Schadenfreude and the Politics of Resentment: A Society Unmoored

Throughout my life, I have encountered individuals and groups who seem to lack not only a moral and ethical compass but even a basic sense of self-interest. When they witness others losing an advantage—whether in employment, social standing, or opportunity—they do not respond with sympathy or concern but instead with unrestrained joy, reveling in another’s misfortune. Rather than advocating for fairness or seeking to improve society or their own standing, they take solace in the suffering of others, as though deprivation itself were a form of justice.

This perverse celebration of the misfortune of others becomes even more striking when we consider the actual distribution of power and wealth in our society. While workers resent each other’s minor advantages, America’s top 12 billionaires have amassed over $2 trillion in wealth—an increase of 193% since early 2020. The displacement of legitimate economic anxiety onto fellow workers, rather than the rigged systems enabling such extreme concentration of wealth, exemplifies how resentment is weaponized against collective interests. Instead of questioning the forces that have hollowed out the middle class, many find misplaced satisfaction in seeing others fall.

This phenomenon is not new. Philosophers and historians have long observed the destructive power of ressentiment—a term Nietzsche used to describe the corrosive, festering resentment of those who feel powerless, who, unable to elevate themselves, seek instead to bring others down (Nietzsche, 1887/1989, p. 36). The weaker spirit, he argued, does not strive toward greatness but seeks revenge against those who embody what it cannot attain. In our current dystopian era, where the richest 1% now control 54% of all stock market wealth—up from 40% in 2002—this sense of powerlessness has fertile ground in which to grow. Rather than demanding fairness or aspiring to something greater, many find solace in celebrating the stripping away the rights and relative advantages of others, while the true beneficiaries of systemic inequality remain untouched.

When the slide into the current era began, I began to see this corruption of the spirit play out in the most mundane of settings. Decades ago, in the workplace, I encountered a revealing example of the mindset that prioritizes resentment over solidarity. Our office had only a limited number of private offices and computers, with the former assigned to attorneys based on job classification and the latter distributed by seniority across all employees, including attorneys and investigators within the collective bargaining unit. When discussions arose about relocating to a new office space, the union sought input from the membership on concerns to bring forward to management. At the time—which was years before I became a supervisor—I was the local union steward.

To my astonishment, a significant number of members advocated for the union to ask management to eliminate private offices for all non-managers in the new space simply because not all job classifications had been granted them. Their logic baffled me. Rather than seeking to extend a benefit to more workers, they focused on stripping it from other bargaining unit members, as though incremental improvements in working conditions for some created intolerable working conditions for others.

Fortunately, I was able to argue—successfully—that this approach was entirely backward. Instead of resenting those who had obtained an improved working condition, we should advocate for an expansion of the working condition rather than its elimination. The rational course was to request that more job classifications be made eligible for offices, using objective criteria related to job duties and their similarities to those that already warranted offices. While we were ultimately unsuccessful in securing additional offices, we did succeed in shifting the mindset of the membership. What began as an impulse to strip others of their advantage out of frustration became, upon reflection, a collective effort to push for broader equity. We may not have won the tangible benefit, but we avoided the far greater loss of allowing ourselves to be divided by shortsightedness and resentment.

And yet, this very same ugly impulse now dominates our national discourse. The cruel celebration of public servants losing their livelihoods becomes even more troubling when viewed against economic realities. While many Americans cheer the human pain that the elimination of government positions and the middle-class existence which such positions enabled, the ultra-wealthy’s share of national wealth has reached levels not seen since the 1920s. Even more striking, as the oligarchs’ wealth share has nearly quadrupled since 1953, their share of total taxes has remained virtually unchanged. Yet rather than questioning this dramatic shift in resources, many find satisfaction in seeing their neighbors lose healthcare benefits and perhaps even their homes.

This misdirection of resentment has particularly pernicious effects along racial lines—an all-too-familiar pattern in American history. While the median Black family holds just 12.7% of the wealth of the typical white family, and 28% of Black households have zero or negative wealth, political entrepreneurs channel economic anxieties into racial antagonism rather than solidarity. The very communities that could benefit most from collective action are instead pushed toward celebrating each other’s losses rather than confronting the systemic structures that perpetuate their deprivation.

Even those who remain employed in federal service are subjected to arbitrary and senseless disruptions, yet their plight is met not with sympathy but with open derision. Some are forced to return to offices that lack the space to accommodate them, while others are ordered to relocate across the country to similarly ill-equipped workplaces—an absurdity greeted with applause rather than outrage. The schadenfreude is both bizarre and troubling, driven not by principle but by petty resentment: If I had to go back, so should they. I was never allowed to work from home, so why should they? I doubt they were even efficient in the first place.

These justifications are not arguments but thinly veiled expressions of bitterness, exposing a society conditioned to revel in the suffering of others rather than demand justice, fairness, or rational policy. Worse still, there is little recognition that these actions—these firings, transfers, program terminations, and other disruptions—whether arbitrary, capricious, cruel, irrational, intentional, or, at times, unfortunate yet necessary—inflict real harm on individuals with families and loved ones, embedded in communities not unlike our own.

This kind of envy serves only the interests of those who seek to keep us divided, distracting us from the real issues that demand our attention. Understanding the true scale of inequality—where most Americans’ wealth is tied to their homes while the top 1% controls over half of all stock market wealth—can help redirect resentment toward productive change. Rather than celebrating when others lose benefits or job security, we must recognize how the concentration of wealth and power benefits from our division.

This lesson has been articulated time and again by thinkers from across traditions. Aristotle’s concept of megalopsychia—the great-souled person—stood in contrast to those driven by pettiness and envy, emphasizing instead the nobility of advocating for the common good (See Book IV of the Nicomachean Ethics). In the Christian tradition, agape—a selfless, communal love—demands that one’s neighbor be uplifted, not torn down (1 Corinthians 13:4–7).

Yet in modern America, these lessons are too often ignored in favor of a corrosive, zero-sum mentality that pits the powerless against one another rather than against the forces that perpetuate their economic insecurity and often economic suffering. A society where 26-28% of Black and Latino households have negative wealth, while billionaires added over $2 trillion to their fortunes during a global pandemic, has deep structural issues to address. Yet instead of confronting these systemic challenges, we have allowed ourselves to be divided, finding hollow satisfaction in our neighbors’ misfortunes rather than building the solidarity needed for meaningful change.

This is the moral failure of our time—not just the overt corruption of those in power, but the willing embrace of cruelty by so many in the public. A nation that delights in its own suffering, that views the suffering of its neighbors as a victory rather than a tragedy, is one that has lost its way. The challenge before us is not merely political but fundamentally ethical: to resist the temptation of resentment and to reclaim the higher virtues of solidarity, justice, and shared human dignity.

Yes, there is a legitimate argument for addressing the national debt and curbing government spending. And yes, when Congress engages this issue in a constitutionally sound manner, it may result in job losses in the public sector. Such decisions, if undertaken with deliberation and fairness, may at times be necessary. However, what we have witnessed thus far is not a measured fiscal policy but a reckless, chaotic purge—carried out without regard for Constitutional norms, the rule of law, economic stability, or human impact. Even where reductions in government employment may be warranted, they should never be occasions for celebration, nor should they serve as fuel for the schadenfreude and politics of resentment that have become disturbingly and consistently prevalent.

Would that we had the wisdom to see it.

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References

 Aristotle, and Terence Irwin. Nicomachean Ethics. 2019. 3rd ed., Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2019, https://www.perlego.com/book/4620092.

Nietzsche, F. (1989). On the Genealogy of Morals (W. Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). Vintage Books. (Original work published 1887).

LSE Inequalities. (2025, January 2). Ten facts about wealth inequality in the USA. London School of Economics and Political Science. https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/inequalities/2025/01/02/ten-facts-about-wealth-inequality-in-the-usa/