Ascribing virtue to suffering itself leads to a race to the bottom, where the most noble society is that which suffers the most
> People who suffered from oppression... and who were denied any effective recourse by relative powerlessness—developed a persistent, corrosive emotional pattern of resentful hatred against their enemies, which Nietzsche calls ressentiment. [1]
In his view modern society was poisoned by "ressentiment", leaving people unable to find authentic happiness as a result.
It is hard to tell from the quote, but is he claiming that that modern views infer virtue from holding hatred/ resentment?
In his view this was an obstacle to true human flourishing, and he hoped for some kind of creative renewal where people invented new values that were more authentically life-affirming.
Wikisource has the book online: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Genealogy_of_Morals
Nietzsche is probably one of the most misinterpreted philosophers out there (I definitely consider him a thinker to "handle with care"), and I'm not necessarily advocating for the correctness of his views. But I think it's interesting to see how previous thinkers have anticipated a lot of our current debates and questions.
Sometimes you are tired of grinding endlessly with little if anything to show for it, all because we threw a bad dice at birth.
A person who wallows in such despair and self-pity would be well served by considering whether he is poisoned by envy, perhaps the envy of egalitarianism. To paraphrase Chesterton, at least the aristocrats of old had the satisfaction of feeling superior than others. The egalitarian man cuts down all those he fears are better than he is (typically by denying the qualities of others)!
The majority of our suffering, especially the spiritual and psychological variety, is our own doing. There are plenty of people born with all sorts of conditions who live happy lives because they've accepted the immutable and made the best of the cards they were dealt. If self-pity deserves anything, it is not compassion, but contempt.
Yeah or rather that man sees tbat often those who are better have counter-balanced that better by a marginal worse in other dimensions :)
I can confidently say that it is a lot easier to go through life not feeling like a victim.
It takes extra work and introspection to change states, but it is far easier in the long run.
If you can't achieve the activation energy needed to change, then staying stuck in that rut is the easiest thing you can do.
My personal experience that activation energy comes from knowledge. The process of finding it can be more unpleasant but not necessarily harder
to put it a different way, the decent to rock bottom is painful but easy. Inflection only occurs when and if someone discovers or internalizes something new.
It's like trying to explain water to a fish.
I claim to be right based on the merits of my argument alone.
My history informs my claim, but I'm not saying that my experience defacto overrides or invalidates any other claim, experiential or otherwise.
Perhaps it would be ironic if I refuse to hear contrary ideas due to my special class as a victim. I did not do this and think it is toxic to debate.
Moreover, I specifically don't identify as a victim.
Do you not believe that some people are more knowledgeable or can have insights on any topic.
Do you have a point you are trying to make?
Feelings of weakness, inferiority, and envy, combined with pride, create the temptation to overcompensate (and involve all sorts of mental gymnastics involving denial, false fungibility of qualities, etc). So-called narcissists function this way which is why having their true character revealed causes such intense rage. It makes public what they feel about themselves, but wish to conceal.
Those who employ the victimhood strategy, specifically, lack the confidence or the ability to effectively bluff strength and will instead turn to manipulative and underhanded strategies like being a "nice guy", making others feel guilty, or trying to arouse feelings of pity in others in order to extract some good they could not, or believe they could not, receive otherwise. True victimhood presupposes injustice and injustice implies restitution and the legitimacy of some proportional degree of anger. Thus, by accepting a victim identity, entitled people rationalize (to themselves) their own chutzpah in making unjust claims of other people and demonizing and retaliating against those who refuse to be exploited by their emotional bullying. (This chutzpah is to be distinguished from boldness; fortune favors the bold, and the bold do not act from a dark place of entitlement, but the optimistic pursuit of opportunity.)
That they use the victimization as power over others may not even be consciously acknowledged by them, or others.
34% of white Americans who applied to colleges or universities admit to lying about being a racial minority on their application
48% of people who lied claimed to be Native American
3/4 of people who faked being a racial minority on their applications were accepted by the colleges to which they lied
https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/57...
Not yet. There's not as much murder yet. There are certianly parallels though. Kafka-trapping is mainstream; if you deny a political charge brought against you, that denial is seen as further evidence of your guilt. If you deny you're an -ist, that 'proves' you're so thoroughly -ist that you can't even perceive it about yourself.
Remember, HR has never been your friend. Even in the purest form of HR uninfected with politics, HR exist to protect the company from the workers. But as you have observed, HR are now becoming political officers charged with enforcing correct political thought.
It makes it so very tough when Rand's writing could inform or elevate a topic. There's just no way to do so that won't inspire an attempt at a flame war. That said, this particular portion of Atlas Shrugged is perhaps the best illustration of what I referenced in my earlier post:
"There is nothing very odd about lambs disliking birds of prey, but this is no reason for holding it against large birds of prey that they carry off lambs. And when the lambs whisper among themselves, 'These birds of prey are evil, and does this not give us a right to say that whatever of the opposite of a bird of prey must be good?', there is nothing intrinsically wrong with such an argument - though the birds of prey will look somewhat quizzically and say, 'We have nothing against these good lambs; in fact, we love them; nothing tastes better than a tender lamb."
This particular quote is a bit facetious, I think, because elsewhere Nietzsche is rather disgusted with slave morality as life-denying instead of life-affirming. But even if we disagree with some of Nietzsche's conclusions and characterizations (as fun as he can be to read and as insightful as some of his writings are, he was a bit nuts and some of his criticisms misplaced), we can certainly observe that ressentiment and envy cause people to invert the moral order within themselves, thus paving the way for their own self-destruction.
It's good to be hungry, because you will be well fed. It's bad to be well fed, because you will be hungry. Really? To me it seems like the Beatitudes make victimhood into virtue.
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be satisfied." Matthew 5:6
This verse isn't talking about physical hunger caused by lack of food. Apparently if you read it in the original greek righteousness and justice are interchangable here. What it's saying is that people who suffer injustice in this life and hunger and thirst for that injustice to be made right will be satisfied.
Having a bad life is good, having a good life is bad. It's an inversion of common sense to make victimhood a virtue. Of course it plays well to commoners who see themselves as victims in societies with great inequality. It's not surprising to me that Christianity became so popular.
I think in both cases (the verse in Luke you mention which I believe is in Mary's Magnificat and this one in James) the idea is that if you were well fed now at the expense of the poor then woe to you - ie. if you exploited the poor so that you could be rich. You can see this theme in the prophets of the Hebrew bible as well. Also, there are wealthy people mentioned in the new testament (contributors to Paul's missions) who are commended for being generous. Wealth in itself isn't condemned, it's hoarding of wealth that's condemned.
So it's bad to be well liked because some of the people who were well liked in the past had wrong beliefs or weren't good people? No sorry, I'd rather be popular. Why can't somebody be popular and good at the same time? Having lots of supportive social connections is good, saying otherwise is serving up cope for people who don't. Of course this plays well for the crowd because most people aren't as well liked as they would wish; Luke says their plight is actually a virtue so they can feel good about not being popular and pity those who are.
Being well liked at the expense of truth is often how the world works, but what's being said here is that it doesn't play well in the upside-down kingdom of God where the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
So there's no way to be well liked unless you tell lies? I don't believe that. I think that's cope for people who aren't well liked to feel morally superior to those who are. It's a form of sour grapes; I didn't want the grapes anyway because they're sour. I didn't want to be popular anyway, because those people are liars.
After all, Jesus dying on the cross is perhaps the most virtuous and aspirational acts.
As it relates to this conversation, it is interesting that the nobility suffering for the sake of others has been simplified to or conflated with simply the nobility of suffering.
Are they? They both follow the form of 'impoverish yourself now to receive rewards later.' Sure, one promises reward in the afterlife and one promises reward in this life, but for those who truly believe the afterlife is just as real as this life, I don't think there's much meaningful difference. To such people, both promised rewards are real and desirable.