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Inner Joy and Ressentiment

Mole

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Joined
Mar 20, 2008
Messages
20,284
The hatred of inner joy is called ressentiment. It has been known to philosophers for a long time, click Ressentiment - Wikipedia. Ressentiment is bone marrow deep and expresses itself in the way we see the world. So ressentiment is taken for granted and is invisible.

Inner joy is hated because it burns the joyless. There is almost nothing worse for the joyless than to meet joy in our inner life. And the first impulse of the joyless is to kill the joy of others under the disguise of humour or morality or even conformity. Whole institutions have been set up to stamp out inner joy. And this is so ugly and evil it must be hidden.

Inner joy bubbles up unbidden from our deep inner self, it only wants to be free, but everywhere is in chains. No wonder the largest cause of attending our doctor's surgery is depression. And gargantuan amounts of anti-depressants are distributed daily.

We know we can be trusted when we kill our own inner joy in the name of God, or the State, or conformity. And when we can be trusted, we are given more power to kill the inner joy of others. And we feel comfort in belonging to the joyless. We don't stand out, we know our place, we even delude ourselves that we are loved because we are joyless.

Yes, ressentiment is insidious, and powerful, and we are taught to believe in it, yet inner joy is freshly minted every day, and every day it must be suppressed, and sometimes there is a crack in social reality, and inner joy bursts forth.
 

Mole

Permabanned
Joined
Mar 20, 2008
Messages
20,284
i've never heard of that before.

Yes, ressentiment and narcissism go hand in hand, it is a marriage made in heaven.

So why not read the book called "Ressentiment" by Max Scheler, and the book called "The Culture of Narcissism", by Christopher Lasch?
 
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