Dialogue: A society awash with resentment

No issue in recent memory has so fired public reaction as the shooting in Waitara of Steven Wallace and the release of the subsequent in-house report on the matter.

It is significant - and most reassuring - that the vast weight of public opinion so far expressed has come down on the side of the police, and particularly support for the anonymous (at least to most of us) policeman who pulled the trigger.

I have no strong, or even mild, feelings on the incident itself, but I abhor the resurgence of the mentality that tries to tell us that Mr Wallace was in some way a victim.

He was not the victim, he was the perpetrator. If he had not behaved as he did it would never have happened. It cost him his life and that is tragic, but it is no reason for anyone, and that includes his whanau who might carry a greater responsibility, to blame the police.

I can understand his family's anger; I can even understand how their anger has turned into a vengeful resentment against the police.

For the victim mentality is still alive and well among us and will remain so as long as most of us allow ourselves to be brainwashed by those who preach and teach political correctness.

That most evil of doctrines has convinced many of us that no matter what happens to us, it isn't our fault; that some other person or circumstance is responsible for the situation in which we find ourselves and is, therefore, to blame.

This victim mentality is a fecund breeding ground for resentment, and resentment is the most dangerous and destructive of all human weaknesses.

Our society is riddled with it: men resent women, women resent men, parents resent children, children resent parents, teachers resent students, students resent teachers, neighbours resent neighbours, Maori resent Pakeha (and within their tribal system often each other), Pakeha resent Maori (and Asians and Pacific Islanders), employers resent unions and unions resent bosses, the rich resent the poor and the poor resent the rich, and the middle class, who see themselves cast always as piggy-in-the-middle, resent just about everyone.

And if you don't believe me, I'd like you to see the dozens of resentment-filled letters to the editor, on every subject imaginable, that cross my desk every week and never get published. The bitterness and hatred they spew forth would cause readers to regurgitate their breakfasts.

This is a real cause for concern because resentment is not only seriously, sometimes fatally, damaging to individuals, it is murderous to society at large. It goes a long way towards explaining why there are so many desperately unhappy people among us and why our nation is so fragmented and stricken with seemingly insoluble social problems.

Let me give you an example of resentment at work. An aged family friend, who's been dead for some years, carried a resentment against his twin brother with whom he had fallen out as a young man decades earlier.

From the time I first met him, he had constantly complained of a pain in one arm and as time went by the pain became worse, the arm became stiff and began to wither. Regular consultations with medical specialists of a number of disciplines brought no relief, let alone cure.

One day, having once again suffered in silence a tirade against his twin brother, I suggested to him gently that if he were to go back to his home town and make peace with his sibling, his arm might recover.

Some months later when I saw him again, he had regained full movement in his arm and the pain had left him for the first time in years. And, just in passing, he mentioned that he'd been down south to see his family. I left it at that.

Resentment is as corrosive to society as it is to the individual. It not only cripples us personally, it cripples us collectively.

What's to be done about it? Very little, I'm afraid, although those of us who care enough could start by taking a long, hard, honest look at ourselves and our attitudes to see if there's any resentment in us and then set about clearing that wreckage away.

St Francis of Assisi put it this way: "Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace. Where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; and where there is sadness, joy.

"O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in forgiving that we are forgiven ... "

It's a tough call. But it's worth a try.

* garthgeorge@herald.co.nz