Resentment is almost unavoidable as a motivation - unless there is a stronger positive goal

I have often written about our age's besetting-sin or "master sin" of resentment; including how negative resentment is the basis of the mainstream dominating socio-political ideology of "leftism". 

(Where leftism is understood to include all types of secular materialism with some variant of an hedonic ethical basis - including conservatism, Republicans, libertarians, nationalists etc.) 

Thus the pseudo-goals of leftism (taken up and discarded expediently) such as equality, feminism, antiracism, anti-anti-semitism, climate environmentalism - are all negative, all oppositional in their nature, all against some-thing. 

...With the purported "utilitarian" justification that this negation will lead to greater human "happiness" of some group or all people - in which happiness is (in recent generations) equated, bottom line, with diminished-suffering. 

(And where suffering is itself conceptualized as a departure-from some implicit and imagined state of not-suffering.)  

The negations are indeed multiple, since to be against some presumed cause of suffering is already a triple-negation - or is it quadruple!... At any rate, in modern leftism there is no serious or would-be-coherent vision of an utopian, happy-state, of society. 

Thus we have the negative ideology of diminishing suffering; while lacking any reference state of a happy world and people. 

How did this happen? Because surely Man cannot and should-not live by negations alone? 

Not by accident; but not wholly imposed top-down either. 

Of course, nowadays the top-down structural political encouragements and inducements (the propaganda in education systems and the mass media, the subsidies and legal exemptions, the careerism) are all very evident. 

But there is another side to things - which is that, after the decline and end of spontaneous religiosity; there were no sufficiently-strong positive motivators.  

Nationalism is a good example; since in several societies it was the first attempted replacement for religion as a basis for social cohesion. Typically, nationalist movements start with considerable emphasis on positive national characteristics and "spirit", and national destiny... 

But always this proves to be too feeble to motivate, and the positive national destiny turns-out either to be a minority aspiration - and/or generally inadequate to provide a basis for national cohesion and direction. 

The nationalism invariably degenerates into double-negativity: into opposition to some source of presumed (or real) harm. For instance; the nationalism of resentment of some particular other-nation or group becomes the main theme, the main source of cohesion, the main basis of the main policies. 

This has been the fate of every nationalist movement of which I am aware: such Germany, Ireland, Scotland and... fill-in the gaps. 

A similar tale could be told of socialism degenerating into class war; feminism into sex war, pro-natural world environmentalism into a negative and destructive crusade against "carbon", antiracism into racism etc. 

The dominance of resentment is therefore a secondary consequence of the feebleness of positive motivators in a post-religious world. 

Resentment provides (at least in the short term) a basis for cohesion against a common "enemy"; and a basis for strategies to deal with this threat. 

But in the long-term, all these negations purposively destroy society - and this is inevitable unless resentment is superseded.  

  

What about individual persons? Why are we (nearly all of us) so helplessly vulnerable to pro-resentment propaganda that strives to turn us, each-and-all, into a self-perceived victim of somebody or something; a seething cauldron of entitlement, fears, anger, spitefulness? 

The ultimate cause is the same - which is the feebleness of our positive motivations. 

Of course it is facile to spout positive slogans, or pretend to be driven by positive goals about some future of enhanced achievement, creation, beauty, love... 

But actual behaviour (e.g. what people think, speak and write about; media and bureaucratic productions; laws, policies and behaviours) suggests that these are gross exaggerations that serve merely as dishonest excuses to hide the endemic negativity of core motivators. And we get the observable socio-cultural-psychological dominance of resentment as a core motivator. 

The only good answer; the only spiritual solution to the sin, is to recognize and repent it. 

This is an essential first step. 

Yet, if we desire to defeat a particular resentment in ourselves that is dominating and distorting our lives - and if we do not want simply to replace one sin by another: such as resentment replaced by self-aggrandisement (a common sight on the internet)...

Then we need to discover a genuinely positive and strong positive motivator that can press-down-upon and net-over-ride resentment; and this motivator must be religious. 

Because only religion is a stronger long-term motivator with sufficient potential for coherence and direction. 

And so we circle back to the problem of discovering a positive and personally-motivating and good religion in the 21st century - which is our only hope for genuine betterment.