start looking like an investment. ## We Who Know Better It's easy to look back at history and wonder how people could have been so blind. We read about slavery, colonialism, child labour, and all the other arrangements that were once considered ordinary parts of society. We see people who thought of themselves as decent, responsible, even good, while participating in systems we now struggle to defend. It's tempting to think we would have known better. We would have protested. We would have understood. We would have stood on the right side. It's a comforting thought, not least because it asks nothing of us. We can look at the moral failures of earlier generations with the same satisfaction I apparently expected to feel after giving away my money. We have earned the right to feel a little superior. But the people who lived before us didn't know they were living in the past. They lived in their present, just as we live in ours. What looks to us like a historical system was, to them, everyday life. They went to work, raised children, paid bills, and tried to get on with things. Most of them probably didn't wake up in the morning planning to become a moral warning for future generations. This doesn't mean they were blameless, or that everything can be excused by saying times were different. It simply means we should be careful about the certainty we acquire when we already know how the story ends. We know what happened. They didn't necessarily know what was coming. And we don't know what is coming for us. Our own era rarely presents itself as a historical blind spot. It presents itself as reality. We debate what is reasonable, what is necessary, what is modern, and what we cannot afford to do differently. We adapt to our circumstances and call it common sense. Only later might someone look back and wonder how we ever thought any of it was normal. Perhaps this is one of the more uncomfortable features of being alive: the present rarely feels like history in the making. It simply feels like life. ### A Gift Is Never Just a Gift In 1925, the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss published an essay on gift-giving and exchange. He explored how gifts in many societies were not simply voluntary transfers of things. They created obligations. People gave, received, and often expected something in return. There's nothing particularly revolutionary about the idea that people remember who has done them a favour. But there is something revealing about the thought that a gift can bind people together, and that the person giving doesn't necessarily surrender all the power. A gift can be an expression of care. It can also create debt, gratitude, and expectations. The giver often gets to decide what the gift should be. I decided to give a few coins to someone I didn't know. Without speaking to them, I also decided that this was a situation in which my money would be useful. Perhaps I was right. But I had already written a little story about myself: I was the one who had something to spare. The other person was the one who needed it. It's a rather comfortable arrangement. I didn't have to explain why I had more money than they did. I didn't have to know anything about their life, whether they had tried to find work, or whether anyone else could help them. I didn't even have to find out if they wanted to talk to me. I could simply give. And once I had given, I could walk away feeling that I had done my part. It was only when I failed to receive the expected gratitude that I realised I might have wanted more than to help. I wanted a particular reaction. I wanted to feel like a good person for a few seconds, and I had counted on the recipient to play their part. Perhaps that wasn't what I consciously intended when I took out the money. We rarely understand all our own motives. But my reaction afterwards was revealing enough. I had given something away and discovered that I still felt entitled to something in return. ## Sign up for RABAGAS Magazine An independent digital magazine for stories, ideas, culture, interviews and observations worth reading. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. Friedrich Nietzsche spent much of his philosophical career examining where our moral values come from, and what they do for us. In *On the Genealogy of Morality*, he explored how values can emerge from human needs, conflicts, and relations of power. The interesting thing about Nietzsche isn't that he can be recruited to prove that everyone is selfish. That would be a rather cheap use of him. What's interesting is his invitation to examine the underside of morality. Not just to ask whether something is good, but why we want to call it good, and what we gain from seeing ourselves that way. I might be generous because I care about other people. But I might also enjoy thinking of myself as generous. Those two things are not mutually exclusive. The problem begins when maintaining the image of myself becomes more important than finding out whether my actions actually help. Then even goodness can become self-centred. I don't have to be a bad person. I don't even have to be aware of what I'm doing. It is enough to start keeping a kind of moral ledger, where every kind act goes into the credit column, and where I expect the world to acknowledge the balance. I help someone and feel good. I donate money and feel generous. I support a cause and feel that I have taken a stand. All of these things can be sincere and worthwhile. But they are not necessarily the same as understanding the people we help, or the world we inhabit. And they certainly aren't the same as being right. Nietzsche wouldn't have needed to meet my beggar to find something worth investigating. He could probably have managed with me. ## The Giver Gets to Be Good There is a particular satisfaction in helping someone who has less than we do. We get to do something concrete, without having to wait for the world's larger problems to find a solution. **It's easy to understand. The world is vast, and most of us have limited influence over it. But we can give a few pounds to someone who needs them. We can buy groceries for a neighbour. We can support an organisation doing important work.** There is no reason to dismiss these acts. Small gestures can matter enormously, and the person receiving help may value it far more than we will ever know. But there is a difference between helping someone and being the person who helps. The first is about the other person. The second can also be about us. I think of wealthy people who donate large sums to charity and are celebrated for their generosity. Some do extraordinary work. Others acquire the power to decide which problems deserve attention and what the solutions should look like. It can be difficult to separate the desire to help from the desire to retain control. The same applies to institutions and societies. We can be proud of helping those who fall through the cracks without asking why so many people fall through them in the first place. We can consider ourselves generous because we give, while rarely examining what allows us to give, or why others are forced to receive. This isn't an argument against charity. It's an argument for being a little more curious about what charity does to our sense of ourselves. Perhaps the recipient isn't always the one who owes something to the giver. Sometimes the giver depends on the recipient, because the recipient makes it possible for the giver to feel good. It's an uncomfortable thought. > **It becomes no less uncomfortable when I realize that it might apply to me.** We tend to think of progress as a movement from ignorance to knowledge, from brutality to decency, and from injustice to justice. That isn't necessarily wrong. People have fought for rights, dismantled oppressive systems, and developed knowledge that has made lives better. There's no need to pretend that history is nothing but an endless sequence of mistakes. But progress has a curious side effect: it can make us believe we occupy the right place in history. We see what earlier generations got wrong and use the distance between us to confirm our own moral development. We've learned. We know better. We're not like them. Perhaps we have learned a great deal. But we have also inherited a world we didn't create and only partly understand. We use technologies whose consequences we cannot fully predict, buy goods without knowing how they were produced, and participate in economic and political systems too complex for any one person to comprehend. We have our explanations for why things must be the way they are. We have our good reasons. And we have our own ways of making uncomfortable things bearable. Future generations may look back at us with the same bewilderment with which we regard earlier generations. They may wonder why we accepted what we accepted, why we didn't do more, and how we could have been so certain we were on the right side. It's tempting to answer that they will have information we don't. They almost certainly will. But perhaps they will also have discovered something we could already have seen, had we been willing to ask different questions. There is a difference between not knowing and not wanting to know. There is also a difference between being blind to your own era and learning to live comfortably with what you'd rather not see. We don't have to be the villains of our own history. It's enough to be the protagonists. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/9c/2e/9c2ea2df-7ec8-45c0-9927-2b8a3b20e701/content/images/2026/10/Veilend_Card-FRONT.png) ## I Hope the Beggar Has a Nice Day **I don't know if I'll give money to the same beggar the next time I pass. I don't even know if I'll give money next time.** Perhaps I haven't learned much from the experience. In a few days, I may have forgotten the whole thing and returned to thinking of myself as a reasonably decent person. That would be perfectly normal. But I've been thinking about why I was so disappointed. I gave away a few coins I wasn't particularly keen to part with, and then expected something in return. Not money, but the feeling of having done something good. I expected the other person to help confirm the image I already had of myself. It's not especially flattering. Perhaps that's why I was so eager to find fault with the recipient. If they were ungrateful, or didn't really need the money, I could remain the reasonable one. I could conclude that I'd chosen badly instead of asking whether I'd expected too much. I don't know what the beggar was thinking. I don't know what their day had been like, or what the money meant to them. I only know that I gave it away and then behaved as though I was entitled to a particular experience. Perhaps I should have given more. Perhaps I should have given less. Perhaps neither matters, and I simply need to learn that other people are not responsible for my good conscience. At least I got to take the four apples and the sparkling water home. I hope the beggar had a nice day, too. But I won't pretend that's why I'm writing this.