Ressentment and Bitterness - Part II
The fascination with sensuality is almost overwhelming for the great majority of people. And the few individuals who have traditionally denied sensuality (at least outwardly) – the mystic, the meditator, the solitary contemplator – do not practice a style of living that is appealing to other types of personality ; the advocacy of asceticism, or even world-denial, is only for the few.
The problem for modern times is to learn to handle sensuality and conformity without being swallowed up by them ; there is a place in a human life for both sensuality and conformity, but it is the over-indulgence in them that causes the problem. Relationships need to become based on harmony and quality of life, rather than on sensuality. This demands an attitude of mind that is very hard to attain: flexibility with depth of character. The Victorian mind had character but also rigid and repressive traits. Whereas it seems to me that many modern people have flexibility but little depth of character.
How does a person develop character ? . And how does a person switch from rigidity to flexibility ? . Usually by working through sorrow. Happiness does not motivate a person to change their way of life. Why should a person change when life seems good to them? . But the demand of modern times is to develop the capacity to change, to become mentally flexible, to cast away inadequate beliefs, and in the process to develop character.
Unfortunately it is only prolonged periods of resentment and of bitterness that force the person to achieve these abilities. Only prolonged periods of such unhappiness lead to the re-structuring of belief systems. The major obstacle in life is to surmount this unhappiness instead of being engulfed by it, which happened to those who embraced Fascism and Nazism in the 1920s onwards.
Eliminating WeaknessThe effects of social conditioning, together with a naive approach to life, create many immature beliefs in the child. These beliefs create a legacy of resentment and bitterness within the subconscious mind. In order for a person to evolve, these negative aspects of character need to be resolved so that he / she can become detached from them.
Only by working through the resentment and the bitterness is detachment attained. Despite the sorrow that they cause, both resentment and bitterness have a positive function. Resentment and bitterness can eliminate weakness from the mind.Resentment focuses on removing degeneracy and degradation from one’s character, usually in matters of sexuality and social behaviour. Resentment cleans up social traits and attitudes.
Bitterness focuses on removing dependency from one’s character, usually in matters of authority. It is generated by the loss of romanticism and heroic ideals (both important issues within narcissism). There is nothing noble in sexual immorality and degradation, so this is why the abre action of pride usually follows resentment ; there is nothing idealistic about sex. Bitterness strengthens traits and attitudes of individuality.
If resentment and bitterness are not worked through then they lead to the production of long-term effects. Resentment narrows a person’s views of society. Resentment facilitates the establishment of morality and a social conscience, plus the desire for a strong political leader. Such a leader may focus on either victimising or getting rid of the ‘weak’ or ‘degenerate’ sectors of society: for example, Hitler focused his resentment on socialists, gypsies, Jews. Bitterness hardens a person.
Bitterness leads to the denigration of society and the cultivation of a conscience of individual values; the person avoids helping other people since they are ‘inferior’. Politically this view leads to the prejudice that other countries are ‘inferior’ to one’s own (as in Hitler’s view of the Slav countries of eastern Europe).
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