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Contrapoints on Envy (Nietzsche's "ressentiment")

Started by Retinend, August 09, 2021, 02:10:07 PM

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Retinend

Her latest video is probably her best one yet, imo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPhrTOg1RUk
Envy | ContraPoints
869,511 viewsAug 7, 2021


And yes, I think this thread should best go in Shelf Abuse, rather than GB. The core of the video is a reading of Nietzsche's "On the Genealogy of Morality", and it's more about philosophical matters, rather than Twitter drama.

Context: If you take her word for it (and I do), Natalie Wynn, AKA Contrapoints, was hounded off Twitter by a coterie of resentful would-be-political-"allies" on Twitter. As a consequence, her recent videos have been less about the right, and more about her jaded perspective on her own side, the left.

Appalled by the jealousy she had encountered from her own side, she delved into Nietzsche's aforementioned book to find material for this video. She uses his master/slave dichotomy to compare how effective political engagement differs from ineffective (and toxic) political engagement.

If you're unsure what Nietzsche's master/slave dichotomy of morality is - it's his belief that, once the Christians had overtaken the Roman empire, "blessed be the meek"-morality upended the morality of the noble, warrior class. It's this older, nobler form of morality which had been prevalent through history until that point. To Nietzsche, our modern morality is based on a sneaky, snivelling sort of "justice", by which the naturally strong are kept in their place by their natural inferiors, in the manner of the kings of Europe genuflecting to the pope, and defering power to his bishops. This Nietzsche detested. He was, philosophically, in favour of the "die Herrenmoral", as opposed to "die Sklavenmoral", and viewed all modern morality as corrupted by the latter.

Now, Wynn doesn't agree with any of that. At least, she criticises Nietzsche for the neglectful way he left his theory open to be interpreted by the nazis (including his own sister), and Wynn- in contrast to Nietzsche - respects the Christian urge to defend the weak from the strong, and for the rich to feel the obligation to help the poor. She also, amusingly, brands him an "incel", since he was a lifelong bachelor, whose only sexual experience had left him crippled with syphilis, and who had few real friends and almost no readership for his books, languishing in complete obscurity until after he went insane.

She does, however, respect the genius of the theory, and she accepts the master/slave moral dichotomy, applying it to those on the left that she sees as just as resentful as those on the American right who whinge jealously about "welfare queens" and unearned "handouts". She also makes mention of Jordan Peterson and Camille Paglia, whose opinions on resentment within the academic left she acknowledges a slight sympathy with, with caveats.

This is a video that is sure to upset a lot of people, because she is essentially saying that people are jealous of her and that the reason for it is because they are weak. She's also calling the left impractical, in broad strokes - clinging to the tool of "critique" in order to create a cottage industry of resentment, instead of using critique to empower the powerless.

As I said, I personally think this is her best video yet. It had a sense of humour, a lot of positive self-awareness, and what she says is rigorous, informative and intellectually rich.  If I have any criticisms it would be of superficial things like the superfluous length of the format, the supposedly "funny" outtakes, or the uncomfortable-making, self-loathing moments.

On the whole, though, I really got a lot to think about out of this one, and I think I might re-read On the Genealogy of Morality off of the back of it. What did you think?

edit: typos

pigamus


Retinend

Arses. I am now. I didn't expect it to be in Picture Box.

evilcommiedictator

Quote from: Retinend on August 09, 2021, 02:10:07 PM
Context: If you take her word for it (and I do), Natalie Wynn, AKA Contrapoints, was hounded off Twitter by a coterie of resentful would-be-political-"allies" on Twitter. As a consequence, her recent videos have been less about the right, and more about her jaded perspective on her own side, the left.

So she's also jealous of them, excellent

greenman

Quote from: Retinend on August 09, 2021, 02:10:07 PM
This is a video that is sure to upset a lot of people, because she is essentially saying that people are jealous of her and that the reason for it is because they are weak. She's also calling the left impractical, in broad strokes - clinging to the tool of "critique" in order to create a cottage industry of resentment, instead of using critique to empower the powerless.

Really though I think that criticism would ring much truer of centralists, much more likelty to be obcessed with celebrity to the exclusion of other politics, much more likely to only focus on disadvantage they feel they personally suffer from.

Likewise her point about ill defined goals I think also tends to apply much more to centralist who will hind behind platitudes far more, claiming they will effect change by dealing with ill defined issues rather than specific ones. Both Sanders and Corbyn's platforms were far better defined in potential policy than the centralist of the same era have been.

chveik


Retinend

Quote from: greenman on August 11, 2021, 01:02:26 PM
Really though I think that criticism would ring much truer of centralists, much more likelty to be obcessed with celebrity to the exclusion of other politics, much more likely to only focus on disadvantage they feel they personally suffer from.

Likewise her point about ill defined goals I think also tends to apply much more to centralist who will hind behind platitudes far more, claiming they will effect change by dealing with ill defined issues rather than specific ones.

Good points. But then again, it's an electoral strength of centrist political parties is that they don't have strong, universalist principles.

If I think of "resentment" in politics, the first party that comes to mind is the BNP - a party that was always based on resentfulness and hatred, but which for a brief time tried to appeal to a centrist electorate, eschewing open racism (by their standards). But it fell apart as a party just as it was gaining traction with this strategy. It was because they had too many members who clung to the resentful principles of the party, and resented being marginalized as open racists in their own openly racist party, and the party imploded into infighting, then oblivion.

Compare them to UKIP, who were basically unprincipled, except for the principle of gaining success at any cost. It was like the BNP decided to stop making a stated principle of being racists, while pursuing ends that all racists would vote for.

If you follow this line of thinking, then principles even seem like liabilities. I am not about to put such a fine point on it, but I do recognise the damaging role of resentment/jealousy in my own life, and what I observe of the lives of others, and imho it's always bad news whenever Schadenfreude replaces Freude, i.e. when you feel more pleasure in a moral/principled victory than an actual objective victory.

greenman

Quote from: Retinend on August 11, 2021, 02:15:30 PM
Good points. But then again, it's an electoral strength of centrist political parties is that they don't have strong, universalist principles.

If I think of "resentment" in politics, the first party that comes to mind is the BNP - a party that was always based on resentfulness and hatred, but which for a brief time tried to appeal to a centrist electorate, eschewing open racism (by their standards). But it fell apart as a party just as it was gaining traction with this strategy. It was because they had too many members who clung to the resentful principles of the party, and resented being marginalized as open racists in their own openly racist party, and the party imploded into infighting, then oblivion.

Compare them to UKIP, who were basically unprincipled, except for the principle of gaining success at any cost. It was like the BNP decided to stop making a stated principle of being racists, while pursuing ends that all racists would vote for.

If you follow this line of thinking, then principles even seem like liabilities. I am not about to put such a fine point on it, but I do recognise the damaging role of resentment/jealousy in my own life, and what I observe of the lives of others, and imho it's always bad news whenever Schadenfreude replaces Freude, i.e. when you feel more pleasure in a moral/principled victory than an actual objective victory.

The great success of centralist politics is that it appeals to the interests of the wealthy and the powerful in repressing political forces that migth threaten their wealth and power.That sucess though a lot of the time will not be at the ballot box but rather in controling the main opposition party via undemocratic manipulation.

Really an "envy industry" applies very much to the way it functions, the example in the video about student debt or when something like nurses pay for example is pushed for, the Starmer labour position was very much one of playing to "well I didnt get a pay rise so neither should they".

Envy being targeted at those around you isnt just a natural function I would say but also an obvious political tool, to focus anger away from the powerful. I don't see CaB as being a strongly envious place though, its probably the most left wing place I post but also the place least obcessed with the idea of celebrity whipping boys. It hates Graham Linehan far more than it hates Michael Mcintyre due to the formers bigotry over the latters greater sucess with material most here wouldnt deem artistry worthwhile.

Retinend

Yeah, it is true that celebrity obsession, dragging sites, general tabloid gossip etc. is a mainstream form of resentment/jealousy that is, at the end of the day, less warranted than "resentment" of the rich and powerful. Whatever the motivation for someone criticizing power - whether they are fuelled by good will or bad will - it's at least indicative of engagement with the world's issues, rather than getting mad over this celebrity personality or another.

Johnny Yesno


Johnny Yesno


Video Game Fan 2000

Gonna have a pop at rephrasing my criticism. Now In The Right Thread! I am no longer an Afterthreadsman.

Quote from: Johnny Yesno on August 15, 2021, 06:24:24 PM
It was also interesting seeing Envy on the back of the Plymouth shooting, Wynn's idea being that incel culture is one driven by envy. Envy as opposed to greed or jealousy, in that a sufficient outcome is 'If I can't have it/them, no one can.'

The issue is that this misunderstands what Nietzsche is saying, and its also a bad way to think about morality. Its important to criticise this because what is important to Nietzsche (as a genealogist rather than dogmatist) how the argument is structured, and how that structure leads into ideas, is more important than the ideas themselves.

Conservatives have habitually used Nietzschean morality as an account of envying things and status. That poor envy the rich, people who don't get laid envy promiscuity, lonely people envy monogamous relationships, etc. As a philosophical reason why its bad to be mad about success or inequality.

But this is a really weak reading. What Nietzsche actually shows with his account of ressentiment is that it is values and virtues that people envy, rather than the status and material things associated with them. His narrative of the healthy and the sick describes how the sick resent the healthy for their health, rather than turn the resources of that resentment towards their own sickness. In Nietzsche's account all envy tends towards an envy of virtue, which the worse kind of envy, and this is how best to think about "revenge" - when NW uses Christian judgement as some sort of analogue for revolution, I think that misses the point. The point of judgement here isn't that you strip people of their positions and status, but there is some other world where they're stripped of their virtues. This is really important if you consider Nietzcshe's criticism of socialism - its the difference between actions that are justified in the here and now versus actions that are justified in some other time and place, in the afterlife or in the world of ideas "spiritual vengeance" isn't really "if I can't have it, no one can" but rather - "I'll do bad things to myself and others, but because they're bad things and not evil things, I'll win by being right on some day that will conveniently never come".

NW is right when she talks about values - beauty, strength, health against ugliness, weakness, and sickness. But the point immediately after that is wrong is that she understands this "vengeance" in terms of the "envy" idea she is presenting. Nietzsche never makes the leap that the video does because its not a coherent idea.

Perhaps the simplest way to understand this is looking at the examples she gives of Nietzsche's targets for condemnation - St Paul, Constantin, and the "marketable" Christian order. They are pinacles of slave morality, but also men of incredible status and opulence. The best example of the "vengeance" idea isn't any of these, its Aquinas who said that the best thing about heaven is that the virtuous will have the pleasure of looking down and seeing sinners burn in hell. Aquinas is the perfect target for Nietzschean critique because even though his views exemplified slave morals his is a figure of incredible opulence and power, he's often portrayed as obese and living in luxury. The crime of slave morality is therefore not to do with having or not having, but how things are valued, what ideals are made, etc. Aquinas also moved away from Plato (who Nietzsche says is the source of this 'sickness' in the entire western world) towards Aristotle, which exemplifies the idea that resentment leads people to become more cunning than people with noble character, and not only seize material goods and status but "the workshop where ideas are made".

The bad reading of Nietzsche is to suggest that the account of slave morality maps directly on to haves and have nots, or oppressed and oppressers. Applying it to, say, people mad about the Kardashians for flaunting a birthday party during the covid lockdown or incel resentment of Chads and Stacys is very weak and while its not exactly the same as boilerplate conservative and reactionary readings of Nietzsche, its close enough to warrant comment.

It gets worse when she says that Nietzsche doesn't care about "genuinely caring" about people when that's exactly what he means by nobility, a genuine care that would be unmediated by pity but affirming life as one encounters it not as one would have wished it to be. That whole point is really bad and wrong, the point is that caring about people is good and noble because its affirmative but its pity that is anti-nature because we're hating people for not being what they think they should be. Resentment can also be like...if a person has a chronic illness or a disability, we might pity that person and resent the illness or disability they have, because its stopping them from having the life we think they should have. Nietzsche points out that this is completely fucked up, if you say you love a person with a disability but only the hypothetical version of them without that disability, you don't love them at all. The MLK quote used to contrast makes it seem like Nietzsche thinks power is valuable against interpersonal values and virtues like love, etc. but nothing could be further from the truth. Can't think of a philosopher who banged on as much about love as Nietzsche, other than Jesus Christ of course.

Quote
You crowd around your neighbor, and have fine words for it. But I say to you: your love of the neighbor is your bad love of yourselves.

You flee to your neighbor from yourselves, and would rather make a virtue of it: but I fathom your "unselfishness."

The Thou is older than the I; the Thou has been consecrated, but not yet the I: so man presses near to his neighbor.

Do I advise you to love of the neighbor? Rather do I advise you to flight from the neighbor and to love of the farthest!

Higher than love of your neighbor is love of the farthest and future ones; higher still than love to men, is love to things and phantoms.

The phantom that runs on before you, my brother, is fairer than you; why do you not give to it your flesh and your bones? But you are afraid, and run to your neighbor.

You cannot endure yourselves and do not love yourselves sufficiently: so you seek to mislead your neighbor into love, to gild yourselves with his error.

If only you could not endure any kinds of neighbors; then you would have to create your friend and his overflowing heart out of yourselves.

You call in a witness when you want to speak well of yourselves; and when you have misled him to think well of you, you also think well of yourselves.

Not only does he lie, who speaks when he knows better, but more so, he who speaks when he knows nothing. And thus you speak of yourselves, and lie to your neighbor with yourselves.

Thus says the fool: "Association with men spoils the character, especially when one has none."

The one goes to his neighbor because he seeks himself, and the other because he would rather lose himself. Your bad love of yourselves makes solitude a prison to you.

It is the farthest ones who pay for your love to the near ones; and even when there are five of you together, there is always a sixth who must die.

I do not love your festivals either: I found too many actors there, and even the spectators often behaved like actors.

Not the neighbor do I teach you, but the friend. Let the friend be the festival of the earth to you, and a foretaste of the Overman.

I teach you the friend and his overflowing heart. But one must know how to be a sponge, if one would be loved by over-flowing hearts.

I teach you the friend in whom the world stands complete, a capsule of the good, -- the creating friend, who always has a complete world to give away.

And as the world unrolled itself for him, so rolls it together again for him in rings, as the becoming of good through evil, as the becoming of purpose out of chance.

Let the future and the farthest be the motive of your today; in your friend you shall love the Overman as your motive.

My brothers, I advise you not to love of the neighbor -- I advise you to love of the farthest!

Thus spoke Zarathustra.

Read this and think of "farthest" and "nearest" not as literal, but as analogies for how much someone shares your values and outlook on life. I've bolded the line I think is the most important.

My reading of Nietzsche's relationship to Christianity isn't that he is anti-Christian, but because he thinks Christ, Paul and Aquinas all failed at the challenge Christianity sets humanity - which is to love the people who are hardest to love. Slave morality perverts this firstly by turning it into an obligation rather than act of the will, and then by making "hardest to love" a matter of sharing values ("love thy neighbour") and proximity. Christianity begins with a radical affirmation and proceeds to make it as hollow as possible. It turns love into a matter of oblivion and suffering rather than affirmation.

From the view of conventional morality what Nietzsche is saying sounds contradictory - we should love the "noble", people who exemplify the values we hold, but also the "most distant" people who we understand the least and don't see ourselves in at all. But the challenge poses is stepping outside of a sense obligation to the point where these two ideas doesn't contradict themselves anymore, because they're both folded into "saying yes to life" in a way that we've become blind to because Christianity has trained us to be focused on another world rather than this one.

TrenterPercenter

Quote from: Retinend on August 09, 2021, 02:10:07 PM
If you take her word for it (and I do), Natalie Wynn, AKA Contrapoints, was hounded off Twitter by a coterie of resentful would-be-political-"allies" on Twitter. As a consequence, her recent videos have been less about the right, and more about her jaded perspective on her own side, the left.

I think there is a lot of truth in this and I don't think she has made this a secret.  This doesn't however mean that she is wrong and there is perhaps an important question here in why did she feel the need to do this.

Quote from: greenman on August 11, 2021, 03:13:33 PM
Envy being targeted at those around you isnt just a natural function I would say but also an obvious political tool, to focus anger away from the powerful. I don't see CaB as being a strongly envious place though, its probably the most left wing place I post but also the place least obcessed with the idea of celebrity whipping boys. It hates Graham Linehan far more than it hates Michael Mcintyre due to the formers bigotry over the latters greater sucess with material most here wouldnt deem artistry worthwhile.

Indeed; so there is an interest in getting men envious of women, women envious of men, white people envious of non-white people and non-white people envious of white people, that is, in part, the game.  Cab isn't an envious place but CPs over reliance on envy to explain online behaviour is inadequate in itself (in fact her over focus on it more speaks to Retinends point above).