Monday, April 13, 2020

Ressentiment

This is a new word to me. But it is magnificent. This is from its Wikipedia page:

Ressentiment is a reassignment of the pain that accompanies a sense of one's own inferiority/failure onto an external scapegoat. The ego creates the illusion of an enemy, a cause that can be "blamed" for one's own inferiority/failure. Thus, one was thwarted not by a failure in oneself, but rather by an external "evil."
Even in the midst of the current coronavirus global pandemic I see people online blaming everybody else for their problems. This is especially true for those whose clearest perception of themselves is as members of a group, a tribe or a nation-state. Some other group, tribe or nation is to blame for everything. The construction of a conceptual enemy is perhaps a flaw in the hardwired human condition, and one which the manipulative and power hungry can exploit.

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