I believe that self-respecting individuals are not given to bitterness.
Bitterness is as corrosive to the human psyche as rust is to metal. It is characteristically irrational in the way that blind jealousy is. Typically, bitterness is occasioned by an egregious wrong that one has suffered—a wrong that either sets one back in some fundamental way or that results in one not receiving a much-coveted prize.
Being unjustly accused publicly often occasions bitterness because the individual’s reputation is sullied in ways that give rise to one major obstacle after another. Being unjustly passed over for a major promotion is another example of something that often occasions bitterness, because it seems as if certain significant opportunities or benefits are forever lost. As a concrete example, divorce often occasions bitterness when it happens that one side or the other makes spurious accusations in order to obtain an advantage over the other. In this regard, consider the case of a husband who must nonetheless pay large sums of child support but who end up with very limited access to their children owing to have been false accused, by the wife, of having sexually abused their children, to say nothing of his reputation in the community. This phenomenon (which, of course, can go in either direction) even has an acronym: SAID (link 1), which stands for “Sexual allegation in Divorce” (link 2).
Thus, what is particularly striking about bitterness is that it appears to admit of justification. In fact, when criticized people who are bitter often point out, “You would be bitter too if what happened to me had happened to you”. And the truth of the matter is that this is more likely to be true than false.
What I find particularly significant is that there is very clear sense in which bitterness can seem to flow from self-respect. A person with self-respect is one who is rightly angry and resentful over having been wronged. It is not possible to have self-respect and be in different to having been wrong. If anything is true, to be bitter is not to be indifferent to having been wrong. Quite the contrary, it might be said that the bitter person shows an acute sensitivity to having been wrong. With great imagination, the individual grasps how this wrong has or is playing itself out in her or his life. Whatever problem the bitter person has, recognizing that she or he has been wronged is not one of them.
If bitterness flows from having self-respect, then it would seem that there could not be a better justification for it. It is, I believe, the fact that bitterness seems to flow from self-respect—understood to entail a proper appreciation for the wrongs that one has suffered—that inclines so many to think of bitterness as an actual entitlement.
The coin of self-respect, if you will, has two sides. To be sure, one must never be indifferent to the wrongs that one has suffered. No less important, however, is that one should not fail to have a proper appreciation for the gifts that one has and the good that one can do. The problem with bitterness lies in the fact that the pre-occupation with one the wrongs that one has suffered over shadows one’s appreciation for the gifts one has and the good that one can do.
It is not uncommon for bitter people to miss golden opportunities precisely because they would rather wallow in their angst over the wrong they have suffered than to enjoy the uplift that would come from exercising this or that excellence. In fact, one of the clear signs of a bitter person is that she or manages to forgo things that will bring about uplift. The bitter person mistakenly thinks that the only way not to be indifferent to the wrong that she or has suffered is to constantly dwell upon it. But this, of course, is silly. No one who has ever suffered an egregious wrong will ever forget it—at least no so long as she or he remains psychologically healthy. Nor is there any chance that she or he will downgrade the wrong. I think that rape is absolutely horrendous. And if I should be raped, there is absolutely no chance whatsoever that I will downgrade the wrong of this deed, whatever wonderful things I might go on to achieve.
What is more, with a wrong that one has suffered only one course of opportunities has been lost. It rare, perhaps even impossible, that every course of opportunities has been lost. And while the door to some levels of success may be forever closed, life typically leaves more than enough opportunities for significant success, if only would avail ourselves of them. Self-respect requires us to be as attentive to this truth. If this is right, then whether we are bitter or not is typically more a matter of choice than most of us would imagine. The key to our psychic healing lies primarily in our own hands.
Self-respect would be a liability, rather than the asset that it is, if it were the psychological precursor to bitterness. If, however, there are any axioms in moral philosophy, surely one of them is that self-respect is an asset rather than a liability. The self-respecting person never allows a loss of opportunity to prevent her or him from seeing, and acting upon, the good that remains within her or his reach. If this is right, then the surprise is that those who go on relentlessly about having been wronged, as if that wrong were the measure of all things, may have far less self-respect than is commonly supposed. In the inimitable words of Shakespeare: They protest too much!
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In writing this essay, I have profited enormously from Lynne McFall’s important essay “What’s Wrong with Bitterness?” in Feminist Ethics (University Kansas Press), edited by Claudia Card.
