How would Nietzsche have judged those affected by the housing crisis: victims or whingers?

I thought my life was pretty good until I watched the Netflix series about footballer David Beckham. Then I realised I’m a total failure.

If you haven’t seen it, Beckham ends with our eponymous hero seasoning and cooking mushrooms in his custom-made outdoor kitchen. Not only does he take a decent free kick but he’s a skilled chef too.

This strange emotional reaction to a man I’ve never met quickly subsided (not wanting to brag, but I do make a mean fajita tray bake). However, I was left with a deep appreciation that I’m as susceptible as anyone to envy.

We humans like to think we’re above base emotions such as jealousy, bitterness and hatred. When we feel ill-will towards someone else, we assume our anger is justified.

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Such self-deception was closely studied by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. People believe they’re well-intentioned but in truth, says Nietzsche, the driving force behind our actions is “ressentiment”.

Doyle says that ultimately, according to Nietzsche, ‘overcoming ressentiment will entail adopting a joyful attitude to human suffering’

While the word translates from French as mere resentment, Nietzsche has in mind a supercharged form of the emotion.

“Nietzsche argues that ressentiment is a poisonous and vengeful psychological state that informs many of our traditional moral judgments,” explains Dr Tsarina Doyle, an expert on Nietzschean literature at University of Galway.

“Confronted with circumstances that they cannot change or with people who seem to enjoy more power than they do, the ressentiment subject enacts an imaginary revenge by labelling the more powerful person or offending circumstances ‘evil’ and its own weakness ‘good’.”

Today you can find ressentiment coursing through public life – in Ireland and elsewhere.

A couple of months ago, a gravel-voiced singer called Oliver Anthony came from obscurity to landing a Number 1 hit in the United States Billboard charts with Rich Men North of Richmond – a song that blamed both careerist, tax-collecting politicians and “obese” welfare recipients for the fact that he is “workin’ all day… for bullsh**t pay”. As an anthem for right-wing ressentiment, it could not have been better phrased as it incorporates both punching up and punching down.

Left-wing ressentiment tends to focus more exclusively on punching up but that doesn’t make it any better, at least in Nietzsche’s eyes. As an unapologetic elitist, his main objection was to Average Joes who were envious of “great men” changing the course of history. “Nietzsche argues that ressentiment gives birth to a ‘slave revolt’ and ‘herd morality’ that attempts to impose a Christian principle of equality that teaches that all individuals are the same,” says Doyle. “Nietzsche thinks that the principle of equality is detrimental to human flourishing and is an act of revenge by the weak-minded on those otherwise constituted to be ‘higher’ types.”

Interestingly, Nietzsche foresaw ressentiment outliving Christianity. “He argues that the money economy, which he describes as a form of spiritual slavery, will replace the role once played by God… Where one’s efforts in the money-economy are thwarted by other interests, then those other interests must be blamed for one’s suffering.”

[ Elon Musk may be a champion of free speech but he draws the line at free thought ]

What Nietzsche didn’t foresee, however, was the way elites themselves would become resentful. Two of the greatest crybabies of our time are the wealthy former US president Donald Trump and the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. The former spends his days attacking judges and civil servants seeking to hold him to account, while the latter seems to blame everyone but himself for his decision to buy Twitter/X and then wreck it.

“The suffering experienced by a ressentiment subject stems from a feeling of powerlessness,” says Doyle. Under this Nietzschean framework, we can interpret the regular tantrums of Trump and Musk as their way of dealing with a sense that they’re losing some of their power.

“Nietzsche thinks that active forgetting is necessary to psychological wellbeing. The unhealthy ressentiment subject, however, broods and cannot forget,” Doyle says.

Here we hit upon some advice for Musk: forget you bought Twitter, give it to someone else to run, and then move on.

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Doyle says that ultimately, according to Nietzsche, “overcoming ressentiment will entail adopting a joyful attitude to human suffering. A positive disposition to suffering, he claims, is notably absent in his contemporary culture. He writes that ‘nearly everywhere in Europe today, there is a sickly, raw sensitivity about pain, and also a disgusting lack of restraint about complaining’.”

This does not mean Nietzsche himself was heartless, she adds. “His criticism of what he sees as the modern culture of complaining and intolerance of suffering might lead us to think that he would be unsympathetic to, for example, the under-35s who complain about and resent the lack of housing options available to them in Ireland.

“However, he thought that flourishing rather than mere survival should be the aim of the human animal. He put an emphasis on the role of shelter, climate, and diet in maximising human flourishing. His interest in these things indicates that, despite his inegalitarian views, he would recognise the frustration experienced by those impacted negatively by the housing crisis. His advice, though, would be to act rather than react and to resist festering resentment.”