I think you can still say that “justice” maybe matters too much to a lot of people though on the populist right and left. My elitism is the primary reason I could never be with any populist movement, but I also just consider it petty and pathetic that someone who votes for Trump for instance could be driven hysterical over illegal immigration or transgender story hour and the basis of their thinking is simply that the “elites” all betrayed them—same with the populist left which is just as ridiculous with their obsession with “billionaires” rigging the economy and their fixation on, to the point of fetishization of, racial and sexual minorities. Like I care about fairness as much as the next guy, but I would say people care about it so much that it’s temperamental and their resentment is to blame these days. So I side with that Adorney guy philosophically. I expect and demand more from human character than what we’re getting. And to me everyone is a spoiled fucking infant. And everyone who went nuts during the covid lockdowns. Like I hated the lockdowns too. It didn’t make me irate at my government though. I was more angry with how afraid everyone was of getting a disease that only posed a serious risk to old people. It’s the cheapest thing to me to blame your government or the economy for all your personal issues and failures.
I don't think your beliefs are consistent. You say that you hate lots of people who were scared by COVID, but not the government. But the government is made up of people! The kind of people you're complaining about were running the government!
Yeah that’s true. Still given the government is always trying to control us, I wish the masses would give less of a shit especially when covid was hardly pre-revolutionary france—no one was dying of hunger and taxes—and there was no Vietnam war either. I think people are just extremely bored and fragile now and resentful and they feel very disempowered. One way for them to feel empowered again is to start railing against the government. I forgot to mention Jan 6 that happened at around the same time. Like don’t you think people need to get a grip? After everything we’ve been through the last century with two world wars and the great depression, the aids crisis. Now people learn they might have to get a covid vaccine or they hear Trump narrowly lost to Biden or another black guy died at the hands of a white cop, and they think it’s either armageddon or an opportunity for a selfie or it’s both (my personal theory)
I think you're right that I probably don't know the DR as well as I think I do. When I said they were mostly Christian, I was pulling from a) the DR folks who have "Christ is King" in their bios or similar), and b) a statement by Colin Wright that the DR is basically "Christianity+" (a reference, I believe, to "atheism+"). But I could have been mistaken about the extent to which the DR is Christian! I know, among other things, that Hunter Ash for instance wouldn't call himself Christian.
I do disagree with you in that I see resentment and injustice as very separate issues. I think that you can acknowledge injustice without feeling resentment about said injustice. That's why, for instance, I opened my piece by stating several of what I see as injustices.
But I am curious: how do you personally see resentment as benefiting you?
I think that "How has resentment benefitted you?" is the wrong question.
Our feelings should be aligned with reality. When you see injustice, you should be angry about it, regardless of whether anger has a quantifiable benefit to you or not. When good things happen to you, you should feel happy about them. Your feelings should flow from an alignment with reality. You shouldn't choose how to feel based on some cost and benefit calculation.
"Our feelings should be aligned with reality."--fair enough!
I suppose I see ultimate reality this way: I see a God who knows everything about you, every hair on your head and every thought you've ever had, and who loves you with an infinite and unfailing love. I see a God who loves you every bit as much as He loved Mother Teresa or the apostles.
I also see a God who delights in (and is eager to) bless us and provide for us.
From that, the emotions that seem to align best with that reality are feelings of love, joy, and peace; rather than bitterness or resentment. To me, it doesn't matter too much what people do or don't do to me, because those actions are less important than what God does with me. What other people think of me can be useful feedback, but I don't feel resentment over it because to me what other people think of me matters less than what God thinks of me.
Well written. Resentment can be a legitimate response to injustice, not just a negative emotion. Dismissing it entirely risks ignoring real grievances. In Objectivism, healthy emotions are those in sync with your rational mind. Emotions like resentment can drive individuals to seek justice, which is essential for a rational society. https://posocap.com
I think the idea is that your view of reality is shaped by your emotional state.
It’s true that wokes believe that police shootings of blacks are 10,000% higher then they actually are. But why do they believe that? I would certainly at least google the issue before I started rioting over it. And I would ask if such a reality made logical sense or conformed with my lived experience.
But what if most people don’t form beliefs that way. I do know a lot of people for whom negativity and resentment are just a natural state. They experience these emotions whether justified or not. If not justified they rationalize justifications, from whole cloth if necessary. That such people could fervently believe woke nonsense doesn’t surprise me. They weren’t reasoned into it, and they won’t be reasoned out of it.
There is also another problem you alude to which is that being justified in your resentment and resentment being useful are sometimes different. The Jews of Israel in Jesus day were certainly justified in disliking Roman rule. The taxes were so onerous they were often sold into slavery. The local rulers the Roman’s backed were often assholes. Etc etc. the Jews were justified in their resentment.
But what good would it do. The Jews got curb stomped by the Roman’s when they revolted. Revolt was a disaster for the Jews. And if they had won here’s a prediction. Rule by a Jewish elite wouldn’t have been all that different then rule by Rome, and if Rome was kicked out probably some other empire would come in (as was the entire history of isreal).
Does anyone think that being ruled by the people that killed Jesus would have been an improvement over the Pax Romana?
Truth is that correct move for Jews at that time was to swallow their perfectly justified resentment and work on self improvement. The Jews that did literally conquered Rome through cultural conversion.
I’m not saying that people should just accept getting screwed all the time (and I don’t think that is what Jesus is saying in the Bible), but you gotta pick and choose your battles and you can’t be angry all day.
You’ve been putting out great stuff recently and I totally agree. People in the modern world aren’t concerned è with justice anymore. A serious society takes real justice seriously
Your points seem solid to me. However, I think Hanania is probably correct that a lot of MAGA folks (if not dissident right folks) are full of the kind of resentment that often exists among low status types.
And non-MAGA folks aren’t? I see a lot of resentment everywhere. The idea that it is uniquely a problem in MAGA is a giant cope. (Or in Hanania’s case, a deliberate troll tactic to gin up rage-engagement)
Of course. But a lot of MAGA resentment seems fueled by low status not just plain ignorance (e.g., blacks who think police murder thousands of unarmed black criminals each year, etc.). I don’t think Hanania is a troll at all—he genuinely dislikes white nationalists and dumb MAGA.
I didn’t mean to imply blacks aren’t more status-oriented than MAGA; I was only using them as a single example of ignorance. MAGA often seem like low status whiners even if they are ignorant about real wages, etc. If they are Pollyanna-ish, it’s because they think Trump will deliver the good ol’ days via tariffs or some other alchemy.
I think you can still say that “justice” maybe matters too much to a lot of people though on the populist right and left. My elitism is the primary reason I could never be with any populist movement, but I also just consider it petty and pathetic that someone who votes for Trump for instance could be driven hysterical over illegal immigration or transgender story hour and the basis of their thinking is simply that the “elites” all betrayed them—same with the populist left which is just as ridiculous with their obsession with “billionaires” rigging the economy and their fixation on, to the point of fetishization of, racial and sexual minorities. Like I care about fairness as much as the next guy, but I would say people care about it so much that it’s temperamental and their resentment is to blame these days. So I side with that Adorney guy philosophically. I expect and demand more from human character than what we’re getting. And to me everyone is a spoiled fucking infant. And everyone who went nuts during the covid lockdowns. Like I hated the lockdowns too. It didn’t make me irate at my government though. I was more angry with how afraid everyone was of getting a disease that only posed a serious risk to old people. It’s the cheapest thing to me to blame your government or the economy for all your personal issues and failures.
I don't think your beliefs are consistent. You say that you hate lots of people who were scared by COVID, but not the government. But the government is made up of people! The kind of people you're complaining about were running the government!
Yeah that’s true. Still given the government is always trying to control us, I wish the masses would give less of a shit especially when covid was hardly pre-revolutionary france—no one was dying of hunger and taxes—and there was no Vietnam war either. I think people are just extremely bored and fragile now and resentful and they feel very disempowered. One way for them to feel empowered again is to start railing against the government. I forgot to mention Jan 6 that happened at around the same time. Like don’t you think people need to get a grip? After everything we’ve been through the last century with two world wars and the great depression, the aids crisis. Now people learn they might have to get a covid vaccine or they hear Trump narrowly lost to Biden or another black guy died at the hands of a white cop, and they think it’s either armageddon or an opportunity for a selfie or it’s both (my personal theory)
A very thoughtful article!
I think you're right that I probably don't know the DR as well as I think I do. When I said they were mostly Christian, I was pulling from a) the DR folks who have "Christ is King" in their bios or similar), and b) a statement by Colin Wright that the DR is basically "Christianity+" (a reference, I believe, to "atheism+"). But I could have been mistaken about the extent to which the DR is Christian! I know, among other things, that Hunter Ash for instance wouldn't call himself Christian.
I do disagree with you in that I see resentment and injustice as very separate issues. I think that you can acknowledge injustice without feeling resentment about said injustice. That's why, for instance, I opened my piece by stating several of what I see as injustices.
But I am curious: how do you personally see resentment as benefiting you?
I think that "How has resentment benefitted you?" is the wrong question.
Our feelings should be aligned with reality. When you see injustice, you should be angry about it, regardless of whether anger has a quantifiable benefit to you or not. When good things happen to you, you should feel happy about them. Your feelings should flow from an alignment with reality. You shouldn't choose how to feel based on some cost and benefit calculation.
"Our feelings should be aligned with reality."--fair enough!
I suppose I see ultimate reality this way: I see a God who knows everything about you, every hair on your head and every thought you've ever had, and who loves you with an infinite and unfailing love. I see a God who loves you every bit as much as He loved Mother Teresa or the apostles.
I also see a God who delights in (and is eager to) bless us and provide for us.
From that, the emotions that seem to align best with that reality are feelings of love, joy, and peace; rather than bitterness or resentment. To me, it doesn't matter too much what people do or don't do to me, because those actions are less important than what God does with me. What other people think of me can be useful feedback, but I don't feel resentment over it because to me what other people think of me matters less than what God thinks of me.
Anyway. How does that land for you?
Well written. Resentment can be a legitimate response to injustice, not just a negative emotion. Dismissing it entirely risks ignoring real grievances. In Objectivism, healthy emotions are those in sync with your rational mind. Emotions like resentment can drive individuals to seek justice, which is essential for a rational society. https://posocap.com
I think the idea is that your view of reality is shaped by your emotional state.
It’s true that wokes believe that police shootings of blacks are 10,000% higher then they actually are. But why do they believe that? I would certainly at least google the issue before I started rioting over it. And I would ask if such a reality made logical sense or conformed with my lived experience.
But what if most people don’t form beliefs that way. I do know a lot of people for whom negativity and resentment are just a natural state. They experience these emotions whether justified or not. If not justified they rationalize justifications, from whole cloth if necessary. That such people could fervently believe woke nonsense doesn’t surprise me. They weren’t reasoned into it, and they won’t be reasoned out of it.
There is also another problem you alude to which is that being justified in your resentment and resentment being useful are sometimes different. The Jews of Israel in Jesus day were certainly justified in disliking Roman rule. The taxes were so onerous they were often sold into slavery. The local rulers the Roman’s backed were often assholes. Etc etc. the Jews were justified in their resentment.
But what good would it do. The Jews got curb stomped by the Roman’s when they revolted. Revolt was a disaster for the Jews. And if they had won here’s a prediction. Rule by a Jewish elite wouldn’t have been all that different then rule by Rome, and if Rome was kicked out probably some other empire would come in (as was the entire history of isreal).
Does anyone think that being ruled by the people that killed Jesus would have been an improvement over the Pax Romana?
Truth is that correct move for Jews at that time was to swallow their perfectly justified resentment and work on self improvement. The Jews that did literally conquered Rome through cultural conversion.
I’m not saying that people should just accept getting screwed all the time (and I don’t think that is what Jesus is saying in the Bible), but you gotta pick and choose your battles and you can’t be angry all day.
Never heard of Julian, sounds like a dollar store Richard Hanania
He is a lot better than Hanania
You’ve been putting out great stuff recently and I totally agree. People in the modern world aren’t concerned è with justice anymore. A serious society takes real justice seriously
Your points seem solid to me. However, I think Hanania is probably correct that a lot of MAGA folks (if not dissident right folks) are full of the kind of resentment that often exists among low status types.
And non-MAGA folks aren’t? I see a lot of resentment everywhere. The idea that it is uniquely a problem in MAGA is a giant cope. (Or in Hanania’s case, a deliberate troll tactic to gin up rage-engagement)
Of course. But a lot of MAGA resentment seems fueled by low status not just plain ignorance (e.g., blacks who think police murder thousands of unarmed black criminals each year, etc.). I don’t think Hanania is a troll at all—he genuinely dislikes white nationalists and dumb MAGA.
Hmm.. to me blacks seem way more status-oriented and MAGA seems pollyanna-ish and naive if anything.
I didn’t mean to imply blacks aren’t more status-oriented than MAGA; I was only using them as a single example of ignorance. MAGA often seem like low status whiners even if they are ignorant about real wages, etc. If they are Pollyanna-ish, it’s because they think Trump will deliver the good ol’ days via tariffs or some other alchemy.
Resentment is the language of those who don’t burn down Auto Zone.
Just standard boilerplate narcissistic DARVO from Julian. Blame the victim and gaslight them by claiming they're "resentful" while being abused.