Professor Katherine Cramer, Political Science, UW-Madison, wrote "The Politics of Resentment: Rural Consciousness in Wisconsin and the Rise of Scott Walker". Until I met that book on the New Books shelf, I rarely thought about the word, the idea or the reality of resentment. I guess that practicing meditation and much good fortune, maybe along with family traditions and ideas, has steered me away from spending time and energy on resenting others. It also seems possible that being small has helped me grasp that my strengths and talents are limited as are everyone's. So what I can do and what I have accomplished are not what others can do or have accomplished. Put the other way, I am not Levon James or Aaron Rogers because my genes, my body, my chemistry, my neurology don't permit me to be. Same thing with Warren Buffet and Bill Gates.
I haven't read Cramer's book (Pace, Dr. Shaw!) but the title alone has carried me quite a way. The title has put "resentment" on a front burner of my brain stove. In grad school, I read the book "Individuals" by P.W. Strawson. So, when I got an email from Amazon about his "Freedom and Resentment", I was interested. The price of twenty seven dollars turned me toward the library. I got the book and started the title essay. Yikes! Such language, such weasel words, such conditions and cautions! I couldn't stand it. I couldn't sit it. I lacked confidence that time spend teasing out what the heck the gentleman has to say is time well spent. I mean: didn't like it.
I looked up the Cramer book in Amazon and found several related books about resentment. I gained new appreciation of the meaning of "Politics of…" It is rather like the use of the hashtag in Twitter. I don't need to understand resentment or other people or anything. Once I am attracted to the resentment group or the anti-resentment group, because of their motto, their background, their beauty, their accent, their anything at all, I might start attending their meetings, voting their way, partying with them, etc.
In Twitter, the # mark can be used to signal an theme. #MeToo is a group that discusses being sexually harassed. I could start a hashtag 'resentment' but I don't know enough and I don't care enough.
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Other notes of possible interest
Watching politics and related today, it can help to picture bands of chimps (male, then) raiding and fighting neighboring bands. Mostly, moderns use words and pictures instead of teeth and clubs.
The investigation of bribery and such in college entrance exams and admissions seems to show one track of unfairness and inequality and one that matters.
Long ago, in The House of Intellect, Jacques Barzun noted how the word "plastic" came to mean both flexible and inflexible, due, in his opinion to stresses on language and vocabulary invention and dispersion. There is more now than in the 60's. Diana Winston asks if I have heard of "extreme ironing." It is not essential to know about but it can be eye-opening.
Among many sources of new things and new thinking, I believe the greater participation of women writers, observers, thinkers, investigators, etc. is one prod toward the new. I just mentioned Diana Winston but also see Amanda Mull and Lily Hay Newman. They see and feel things that men tend to dismiss.
