Resentment is productive

Julia met Emily while working for a start-up.

The company was a vicious place, where performance didn't matter—couldn't even be measured—all that counted was office politics. In these politics, women were a liability. The more women you knew, the weaker you were, because women earned less, were valued less, and generally had little to offer. Ideally you wanted to be a man's woman. You wanted male friends, male colleagues, male mentors, etc.

But if you were alone, you were also vulnerable. It was utterly dreary to talk about, but at this small, hard-drinking company there was at least one rape (that Julia knew about) at a late-night office party, and a lot of women being preyed-upon by the boys. A lot of sleeping around that ultimately rebounded to the woman's detriment. Hard to stay safe. So Julia and Emily banded together at events, operated as a pair, met for coffee, walked each other home, etc. They avoided the other women at the company (who were often somewhat catty and cruel anyway, because of the stress of the bro-ey culture), but these two women seemed at least to like each other.

Then Emily left to start her own business. She didn’t invite Julia. There was an original hurt there. Julia maybe wasn't…wasn't the best employee…wasn't the smartest or hardest-working. But she could've been an ally, a partner. The pain was etched in glass—not acutely painful, but she could always feel it with her fingertip, no matter how much time had passed.

Emily’s business failed, as most businesses do. Their careers fluctuated—Emily was always the better-liked, the more overtly talented, and yet ultimately she earned less money, accomplished less. Julia stayed put, cultivated male mentors, negotiated savvily for raises and the replenishment of stock, and now, after twenty years, was a senior director. Sometimes Julia and Emily got together for lunch, and Emily complained about these companies, how they had no vision, how they wouldn't take her advice.

But then Julia was laid-off. She'd gotten a decent severance, but she was laid off. And Emily said, "That's so hard. You probably won't be able to find another senior director job in this climate."

That was Julia’s fear. She was in her mid-forties—She didn't really think her work was that good or had amounted to very much. She spent a few months sending out resumes, contacting head-hunters, going through the motions of looking for a new job. Everyone nodded their heads, said they would help, but they didn't do anything--they'd all written her off. And why shouldn't they? In her whole life, what had she accomplished? She saw herself now as her friend saw her—lucky, useless, just the right woman in the right spot.

During that time, Julia considered switching careers. Her friend encouraged her to apply to a school of social work. And when Julia got in (without financial aid), her friend said, "Oh, but you can afford it, right?"

They were at lunch near Emily’s work. Em was employed by an AI startup, and she burbled excitedly about all the important work they'd do, and how people really didn't understand how this work would free up human creativity.

"Do you really think I should go back to school?" Julia said.

"Well, yeah! You've been looking for a change! What other option is there?"

"But...is it really right?"

"It's a great program. You have the money..."

Julia stared into her friend's eyes. Emily speared a piece of shrimp with her fork. She took a bite, and then she raised a glass of soda water with her fingertips. The windows were streaming light, and outside the trees were waving from a gentle breeze.

And Julia had the thought: I am alone. I am utterly alone.

After a few days, she rejected the offer from the school of social work. Then she went back to the worst man from their original company, and she asked him for advice. He invited her out to dinner. He was boorish and loud, threw out a suggestion about maybe she could shadow him at his new job (like she was a college kid just looking to learn the ropes). She nodded and said nothing, just blinked a few times and waited for the next burst of condescending advice. A few days later, he called her again, and they went out again.

These meetings continued for some weeks. Then, suddenly, she stopped responding to his texts.

A few days later, he asked Julia to interview for a senior director job. She took it.

Emily was laid off from the AI startup later that year.

Julia worked under the boorish man for two miserable years, whilst cultivating other contacts, and then she transferred out from under him.

Emily opened a freelance business, and started traveling the world, writing a blog about the wonders of being a digital nomad.

Julia rose and rose. Women were rare before in her line of work, but now they were almost entirely absent. She was one of two female vice presidents. Then she got hired into the C-Suite. She joined corporate boards. Always, she was the only woman.

Sometimes the men probed her, trying to see if she was a feminist, and she knew the right things to say—"You know, honestly, most women don't want to work this hard. Like, there's a friend of mine, we started out at the same time and place, but she'd rather live in Barcelona."

"Good for her," said the men.

"I'd rather get rich," Julia said. And she did.

She was continually coaxed into being a mentor for other women, and she continually refused. The truth was—other women hadn't helped her, and she saw no particular reason to help them.

Julia was offered several CEO gigs, but she always just used the offers to negotiate for a better package at her current job—she knew the moment she took a top job, she'd have a target on her back.

By the time Julia retired, she was worth several hundred million dollars. Emily had stopped working ten years ago—lived in New Mexico, painted, had a girlfriend now, wrote about how toxic the corporate grind had been—how wearying to her soul.

Julia traveled for a few years, ate at three-star Michelin restaurants, visited Macchu Picchu, the Pyramids, Angkor Wat, etc. She had all this money, but no idea how to spend it. The money was almost the living incarnation of her anger, of her pain, of the continuous stream of smart decisions she'd made to acquire it. She knew that her friend considered her possession of this money to be dumb and random, but Julia believed the money had some deeper meaning.

She had no real desire to spend the money during her life, but since she had no kids, she bequeathed it to her alma mater—college was the last place she'd felt really free and happy and alive. They probed at her, asking if she wanted the money to benefit women in some way.

"No."

"Are you sure?" said the development officer. "We have a great gender studies program.”

"Absolutely not. Put the money into..." Then she had a brainstorm. She said, "Yes, put the money into gender studies. But I want you to rename the program after me."

Almost from the moment the gift was announced, the protests began. The school tore itself to shreds, issuing statements, expelling the students who ordered sit-ins. She got reams of phone calls, was asked into mediations with students and professors—everyone kept pressuring her alter the bequest somehow, so the naming rights wouldn't be so iron-clad. But the amount of money was too big. They couldn't—wouldn't—just refuse it. The school was small, and this would be amongst the biggest gifts it'd ever gotten.

Testimonials were published, describing the Julia’s terrible business decisions, the companies she’d acquired and destroyed, the women she’d spurned and ignored. Emily wrote an article repudiating her friend.

Ironically, Julia garnered a lot of good-will from men for this gesture. They invited her to corporate boards. Her old friend and boss was a high-up fundraiser for the Republican party and he asked if she’d consider running for the Senate. She refused.

Some seven years into her retirement, she got an email from a young woman, a recipient of a scholarship that she had funded. The email was a short thank-you—the very first that Julia had ever gotten from a student of that college.

A correspondence developed between them. The young woman, Alex, became her assistant, her protege, and even after Alex hopped to the public sector, she still called Julia most nights to ask her advice.

"I just don't know how to get through to these guys," Alex said. "They have no vision."

"Well, they're idiots," said our protagonist. "You'll never convince them you're right."

"Oh...! That's not what I expected you to say?"

"Why? Because of...why?"

"Just...your career. You never said anything bad about anyone."

"Exactly," Julia. "Just agree with them, and quietly play them off against each other. Does your boss have an enemy? Go to him, talk to him. Listen. Never expect credit. Never expect recognition. Whatever it is you want, whether it's money or approval of some program, just get that. Get something you can take to the bank."

"Hmm, okay. So...what’s my approach?"

"You can't email him or message him. It's too forward. Cross-cutting connections in a large org are hard...you need to get onto a project he's interested in..."

After several years, our protagonist became sick with cancer. She planned to euthanize herself at a clinic in Switzerland. She didn't want to tell anyone, because she hated the idea of them not caring, not being there for her. But at the last moment, she called Alex from the airport. Julia knew she was sabotaging herself, asking for something without asking. Julia was, on some level, in love with her own anger, and she’d staged this last-minute phone call as a way of creating a moment where she could get rid of Alex, could accuse the latter of not caring about her, just because she refused to drop everything and see to her.

"Are you serious?" Alex said.

"I am," Julia said. "But don't fly out—definitely don't do that—don't come here."

Alex said, "Don't be crazy. I’ll be at the airport in four hours.”

Julia had already given away the bulk of her fortune to the university, but she now offered to call a lawyer, to give the rest to Alex.

"No, no."

"You're being very foolish,” Julia said.

"No."

Julia was joined in Switzerland by her friend. They sat in a flower-bedecked room in a little clinic up in the alps, staring out at the snow-capped peaks. The line was placed in Julia’s arm, and she was given a button to press.

"I can still change my will," Julia said.

"Don't be crazy," Alex said..

And neither of them understood the moment—not really. They didn't know why they were doing this, speaking, interacting this way. Alex had vestigial Christian values, and she was still young—she didn't understand the value of the money she was relinquishing. All she knew was that it would dishonor her friendship if she allowed it now to be about money.

And Julia was disintegrating emotionally—for so long she'd viewed her money as more or less the avatar of herself. She'd assumed that her friend, on some level, wanted her money, and she'd even respected her friend for dropping everything to fly out here. But if that didn't happen—if no money was really involved—then it meant that friendship was real. That Julia herself had some inherent worth, and that she hadn't, perhaps, needed to convert her life-essence into cold, hard cash.

Julia didn't have regrets—far from it. She was just overjoyed to have this person here—to have shared these years with her—to have finally experienced that union, that thing beyond friendship, that she’d always suspected might be possible. Her whole life had been driven by resentment and anger over the failure of that higher thing to materialize. And that anger had kept her going, kept her from quitting, kept her from selling herself cheaply. That anger had sustained her, even when she had nothing else left.

In a moment, the anger evaporated, and that absence made her almost want to live. But to what end? If she got up and walked away, would her friend stay with her? She didn’t know—didn’t want to find out—but now in these last few moments, she couldn’t succumb to fear. So she called in the nurse, ordered the line to be removed, and they spent a few days in Switzerland, talking about their lives—Julia shared whatever she still knew, whatever had gone unshared. She called up her lawyers and put together one of those fancy deals that rich families do—creating a foundation for her friend to run, drawing a salary indefinitely, to avoid the appearance of a direct gift.

“If you want to give it up, or give away the money, please do,” Julia said.

“I mean…if you say so…I never really…”

“Please,” Julia said. “I just don’t have the words to explain it. I’m sorry…”

That’s how they talked in those final months. Kind of inchoate, emotional. Not really worth reporting directly.

Julia had some anxiety about the burden she was placing on this young woman. But she also thought, maybe this is a gift, maybe my presence is a gift—maybe the experience of someone needing her, of being there for someone—maybe that will sustain her later on, help her to do the great things that I could never do.

Afterword

About a year ago I read a lot of Nietzsche. And much of Nietzsche is about this concept of the slave morality and ressentiment—the hatred that lesser beings feel towards their betters. The funny thing about Nietzsche is that nobody had more ressentiment than he did! (Something he probably understood and agreed with). He was absolutely brimming with hatred for a society that hadn’t really recognized his genius.

For him, those negative emotions, that hatred and anger, were powerfully productive. They spurred him to write, to create, and to explain himself. The whole point of Nietzschean ressentiment is that it’s a thwarted or suppressed psychological energy that can come out in all kinds of ways. It’s very similar to Freudian neurosis. It’s where the basic drives—for domination and recognition—rub up against the fact that nobody really gives a shit about you, and you’re not really powerful enough to make them.

So the question becomes…what can be done with this energy? Nietzsche used it to write. My character used it to make money. And I think, in a more general sense, we use this energy to define some core of ourselves that is sacrosanct—a part that we set aside and say…I think this part of me is worthwhile. We keep that core safe, and we protect it, and we wait for the moment when it’s safe to reveal it to the world.

Rejection, by Tony Tulathimutte

After writing and scheduling this post (a week ago), I read a book that’s extremely germane to these themes. Rejection is a short story collection about a group of people who are basically trapped by their own shame, their own conviction that nobody could love them.

The book is well-written. It definitely doesn’t fall into the traps that usually afflict literary short stories. It’s straightforward, brisk, it attempts to tell actual stories. I was pretty invested in at least the first four stories and their characters.

But…the problem is…these characters are basically in hell. They are so trapped by the certainty of their worthlessness that they are unable to make a connection with anyone or do anything to help themselves. In this whole book that’s mostly about sexual shame, nobody even hires a sex worker! The problem isn't that the characters made choices that were anti-social or bad—it’s that they mostly did nothing at all!¹ And, like, I understand why the book is written this way. It’s because shame enervates you, saps you of your vitality, makes you unable to help yourself.

But I wanted more. I wanted more seeing, more wisdom. One of the stories, for instance, is about a gay man with these ludicrous fetishes that can’t possibly be satisfied in real life. But we only realize how absurd his fetishes are at the end of the story. To me, that’s where the story begins. He has these absurd desires—then what? What happens? Does he just fuck off and die? Is he sad forever? I dunno! I just wanted more evidence of mankind’s indomitable will to live! I understand that shame exists, and that peoples’ lives are hard. I have experienced the emotions and situations detailed in this book—many people have. But almost all of us have found ways of coping and moving forward. I just think there’s a potential heroism that’s missing.

Not a bad book. Definitely glad I read it. Glad it exists. But…it ultimately felt like a failure of vision.

1. This is why the first story (“The Feminist”) is the best one. Because in that one, the guy gets angrier and angrier, and then he just explodes. That’s one possible solution. But it’s a story collection, so I expected subsequent stories to have different potential solutions, and they never really came.