Ressentiment in the Present Age, by Søren Kierkegaard

Excerpt from - Søren Kierkegaard, The Present Age, translated by Alexander Dru with Foreword by Walter Kaufmann, 1962, pp. 49–52.



It is a fundamental truth of human nature that man is incapable of remaining permanently on the heights, of continuing to admire anything. Human nature needs variety. Even in the most enthusiastic ages people have always liked to joke enviously about their superiors. That is perfectly in order and is entirely justifiable so long as after having laughed at the great they can once more look upon them with admiration; otherwise the game is not worth the candle. In that way ressentiment finds an outlet even in an enthusiastic age. And as long as an age, even though less enthusiastic, has the strength to give ressentiment its proper character and has made up its mind what its expression signifies, ressentiment has its own, though dangerous importance. […]

The more reflection gets the upper hand and thus makes people indolent, the more dangerous ressentiment becomes, because it no longer has sufficient character to make it conscious of its significance. Bereft of that character reflection is a cowardly and vacillating, and according to circumstances interprets the same thing in a variety of ways. It tries to treat it as a joke, and if that fails, to regard it as an insult, and when that fails, to dismiss it as nothing at all; or else it will treat the thing as a witticism, and if that fails, then say that it was meant as a moral satire deserving attention, and if that does not succeed, add that it was not worth bothering about. [...]

Ressentiment becomes the constituent principle of want of character, which from utter wretchedness tries to sneak itself a position, all the time safeguarding itself by conceding that it is less than nothing. The ressentiment which results from want of character can never understand that eminent distinction really is distinction. Neither does it understand itself by recognizing distinction negatively (as in the case of ostracism) but wants to drag it down, wants to belittle it so that it really ceases to be distinguished. And ressentiment not only defends itself against all existing forms of distinction but against that which is still to come.

The ressentiment which is establishing itself is the process of leveling, and while a passionate age storms ahead setting up new things and tearing down old, raising and demolishing as it goes, a reflective and passionless age does exactly the contrary; it hinders and stifles all action; it levels. Leveling is a silent, mathematical, and abstract occupation which shuns upheavals. In a burst of momentary enthusiasm people might, in their despondency, even long for a misfortune in order to feel the powers of life, but the apathy which follows is no more helped by a disturbance than an engineer leveling a piece of land. At its most violent a rebellion is like a volcanic eruption and drowns every other sound. At its maximum the leveling process is a deathly silence in which one can hear one’s own heart beat, a silence which nothing can pierce, in which everything is engulfed, powerless to resist.

One man can be at the head a rebellion, but no one can be at the head of the leveling process alone, for in that case he would be leader and would thus escape being leveled. Each individual within his own little circle can co-operate in the leveling, but it is an abstract power, and the leveling process is the victory of abstraction over the individual. The leveling process in modern times, corresponds, in reflection, to fate in antiquity. The dialectic of ancient times tended towards leadership (the great man over the masses and the free man over the slave); the dialectic of Christianity tends, at least until now, towards representation (the majority views itself in the representative, and is liberated in the knowledge that it is represented in that representative, in a kind of self-knowledge); the dialectic of the present age tends towards equality, and its most consequent but false result is leveling, as the negative unity of the negative relationship between individuals.

It must be obvious to everyone that the profound significance of the leveling process lies in the fact that it means the predominance of the category ‘generation’ over the category ‘individuality’.

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The American Dream is so 1950's

Having to face a different reality than the preceding Boomer and Greatest Generations, many Millennials and Generation Xers express their disdain about both the pervasive economic environment and the overall quality of life they are able to obtain.  As the aftermath of the Financial Crisis of 2008 fails to level off, and indeed continues to enlarge the breach between the haves and the have-nots, the general feeling that emerges and is often expressed can be summed up in one single hopeless sentence: “We were told lies”.

Everything that they were told weren't lies... until they were. What lies were they told? If you go to College, you will have a good job waiting for you and, if you work hard, you will fare better than your parents did.  Now these generations mostly drown under the weight of student loans that they cannot get rid of even if they are forced to declare bankruptcy.  And where are the returns for that investment?  The few that may argue against that question are the exception that proves the rule.

The American Dream rests on the affirmation that, through hard work, each generation will fare better than the preceding.  Now, the American Dream has materialized in wage serfdom sprinkled with fairy dust over progressively shattering hopes and dreams. 

The script that our parents repeated were also repeated by their parents.  Hell, it was even in our history textbooks growing up.  For their generations, it panned out.  But they themselves dismantled or exploited the system that made it a truism.  Today, ironically, many people that don’t go to college are often better off than many of the ones that did.  Tuition costs have risen well above recorded rates of inflation for half a century, significantly hobbling the possible returns on that investment.

Recent economic research indicates that neither the Millennials nor the Xers will live better or enjoy a higher quality of life than the Baby Boomers. That is the new economic trend. In fact, Millennials and Xers will have to work twice as hard just to get to where their parents were, and even then there is no guarantee of that. 
 

Look at this graph. It reveals that younger generations really do face a difficult future. Every group through early-wave Boomers has seen upward jumps in their lifecycle income—all the way up until 2012. But every younger generation that has not yet reached age 60 has experienced no such progress.


From 1983-2010, the real median net worth approximately tripled for Americans over the age of 74 and doubled for the age of 65 to 74. And here is the kicker! It fell 30% for Americans aged 35 to 40. Why do younger generations lag behind?

An obvious explanations is their inferior median income growth. With less income, there is less to save.  A less obvious explanation is that previous generations used to share their wealth to a greater capacity as they became senior citizens, as can be easily observed in the graph above. The scenario we are looking at now is that the wealth will have to be pried from their cold, dead hands.