But what explains Putin’s belligerent animosity towards Ukraine and Western countries? What is its deep spring? An imperialist megalomania, a tsarist desire for glory? There is no doubt that, but the essential of its moral fuel can be summed up in one word: resentment, “A resentment, explains former ambassador Michel Duclos, who completely took over the character with a feeling of humiliation that he puts forward in an almost frenzied way” by getting her to switch sides.
“Putin is crazy! » fulminated in recent days an adviser to the Elysée. Crazy ? Not so sure, or rather in his own way with an obsessive goal of merciless revenge against the contempt and arrogance of the West.
Closed face, shifty gaze, disdainful lip
Everyone knows that nothing is worse than a wounded bear, wounded in his pride, in his expectation of recognition at the height of the idea that he nourishes of his greatness… flouted.
Nietzsche sees in resentment the “grudge of the weak”, embittered by maceration in the bitter observation of the gap between the ideal of their ego and the derogatory looks of others. With the consequence a “poisoning of body and soul” whose manifestations we know: closed face, shifty gaze when it does not dart its venom, disdainful lips of those who intend to deceive them. is about Putinwe can imagine how much the face-to-face with our brilliant president could once again have been unbearable for him and contributed, perhaps, to the desire to fight it out and put an end to endless rumination .
And the passage to the act seemed, in his eyes, all the more logical and legitimate as this lack of recognition on the international scene is interpreted as an injustice which places him in the status of victim. However, the status of victim is deemed to establish a requirement of law beyond even reasonableness, on the basis of compassion. The victim or deemed such has all the rights, right to reparation but also to the expiation of all those held responsible and guilty of his misfortune. As if the status of victim conferred a virtue of innocence excluding any idea of responsibility. Others, person or State, being set up as an enemy, everything becomes permissible for the Humiliated and Offended (Dostoyevsky) to spit the gall of resentment: demonization (« nazis »), questioning of historical identity and territorial integrity, destruction.
The resentment of not being recognized at its fair value
It is likely that the West showed questionable arrogance and lack of tact in its dealings with the new Russia after 1989. The country was down and the opportunity too good to make it drink the chalice of humiliation. Error.
An error to be pondered also in the order of internal relations where anger, resentment and resentment proliferate at a time when State-citizen relations (1) and citizens between them have become more electric than in the past. The access of individuals to their full singularity, from which they expect full recognition, makes us more susceptible than ever, to the point that unimportant incidents, trivial hiccups, ignite like tow, everything being perceived in an exaggeratedly emotional mode as an affront and wrong. -majesty. Here too the resentment of not being recognized at its fair value plays a decisive role. And the more social relations are personalized, especially in work, the more these skinned behaviors multiply. And then, what to do as Lenin said? Just be careful. This is the basis…
(1). See François Dosse, Macron or lost illusionsThe passer.
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