Post by Admin on Mar 2, 2022 4:30:03 GMT
Chapter 10 - Divine Epicaricacy
Job wishes for God to explain his legal grounds for punishing him so severely. He questions whether or not God enjoys watching the suffering of his righteous children, while he allows the wicked to run free.
*Resentment Aims Upward*
Professor of philosophy Robert C. Solomon has theorized that the negative emotions of resentment, anger, and contempt function in relation to your position on a social hierarchy. Resentment is the emotion that is triggered by injustices delivered to you by someone of a higher rank than yourself. Anger is triggered by offenders of an equal status to your own. Contempt is triggered by offenders of a lower rank than your own [8].
*Behavior Implications*
The ability to identify the power imbalance between the offended and the offender would seem to have useful implications for optimizing behavior. When faced with injustices by a higher power, a certain amount of inhibition is to be maintained. Resentment builds in silence, because the victim doesn't have the power to defend themselves. When pushed to the extreme, this could lead to revenge ideation - secretly looking for weaknesses in the oppressor in order to exploit them and get revenge.
*Epicaricacy*
Epicaricacy is the English word for schadenfreude - the taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. Epicaricacy seems worse than the popular version of sadism - instead of merely delighting in the pain of others (often only superficially - enjoying the idea of stimulation rather than the actual suffering), you delight in their downfall - a more comprehensive desire for them to suffer in any and all ways possible. When facing repeated injustices by a higher power that has the capacity to stop the pattern of injustices, it can be natural to impute epicaricacy to the offender - or else how do you explain their lack of action? Obviously, there are many factors to take into account. Hanlon's razor advises us to not assume malice when stupidity is a possible explanation. Yet in the case of God - when defined as omniscient, stupidity or ignorance no longer become acceptable answers. If ignorance and impotence are not viable answers, theists often move to assume that God uses suffering as a tool to teach us. But in the depths of suffering, it doesn't feel like any lessons are being taught - the only lesson they are learning is how evil the structure of reality actually is. If the nature of the suffering becomes so extreme that "learning" becomes an unacceptable answer, epicaricacy becomes a logical deduction as to why God allows evil to exist - because he likes it.
*Revenge Against the Divine*
Job is suffering injustices dealt to him by either God or nature - both with a higher status of power and influence than his own. He cannot battle with them as equals with the emotion of anger. He cannot swat them away with the emotion of contempt. He can only deal with them using resentment. But resentment, unmanaged, can be a self-harming state of being.
*Self-harming Resentment*
As Alice May stated, "Hanging on to a resentment, someone once said, is like drinking poison and hoping it will kill someone else. [9]" There is a lot of pain in the soul of the person racked with feelings of resentment. There is an element of psychological self-harm in this mode of being. Because of the extreme power imbalance between God and man, there is no real way to satisfy it's base desires for revenge. The person harboring resentment might suffer more than the offender does thereby. According to Dr. Nina Radcliff, resentment can 1) weaken your immune system, 2) increase stress and anxiety, and increase the risk of 3) heart disease, 4) hypertension, 5) stroke, 6) cancer, 7) alcoholism, 8) drug addiction, 10) compulsive behavior, 11) weight gain, 12) mood swings, 13) depression, 14) burnout, and 15) shortened lifespan [10].
*Resentment as a Defense Mechanism*
Despite the power imbalance, resentment can function as a tool to ensure that you never trust a source of your pain ever again. This change of trust can protect you from future incidence of harm. I think a major factor in many post-religious individuals is a type of resentment that comes from experiencing the harm that the higher power of religion caused them. A religion is often represented by the power structure of an organization. Often the emotions of anger (same power level) or contempt (superior power position) are unable to manage the imbalance of power between the individual and the organization - leading to resentment (inferior power position). The resentment can provide these individuals a defense mechanism to ensure that they maintain their distance and never get harmed by trusting that religious organization ever again.
*Religious Defense Mechanisms*
In response to the post-religious resentments, the currently religious often adopt a mentality that anyone who leaves a religion is possessed by evil energies. This can provide them with a psychological defense mechanism to write off the harm experienced by those who depart from the faith and maintain their trust in their religious structures. Yet, this is incredibly unfair to the post-religious individuals - not only do they have to suffer the trauma caused by realizing you were betrayed by religion, but they also have to suffer from being villainized by those who formerly were your only support group. Job experiences this acutely by realizing that his theist friends are now his enemies that demonize him everyday, adding insult to injury.
With Job's appeal to divine epicaricacy, you can see Job's resentment growing in each chapter.
NEXT: Chapter 11 - Repent and be forgiven
Job wishes for God to explain his legal grounds for punishing him so severely. He questions whether or not God enjoys watching the suffering of his righteous children, while he allows the wicked to run free.
*Resentment Aims Upward*
Professor of philosophy Robert C. Solomon has theorized that the negative emotions of resentment, anger, and contempt function in relation to your position on a social hierarchy. Resentment is the emotion that is triggered by injustices delivered to you by someone of a higher rank than yourself. Anger is triggered by offenders of an equal status to your own. Contempt is triggered by offenders of a lower rank than your own [8].
*Behavior Implications*
The ability to identify the power imbalance between the offended and the offender would seem to have useful implications for optimizing behavior. When faced with injustices by a higher power, a certain amount of inhibition is to be maintained. Resentment builds in silence, because the victim doesn't have the power to defend themselves. When pushed to the extreme, this could lead to revenge ideation - secretly looking for weaknesses in the oppressor in order to exploit them and get revenge.
*Epicaricacy*
Epicaricacy is the English word for schadenfreude - the taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. Epicaricacy seems worse than the popular version of sadism - instead of merely delighting in the pain of others (often only superficially - enjoying the idea of stimulation rather than the actual suffering), you delight in their downfall - a more comprehensive desire for them to suffer in any and all ways possible. When facing repeated injustices by a higher power that has the capacity to stop the pattern of injustices, it can be natural to impute epicaricacy to the offender - or else how do you explain their lack of action? Obviously, there are many factors to take into account. Hanlon's razor advises us to not assume malice when stupidity is a possible explanation. Yet in the case of God - when defined as omniscient, stupidity or ignorance no longer become acceptable answers. If ignorance and impotence are not viable answers, theists often move to assume that God uses suffering as a tool to teach us. But in the depths of suffering, it doesn't feel like any lessons are being taught - the only lesson they are learning is how evil the structure of reality actually is. If the nature of the suffering becomes so extreme that "learning" becomes an unacceptable answer, epicaricacy becomes a logical deduction as to why God allows evil to exist - because he likes it.
*Revenge Against the Divine*
Job is suffering injustices dealt to him by either God or nature - both with a higher status of power and influence than his own. He cannot battle with them as equals with the emotion of anger. He cannot swat them away with the emotion of contempt. He can only deal with them using resentment. But resentment, unmanaged, can be a self-harming state of being.
*Self-harming Resentment*
As Alice May stated, "Hanging on to a resentment, someone once said, is like drinking poison and hoping it will kill someone else. [9]" There is a lot of pain in the soul of the person racked with feelings of resentment. There is an element of psychological self-harm in this mode of being. Because of the extreme power imbalance between God and man, there is no real way to satisfy it's base desires for revenge. The person harboring resentment might suffer more than the offender does thereby. According to Dr. Nina Radcliff, resentment can 1) weaken your immune system, 2) increase stress and anxiety, and increase the risk of 3) heart disease, 4) hypertension, 5) stroke, 6) cancer, 7) alcoholism, 8) drug addiction, 10) compulsive behavior, 11) weight gain, 12) mood swings, 13) depression, 14) burnout, and 15) shortened lifespan [10].
*Resentment as a Defense Mechanism*
Despite the power imbalance, resentment can function as a tool to ensure that you never trust a source of your pain ever again. This change of trust can protect you from future incidence of harm. I think a major factor in many post-religious individuals is a type of resentment that comes from experiencing the harm that the higher power of religion caused them. A religion is often represented by the power structure of an organization. Often the emotions of anger (same power level) or contempt (superior power position) are unable to manage the imbalance of power between the individual and the organization - leading to resentment (inferior power position). The resentment can provide these individuals a defense mechanism to ensure that they maintain their distance and never get harmed by trusting that religious organization ever again.
*Religious Defense Mechanisms*
In response to the post-religious resentments, the currently religious often adopt a mentality that anyone who leaves a religion is possessed by evil energies. This can provide them with a psychological defense mechanism to write off the harm experienced by those who depart from the faith and maintain their trust in their religious structures. Yet, this is incredibly unfair to the post-religious individuals - not only do they have to suffer the trauma caused by realizing you were betrayed by religion, but they also have to suffer from being villainized by those who formerly were your only support group. Job experiences this acutely by realizing that his theist friends are now his enemies that demonize him everyday, adding insult to injury.
With Job's appeal to divine epicaricacy, you can see Job's resentment growing in each chapter.
NEXT: Chapter 11 - Repent and be forgiven
