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| Michael Sandel (photo c/o Harvard U.) |
In the first instalment of this series, I introduced the ideas of professor Michael J. Sandel as revealed in his book The Tyranny of Merit. As I pointed out in that article, he sees one of the key flaws of our present economic system is the poorly-thought-out idea that some people "deserve" to be rich or at least well-off, while others "deserve" to be poor. In this article I want to show how this situation has created a politics of misplaced emotional reaction towards the tyranny of merit.
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In order to understand what follows, I first want to examine two different words that mean similar---but significantly different things. The first is resentment which is an ordinary English word that means "Indignation or ill will stemming from a feeling of having been wronged or offended" according to Wordnik. There's another word, ressentiment, that I want to introduce (I don't remember Sandel mentioning it in his book), which is a French word that was adopted by the philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and Friedrich Nietzsche. As the Wikipedia defines it:
...ressentiment is a sense of hostility directed toward an object that one identifies as the cause of one's frustration, that is, an assignment of blame for one's frustration. The sense of weakness or inferiority complex and perhaps even jealousy in the face of the "cause" generates a rejecting/justifying value system, or morality, which attacks or denies the perceived source of one's frustration. This value system is then used as a means of justifying one's own weaknesses by identifying the source of envy as objectively inferior, serving as a defence mechanism that prevents the resentful individual from addressing and overcoming their insecurities and flaws. The ego creates an enemy in order to insulate itself from culpability.
The difference between ordinary resentment and philosophical ressentiment is subtle, but I think important. The key distinction is that with regard to resentment, the person feeling it has no doubts about his own value. She knows that what is being done to her has no valid justification, so she is angry about it. In an aristocratic society the peasants might be angry about the fact that the local lord is rich and they are poor, but the emotion is simple and never self-directed. These people just want to get rid of the parasitical aristocrats who feed off the work of the peasantry.
In contrast, people feeling ressentiment seem to generally have no problem with the idea of a meritocratic hierarchy, just those people who have gotten ahead because of what they consider "gaming the system". Unfortunately, a significant number of people believe that these lowlifes have effectively taken over and they use the government to abuse what Richard Nixon used to call "the silent majority".
What I mean by "gaming the system" is a very specific type of behaviour. Their hero, Donald Trump, isn't doing that when he avoids paying taxes---because, as he says "everyone does it" and "it's just the smart thing to do". Instead, the populist hordes are seething with ressentiment against the "elite" (the "swamp" that populists in the US say that they want to drain, and, in Canada the "Laurentian elite") who control their lives through liberal politicians , the bureaucracy, legacy news media, and, academics. The problem with these folks is that they increasingly dominate the world but support policies that are fundamentally incomprehensible to people who lack higher education.
So many things are like that---climate change, Covid-19, systemic racism, the legal system, zoning laws, etc, are all issues of tremendous public importance but are incomprehensible unless you have a university degree in a specific field. Indeed, it must seem to many of the people I'm talking about that an alien race has invaded the world and is now running it according to some incomprehensible agenda. This is why they repeat paranoid slogans like "Make America Great Again!", "The Jews will not replace us!", and, "Stop the white genocide!" It also explains the outlandish conspiracy theories that speak of Jewish lizard space people taking over, the secret pedophile elite that fuel the Democratic party with the blood of tortured children, and so on.
And yet, the paradox that lies underneath the hostility seems to be an unconscious sense of self-loathing. That's because populist supporters really do believe in the meritocracy. These are the people who believe in the importance of being quiet, working hard, and, waiting your turn---that's why they get so enraged at the idea of using quotas to allow women and minorities into good schools and good jobs. That's also why they get so angry at the idea of people getting food stamps, health care, and, welfare. Moreover, on some level even the wildest reactionaries have to admit that scientists and academics aren't all fools locked in an ivory tower. The fruits of their labours enrich us all. Higher education is undeniably the goose lays gold eggs. And yet, these people who never did get the credentials that would allow them to become part of the elite resent the fact that even though they value hard work and competition more than anyone else---in the race of life, they suspect that they have come dead last.
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I would argue that any society that purports to be a total Meritocracy will inevitably foster ressentiment among it's citizenry. That's because it fosters a double-sided myth that tells people who "succeed" that they are totally the authors of that success. Similarly, those that "fail" have no one to blame for their position but themselves. If you buy into this fairy tale (and almost all of us do to some extent), it weakens the social cohesion that used to exist when people really believed "there but for the grace of God goeth I".
Farther down I've cued up a YouTube clip from the amazing movie Monster that illustrates this chasm between "winners" and "losers". But first, I'm going to share a personal story.
When I started out in my work life I had a great many skills and a strong work ethic. That's what happens when you grow up on a farm---especially if your father dies when you are young, and, you and your brother have to run it from an early age. But I had absolutely no social skills because I had spent pretty much all my non-school time working the farm. (For example, most summers I never met anyone my own age from the last day of school in May to the first day in October.) And because I never had the opportunity to get an "after school job", I had no idea at all about how one goes about finding work.
The day arrived when I had to find a job. I'd heard about having to have good clothes, so I found something I thought was presentable. On tv I'd seen people go to employment agencies, so I looked in the yellow pages and found one in Guelph. I didn't book an appointment and just thought I'd show up in person and book one with the receptionist.
Well, no one "just shows up", and the receptionist was surprised when I walked through a group of people waiting and asked to talk to the guy who ran the business. Instead of booking an appointment, she just called her boss and he told her to see me in. I walked into his office---about as clueless as if I'd fallen off a turnip truck, which in fact I pretty much had.
The man behind the desk was puzzled, but quickly figured out what was going on. He took a few moments to give me some good advice and then sent me on my way without diminishing my sense of self-worth. In retrospect, he was a very classy guy.
Contrast that with the following movie clip. For those who don't know the story, the character sitting across the desk is modeled on a real person, Aileen Wuornos. She had been horribly abused both by her family, then people in her community, and, finally by her clients as a prostitute. Just like me, in this scene she is trying to claw her way out of that situation, and, just like me, she was totally oblivious to all the subtle elements of life that she didn't understand. The difference was that I had a LOT more opportunities in my life than she did, and, I was treated with a lot more kindness and empathy when I made a similar "job search" faux pas.
It's true that the woman storms out angry about the fact that the fellow interviewing her is making assumptions about her intrinsic worth without having a clue about all the problems she's had to face from an early age. But it's important to listen to the man too. He's being a class-A dick, but he is also venting his own personal frustration about the huge amounts of effort he's had to put into get his job. (Perhaps he wanted to spend some time having fun on Daytona Beach too.)
If memory serves, the character based on Wuornos falls into despair after this attempt to drag herself into mainstream life. And since despair is the mother of all other sins, she ends up killing several truck drivers for their money. (Maybe---unlike movies, real life rarely fills in all the details.) She may not know exactly why she is trapped in a Hellish existence, but on some level I have to believe that she thinks she is the author of her own problems. That's what the world around us tells us to think, and, it requires a great deal of knowledge and self-confidence to push back against this narrative. (That is partially why I'm writing this series of articles.) Most people simply can't see the big picture, so they internalize and blame themselves.
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Here's an animated short produced by the Royal Society of the Arts and narrated by Sandel. It's pretty dense, so I would suggest that readers look at it several times to tease out all the different issues mentioned.
One of the more puzzling things that I have noticed listening to people who support populists of the Donald Trump ilk are two things: first, that they are really, really angry, and, second, that they can't really articulate what they are so angry about---so they just latch onto whatever stupid thing they've recently heard or read on line.
I think that's why---as a general rule---no matter how much evidence people put in front of them to dispel whatever kooky thing they are saying, it generally has no effect whatsoever. Indeed, the one response that I hear over and over again is anger about "not being heard", or, about those who disagree with them being "arrogant". This makes no sense at all if I assume that what they are feeling is resentment about some sort of objective and easily identified wrong. But it does compute if what they are feeling is a welling-up of inarticulate ressentiment against a world where they feel that they are losers---even though (actually, especially because) they pretty much agree with the system that's holding them down.
That's the nub of the problem.
Most working people who support right-wing populism don't resent their economic reality. Indeed, they've internalized its values to the point where they actually believe that if they work hard they are guaranteed to get ahead. They believe that they have merit, that they "deserve". If you believe this, it is tremendously galling to fail. But they simply cannot chalk up their problems to "CAPITALISM". That's what "lefties" like yours truly think---and they have nothing but contempt for people like me.
Without any critical analysis to guide them, the only thing they have left are patently goofy conspiracy theories. George Soros, Q-Anon, White Genocide, Bill Gates, the stolen election---all of these things are explanations about how the "elites" have biased the competition and let people who aren't as hard-working as them "jump the queue" and push them to the back of the line. It's all nonsense, but they won't hear a word of evidence against it, because they are true believers in both Capitalism and the meritocratic myth.
I came to this conclusion because I find that these are the people---above all others---who complain whenever anyone is given something that they didn't "deserve". These folks oppose welfare, food stamps, universal medical coverage, housing for the homeless, support for the addicted, etc. They are also the ones who are the most angry to see people that they didn't think "measure up" being given what they think is "preferential treatment". That includes quotas to hire women fire fighters and police officers, special rules that help refugees who "illegally" cross the border, and so on.
I can't imagine a more bitter pill to swallow than believing in "FREEDOM"---defined as being the right to win or lose according to your own drive and ability---and finding out that when all is said and done, no matter how you strive, you are still counted as one of the "losers". But if at the same time you believe that others are being given a special pass to cut to the "head of the line" in front of you, it will be even worse. If my read is right, this must be the source of much of the right-wing rage I've come across in my life.
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This is enough for one week. Next post on this subject will suggest some solutions. In the interim, get your vaccination but don't relax your guard. Those pesky mutations are still out there!
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