Pascal Bruckner: Die Gesellschaft der Opfer. Porträt des Erniedrigten als Held
[Pascal Bruckner: The Society of Victims. Portrait of the Humiliated as a Hero]

Whereas in modern times, mankind understood itself as a conqueror, today it prefers to see itself as a victim. The promises of a better world as once given by the Enlightenment and revolutions, a world free from fatalism and fanaticism, have given way to a self-pitying society. The greatness of civilization is reflected in its care for those who have been humiliated and have fallen by its wayside. However, the flipside of this progress becomes apparent when those who have declared themselves a victim use their status to blackmail others: a pathology of recognition. It has been in the hedonistic West, of all places, where suffering has acquired a new sanctity, where it has turned into a head of the Medusa turning people to stone. Anyone, both rich and poor, man and woman, openly displays their disadvantage like a patent that grants them superiority over their fellow humans. This bitter cult of pain resurrects the figure of the martyr and feeds the grand passions of both resentment and revenge. The happy and the powerful also want to grab their place in the aristocracy of the disadvantaged—at the expense of the genuinely unfortunate.