Age of Resentment

"The first thing to remark about resentment is that it never lets you down, because it is powerful in its capacity to stimulate the imagination (in a similarly sour way). For example, if someone points out to a resentful person reasons why he should not be resentful, he will immediately come up with reasons why he should be. I have observed that when someone says ‘Yes, but...’ there is little purpose in continuing by providing reasons, evidence or arguments as to why that person should change his mind about the thing in question. Deeply unimaginative as that person might be in all other circumstances, when it comes to preserving his original standpoint from attack by people who want to argue him out of it, his imagination is infinitely fertile. It acts instantaneously, at the speed light. ‘Yes, but...’ and its subsequent rationalisation emerges from the mouth of the resentful faster than a driver in Mexico City can apply himself to the horn when the traffic lights change from red.

So the sustainability, and therefore predictability, of resentment is established. When you are resentful, change does not frighten you because there will be none. No need, either, to fear or face up to the unknown, because everything has been decided in advance. You do not risk, for example, finding out that your incapacity is not caused by what you think it was, but rather by – your incapacity. So resentment allows you to dream on about all you would have achieved if things had been different (better, of course, for no one dreams of how little they would have achieved had things been worse).

But the real reward of resentment is that is changes the polarities of success and failure, or at least of the worth of success and failure. The fact that I am a failure in a certain regard shows that I am not only more sensitive than a vulgar success in that same regard, but really I am morally superior to him. To become a success, he has not had to contend with all that I have had to contend with to become a failure. Really, I am better than he, if only the world would recognise it.

Of course, the world does not recognise it, in fact stubbornly refuses to take any notice of it. But this does not really matter because it is grounds for – yes, further resentment. You see, the dirty trick that has been done me that makes me like I am, that is to say a failure, is only part of a persistent and recurring pattern. My original resentment can become a meta-resentment when the world refuses to recognise the justice of my complaints."
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