Those who resent us, The Mechanics of Virtue, aphorism 292

292

Those who resent us can rarely extend a compliment without premising that compliment in something poisonous.  If we should refuse the polite invitation of this scorpion to “shake on it,” we are then stung with our own sense of ingratitude.  Through our refusing the polite gesture, we precluded the evil ... but at a price of there being no evil act to serve as evidence in our favor.  All that remains is our rude conduct.  

In retrospect, we are poisoned only if we embrace two erroneous viewpoints – (1) that to be stung is to become somehow inferior and (2) that to resist the “friendly” overture of the scorpion is a case of ingratitude.  

A third and even fourth viewpoint existed however: (3) their accusation of ingratitude only comes out of the inferior position of needing to protect their prestige, exposing an underlying sense of inferiority.  Thus, we cannot be accused of ingratitude by a magnanimous superior; just as we ourselves cannot accuse another and remain magnanimous.  If we are under attack for “our ingratitude,” this is not an attack by one of superior character.  And thus if we accept the battle over our “ingratitude” we defer to the agenda of someone of inferior character.

We find the highest response to the other’s spite, (4) when we have built up a superior resistance.  We might then shake hands, and welcome ... openly ... the sting ... proving our abundance of strength and gratitude ... to ourselves most of all.  We take the sting, voluntarily, just to prove our strength to ourselves.  We also incidentally preclude the undignified battle over “our ingratitude.”

But from here we spy another option just over the peak and one step down: (5) If we could not overcome the motive for revenge with magnanimity ... that is, if we were scorpions ourselves, we would still have the superior revenge by taking the sting and refusing any response.  This creates the conditions from which (a) any third party naturally concludes that the spiteful does not have a rank sufficient to merit our enmity and (b) a stimulus has arrived without the naturally accompanying response, and nature transfers this dissatisfaction over to independent observers.  When the villain strikes us with impunity ... our refusal to respond frustrates an onlooker’s natural discharge of aggression.  The spectator’s conscience is aroused: the habit-script is incomplete and must be finished.  Social rank has been challenged, and in this threat of disorder, the herd member must beat down upon ... must humble the villain’s “arrogant” disregard for “appropriate behavior” and “authority.”  Not only is the response vacant and therefore “deserving,” but the ideal of justice now carries the issue high above mere revenge and serves as the pretext for a cleaner discharge and greater relief.  Even if there should be no third party in the present context, memory will usually make one.  This refusal to strike back appears so much like love and magnanimity that our sword gleams ... even when the other is dripping from its wound.

Thus, the third party ... the hero steps in – out of the subconscious but natural urge to dominate – and rights the matter.  The upshot is that feigned magnanimity affords a quick recovery for one’s spite.  Because this “nonviolence” is indistinguishable in display from actual magnanimity, in refusing to strike back one keeps one’s pride free of entanglement into the future.  There are no steps beneath it to which one might fall further; consequently, one regains the highest step again and with greater ease than one would have if one had gone the other way, in spite of oneself and one’s rival, begging for and exacting justice.  

If one were magnanimous, we observe, one would have had this same “revenge” but one does not call it such for the fact that one no longer cares for nor needs it.

Thus, our faith in the precept of turning the other cheek: if one has lost contact with the reasoning behind one's self-advantage and where only a crude instinct has taken over, one must maintain a faith in previous conclusions and take the sting, with feigned pride if need be, and showing disdain for the other by refusing any act of retribution.  A proud reflex of turning the other cheek is the ultimate gesture within the human predicament.  But the penultimate, if the reflex should be lacking, is a faith in a strategy which aims at the same result.