Nietzsche's Warning Against Becoming a Resentful Loser
If the title of this essay triggered you or made you even slightly uncomfortable, good.
This whole essay is supposed to make you uncomfortable. Not simply for the sake of getting a reaction out of you. But because I want to challenge you.
If I’m challenging myself when I read and think about these ideas, you better believe I’m going to challenge you when I’m writing about them.
Let’s get into it.
Throughout the history of written thought, few thinkers have shown the ability to understand human nature as deeply as Friedrich Nietzsche did. (Dostoyevsky comes to mind as someone on the same level.)
It is no wonder then why Nietzsche is sometimes called “the first psychologist” and why the greatest names of psychology’s golden era, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, and Alfred Adler, were heavily influenced by him.
(It is worth noting that not just these three, but almost all the greatest thinkers of the 20th century, including philosophers, psychologists, and novelists, have acknowledged Nietzsche as one of their biggest influences.)
With his unique insight into how the human mind works, Nietzsche was able to shake the foundation of something most people never even think to question: morality.
What I will try to do is give you a brief but comprehensive overview of one of Nietzsche’s most important ideas, the Master and Slave morality, and then show how it is relevant to your life, whether you agree with Nietzsche’s main message or not.
In his masterpieces “Beyond Good and Evil” and “On the Genealogy of Morality,” Nietzsche gives us his account of history, or rather genealogy, of morality. And the central piece of this account is the idea of master and slave morality.
Master morality is the morality of the strong, vigorous, life-loving, and life-affirming.
It is the morality of those who live dangerously and assertively. Those who love adventure and justify their existence through acts of creativity, exploration, and conquest.
Slave morality is the morality of the weak. It's the morality of the humble. Of those who are unable to assert their own will and afraid to venture into the dangerous and unpredictable world. Slave morality is the morality of victims.
The weak ones are passive. Because of this inability to assert their own will and get what they want out of life, they become frustrated and envious of the strong. What is more, they start hating themselves for being weak. But no one can live this way. Their will seeks a way to express itself. And since it cannot express itself through strength, power, and vitality, it finds another way.
This is how the slave revolt in morality begins. Ressentiment becomes a creative force.
“The slave revolt in morality begins when 'ressentiment' itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge. While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is "outside," what is "different," what is "not itself"; and this No is its creative deed.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals
Because they cannot revolt through real-world action, the weak revolt in the realm of ideas. They rationalize their weakness. The weak tell themselves they are good and moral precisely because they are weak, humble, meek, obedient, and passive.
All those traits that make them unable to assert their will are turned into virtues. What was, up to that point, considered a sign of weakness has been turned into a sign of goodness.
The opposites of these virtues become not only bad but evil and immoral.
Pride, power, independence, ability to exercise control, assertiveness, confidence, abundance, glory, wealth… Under the slave revolt, all of these once-virtues become signs of immorality.
To put it in modern language, slave morality is coping. However, successful coping, since the slave morality became, and still is, the dominant morality of most of the humanity.
Now, I am not asking you to agree with Nietzsche on what we should uphold as true or right virtues.
However, consider the fact that the origin of the dominant values and virtues of our culture often goes unquestioned. We take it as common sense that humility and meekness are virtues and pride is a sin, when that wasn’t the case for a significant portion of human history.
I personally think Nietzsche’s account of the genealogy of morality is mostly, if not entirely, correct. Still, that doesn’t stop me from viewing humility as a virtue, regardless of its origin. But I digress.
Even if you decide that what Nietzsche calls slave morality is the right type of morality to live by, there is still great value for you in the idea of the slave revolt.
I would say that, on a cultural and societal level, we’ve been going through a slave revolt 2.0. But that’s an idea I will discuss another time. This time, I want to bring this to the level of the individual. That is, I want to bring it to you.
Are you engaging in your personal slave revolt?
Around 4 years ago, I wrote myself a note that I recently found while going through my journal.
Only allow yourself to criticize a behavior or a lifestyle that you are able to act out, but choose not to because you believe it's immoral or destructive.
Every time you criticize something that you wouldn't be able to attain or act out if you wanted to, it’s more a sign of your weakness than your moral goodness, no matter how “bad” that something is.
I would be embarrassed to find out the number of hours me and some of my closest friends spent criticizing people from our environment who have started making money through some type of entraprenurial venture.
They were taking advantage of the corruption in our country. It was easy for them to start a business because they were born into money. The business wasn’t even theirs; it was just a facade for money laundering. Or, at the very least, they were superficial because they even pursued making money in the first place. These are some of the narratives that we would tell ourselves.
On the other hand, we were these deep souls who were too profound to engage in something as superficial as trying to make money outside of our regular jobs. Our time and energy were to be spent discussing philosophy, history, and literature. And, occasionally, on releasing our pent-up frustration through moralizing.
Clearly, I don’t consider love of philosophy, history, and literature a slave value. My life largely revolves around it to this day.
However, this love was overshadowed by the fact that our criticism of a more materially-oriented lifestyle originated in frustration around our own material status. Our criticism didn’t come from a place of strength, power, or genuine distaste for the behavior that we attacked. It came, more than anything, from a place of envy and resentment. It was our own slave revolt.
Does any of this sound familiar?
It is uncomfortable, even today, to write about this. Even 4 years after distancing myself from this way of thinking, or at least starting to do so, it’s embarrassing to admit what was the real motivation behind my criticism. So I know how difficult it might be for you to acknowledge that you are acting out your own small slave revolt.
If you don’t recognize this type of thinking in any aspect of your life, social media is full of examples and warning signs that you can hopefully use to stay away from this path.
“What a pathetic life. You will never be happy," comments a conservative, “God-loving” family man on an Instagram post of a solo traveler who has been backpacking around the world for the past 3 years.
“Just because you’ve been trapped by the patriarchy doesn’t mean that we should be too. Don’t push your misery onto others," comments a "free-spirited" single woman on an Instagram post of a young lady who talks about the joy of being a stay-at-home mom.
Of course, there is nothing wrong with being a family man or a single woman living an unconventional life path. Just like there isn’t anything wrong with being a young man more inclined toward intellectual and spiritual pursuits than material ones.
However, the problem arises when you are fueled, not by genuine fulfillment with your way of life but by frustration and envy toward someone else’s.
Nietzsche was clear, and I wholeheartedly agree: the strong ones don’t feel the need to criticize what is attainable but undesirable for them.
The family man who is truly fulfilled doesn’t feel the need to convince himself and others that an adventurous life is devoid of meaning and happiness.
A truly free-spirited woman who has attained joy in her freedom doesn’t feel the need to convince herself and others that being a stay-at-home mom is miserable.
A young man who has truly found peace in his non-material growth and development doesn’t feel the need to criticize his peer, who is able to take his mother on an exotic vacation.
It is the envious and resentful ones that use such creative coping mechanisms.
I would like you to think about this next time you are ready to pass your judgment on a certain behavior or lifestyle as immoral, bad, or even evil. Is it within your reach, attainable, but undesirable? Are you able to assess it objectively, from a level playing field? Or are you trying to bring down something that you perceive is above you?
Unlike Nietzsche, I am not telling you what values are slave values. Likewise, I am not going to suggest what values belong to the “noble class” of humans. Rather, I am inviting you to make use of this profound insight into the process we often go through before we judge something as “bad,” “immoral,” “superficial,” or “evil.”
Question the origin of your criticism of someone else’s behavior or lifestyle. By doing so, you will recognize what needs changing in your way of living, thinking, or both.
In his masterpiece On the Genealogy of Morals, Nietzsche says that “it is not from the strongest that harm comes to the strong, but from the weakest.”
So I call you to look out, not only for the weak ones who will try to bring you down, but for the weakness in yourself that will try to corrupt you.
Thank you for reading.
Free Resources:
My free ebook: The Lost Art of Reading
Paid Resources:
The Art of Showing Up: A Clear and Practical Method for Mastering Consistency
The Gold Pill: Timeless Ideas for a Life Worth Living
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