The previous post left oof with reference to so-called "forces of within" and to how one of the primary purposes of ideology is to manage these forces, especially envy and resentment. Externalizing these is as easy as falling from paradise, especially with the readymade categories provided by progressive politics.
If envy didn't exist, nor would the left, because these vindictive snowflakes would necessarily tend to their own business instead of concerning themselves with ours. But it seems that envy is baked into the the psychosocial cake, or at least coincides with the emergence of history from our prelapsarian innocence.
Man evolved as a social animal, and envy is the glue -- or part of the glue -- that holds the group together. It must be the dark side -- or a privation -- of something that had a positive function in binding together small human groups.
Let's try to analyze this from the ground up: man is first a familial animal before he is a social animal per se. However, the social and familial can only be artificially separated, which is precisely why so much crazy seeps into the sociopolitical. It helps to explain the perpetual hysteria of the left, and why progressives are rebellious adolescents with daddy issues when they aren't abandoned children with mommy issues.
Bob, is it really that simple? Probably not, but before we dive in to the subject, let's drop a few aphorisms behind enemy lines in order to soften the ground:
1: Social problems are the delightful refuge of those fleeing from their own problems.
2: Socialism is the philosophy of the guilt of others.
3: “Social justice” is the term for claiming anything to which we do not have a right.
4: The left claims that the guilty party in a conflict is not the one who covets another’s goods but the one who defends his own.
5: It is not enough for the democrat that we respect what he wants to do with his life; he also demands that we respect what he wants to do with our life.
6: Maturity of spirit begins when we stop feeling responsible for the world.
I've ordered these in a certain way so as to illuminate the process: 1) denial and externalization, 2) projection into others, 3) envy, 4) rationalization, 5) punitive control, and 6) growing the hell up and minding your own business, AKA tolerating the terror of freedom.
Let's get back to Feminism and Freedom. Now, contrary to what feminists teach, women have always exerted control over men -- well, some women, in some ways, over some men.
Or perhaps you are too stupid or oblivious to have noticed. I began noticing it when I was, oh, 11 or 12 years old. I won't bore you with details, but every man knows what I'm talking about, and every man must somehow come to terms with this form of female power.
Let's stipulate that feminism was invented by females too stupid or oblivious to understand the nature of their power over men. Or too envious. Or perhaps just too unattractive, simple as.
Note that there is no explicit counter-philosophy to feminism, because no man is stupid or reckless enough to promulgate it. Well, maybe Nietzsche, but not because of any lack of intelligence. I have only vague recollections, but Prof Wiki has the goods:
From the beginning, nothing has been more alien, repugnant, and hostile to woman than truth -- her great art is the lie, her highest concern is mere appearance and beauty.
But its complicated:
women are on the whole cleverer and more wicked than men -- which in Nietzsche's view, constitutes a compliment. Yet he goes on to claim that the emancipation of women, and feminists, was merely the resentment of some women against other women, who were physically better constituted and able to bear children.
One fellow claims Nietzsche isn't anti-woman, just anti-feminist.
In any event, so long as genes have anything to say about reality, feminism will be here to bitterly struggle against that reality:
In the end it is impossible to overcome the biological inevitability of sex roles, but it is possible to try -- and to violate liberal values in the process (Levin).
Hence the soft but increasingly hard tyranny of illiberal leftism. Is there anything maternal about the left, in a healthy or wholesome sense of the word? Likewise anything feminine? Kamala Harris, for example, is neither; and yet, she is certainly both in the pathological sense, i.e., simultaneously the mother from hell and the ex-wife from hell. But one could say the same of Hillary Clinton, Gretchen Whitmer, Nancy Pelosi, Lori Lightfoot, Sandy Cortez, et al. If you love women, you must shudder at them.
Another important point is that more equality will only generate more resentment in the left, precisely because equality of opportunity will starkly reveal inequality of gifts, merit, and ability. Under conditions of freedom, there is no escape from certain truths about oneself, and what crazy person wants that?
This is getting tedious. Let's just agree with Max Scheler that ressentiment is always available to the disordered person, whereas "an individual of strong personality has no need to compare himself with his fellow humans, even if they happen to be superior in specific respects and abilities."
Imagine how impoverished one would have to be in order to be unacquainted with moral and intellectual superiors! Which is a good working definition of a progressive: a person with no moral and intellectual superiors. They are better than you, which is why they are qualified to run your life.
For example, is there anyone wiser and more virtuous than Barack Obama? Just ask him. Even his supporters are the very people we'd been waiting for to bend the arc of history and set it right!
But in reality
There is something definitively vile about the man who only admits equals, who does not tirelessly seek out his betters.
Do not commit the injustice of treating your superiors as equals.
The noble one is not the one who thinks he has inferiors, but the one who knows he has superiors.
Respecting our superiors is above all a proof of good taste.
By learning to admire we are cured of the vices of mediocrity.
Hmm. Who are some of my superiors that help me keep my own mediocrity in perspective? Let's see... Thomas Aquinas, John Paul II, Clarence Thomas, Thomas Sowell, Friedrich Hayek, Winston Churchill, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln... If we look down, it should be because we're always looking up, which is structurally the opposite of resentment.
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