Ressentiment (Scheler) - Ressentiment and Wider Societal Impact

Ressentiment and Wider Societal Impact

10) Finally, Pathological Ressentiment bears a particular relation to the Socio-Political Realm by virtue of, what Scheler describes as, man's lowest form of social togetherness, "Psychic Contagion". Psychic Contagion is the phenomenon of uncritically "following the crowd", or mob mentality, liken to lemmings charging over a cliff. Positive examples, are good natured crowds in a pub or at sporting events; a negative example, violent rioting. As a concept, Psychic Contagion bears an affinity to Nietzsche's assessment of Slave-type mentality.

To the extent that the politically powerful (i.e., the "Master" faction or "Salve" faction of society, as the case might be) are able to rally collective cultural animosities through the use of Psychic Contagion, they increase their ability to achieve their underlying socio-political objectives. Such methods usually take the forms of incendiary rhetoric, scapegoat tactics (e.g., anti-Semitism, homophobia, hatred toward welfare recipients and the disadvantaged, etc.), class warfare, partisan politics, propaganda, excessive secrecy / non-transparency, closed minded political ideology, jingoism, misguided nationalism, violence, and waging unjust war.

The use of such methods of negative Psychic Contagion can be viewed as having propelled such historical figures or movements as Nero (burning of Rome), the French Revolution (Ressentiment in the original concept), Hitler (genocide of the Jews, the Aryan Master Race agenda and the Lebensborn project), the 1975-1979 Cambodian Khmer Rouge (genocidal social engineering), the 1994 Rwanda (tribal based genocide), International Fundamental Islamic Terrorism.