The phrase “bitterness is an analgesic” popped into my head the other day. I did not understand it, but thought I might take this lazy day to ponder it a bit.
Dictionary.com defines it this way: a feeling of antagonism, hostility, or resentfulness.
Is anger not an analgesic? Do we not feel less when we are angry? You can get an adrenaline rush physically that mutes all physical pain. We are physiologically made that way.
Would this not make anger–chronic anger, anger you wake up with, anger you “exercise” daily–an analgesic too? Would it not be an attractive alternative to the entropy of dissolution, of confusion, of uncertainty, of anomie and alienation, of self loathing?
Anger is an emotion, but resentment is its cognitive framing, is it not? And bitterness is what you get when you think resentful thoughts. Things should not be this way, we say, they should be some other way, and that they are not fills me with anger. Then off you go to the races. You are filled with the thrill of the chase, and as long as your thinking fosters resentment and bitterness, then you will necessarily be filled with anger and hostility.
I think much of the anger, the lack of listening, the lack of openness, the hostility, begins with sadness. It begins with loneliness. It begins with a lack of fulfilling lives. Most Americans are not happy. We are not a singing and dancing, happy, spontaneous people. We are more or less chained like galley slaves to jobs most of us do not want to do.
Is it not an obvious extension of the “panem et circenses” to “grant” people the “right” to daily rage? Was the Two Minutes of Hate in 1984 in some sense not just a letting off of the “steam” of circumscribed lives, not just the teaching and measuring of obedience, but a pain killing drug?
It is so hard seeing any good end to all of this. It is very hard not seeing the Earth as a giant prison run by wardens who themselves cannot leave, and who resent those who try.
And yes, these are techniques of psychological manipulation, but it should never be forgotten those who want to rule over us, who view us as inferior cattle, are themselves if anything INFERIOR to us in their emotionality. They don’t exist on a higher plane spiritually or developmentally. They just have the money and the power. Most of them are worse than most of us. Most of us can be taught. Most of them cannot.
And being the kings of Hell is much like ruling over a fetid swamp where the very best are disgusting by any sane cosmic standard. It is being a small fish in a small pond, desperate to forget the ocean, and desperate to forget that there exist whales out there. It is a stupid game for small people.
But as Hannah Arendt pointed out, such people, their essential banality notwithstanding, can destroy lives when not opposed by those capable of dignity and honest clinging to truth.
The word Sophistry comes to mind. Historically, the Sophists are “received” as liars, as politicians. But the word means “truth”, and it could be repurposed to mean “Truthists”, or speakers of truth.
Gandhi’s Satyagraha would be relevant here too.