Dear Friends,
It seems to me, when a faction feeds on resentment as a means to political power, their wins come at cost to the future. Such a faction will row crop resentment. They’ll exploit every human weakness, and push fallacies like, “the disparity between the rich and poor…” to distract from what people really resent, the disparity between the politically powerful and the politically weak. One way to manipulate is to convince the politically weak they are the politically powerful. By exploiting resentment. While resentment is a great motivator, it harms the people who harbor it, harms the society that encourages it, and harms the civilization that holds it as a good. This harm comes in a myriad of flavors. Despotism, economic collapse, health issues, and more… can all be yours, by harboring resentment in your heart.
Resentment is a powerful emotion and so has great power to motivate. Imparting the political faction that wields it great power as well. Resentment is an envy based emotion. Without envy or jealousy it would deflate to a mere incorporeal malcontentedness. The emotion of envy, jealousy and perceived injury, can grow to become all consuming. creating a need for revenge. As that resentment grows, so too does the need for revenge, until an actual vendetta is called. Then the only productive action those consumed with hate from revenge will engage in, is to move them closer to the day they get to say, “My name is Inigo Montoya, You killed my father, prepare to die.” Making a productive human being into a mere hunter seeker drone.
Which means, an overwhelming resentment will make a person harm him or herself… to get back at those he or she resents. Therefore, a negative emotion like resentment, will never advance, but will always harm. It’s hard to argue a mindless hunter seeker drone will show up to work on time, sober, and willing to work, nor will they start a business that serves. Those programmed to hate through the subtle and judicious use of resentment are the opposite. People overwhelmed with vendetta, tend to make poor employees and to start fewer than average businesses. They are hard working at amassing political power to get revenge though. In other words, those who have become useful to the faction that feeds off resentment, become useless to themselves, their families and society. They become a danger.
While resentment is a powerful tool of politics, it’s use diminishes not only the body politic but the economy and justice itself, leading to despotism. The faction that nourishes itself from envy, jealousy and perceived injury, will have ardent followers. Zealots ready willing and able to do violence at a moments notice. Which lowers the quality of political discourse to violence. Factions that refuse to engage in violence are crushed. As Lenin’s Bolsheviks murdered Mensheviks in the night, leaving their tortured bodies as a stark reminder, of the violence the Bolsheviks were willing to apply. While that was a revolutionary period, subsequent decades only hammered the nail in further. Resentment leading to vengeance, results in damage to everyone and everything… except the faction that exploits it.
A wise faction, that seeks the best interest of the nation and indeed humanity itself, will seek to eliminate resentment by providing opportunity, education… and only political limits to the industrious. Any use of resentment should be immediately attacked as the manipulation it is, and the would be despots who use it, are discredited for it. A progressive economist of the nineteenth century, Veblen, was asked, “Why don’t Americans resent the rich?” He replied, “Because Americans think they can become rich.” Which is the real answer to resentment. Create a culture of success. Give everyone the unlimited opportunity to become rich, and plenty of careers for those without the ambition, by limiting political power, and there will be no need of envy or jealousy, leading to resentment and revenge.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
