People suggest philosophers are impenetrable because, in their own situations, that is true. Adorno was absolutely impenetrable to me when I tried to read in my 20s. Waving your finger at me and telling me I was morally failing in my duty to read Adorno would not have helped the situation! Thank god no one did, because I may have developed a blood feud against them, that would have caused me to swear off Adorno for the rest of my life. Lucky that I escaped such feigned concern from others on that specific front. I was permitted to build up the capacity to understand theory at my own pace. It took time.

People are prepared from very early life to be able to work their way towards understanding more complicated material, but they take this a classed, and thus unevenly permitted, preparation for granted. They do not even see it as preparation, but as a universally afforded premise. Still, they, too, are driven to have resentments around even what was afforded to them. Although we also have people who overcome obstacles, but remain bitter, just in the wrong direction, against those from their background who seemingly failed to put in effort.

Society tells them their achievements should have fulfilled them. When confronted by the other’s envy, they distract themselves from that lack of fulfillment to tell the other, “you should have worked harder, I don’t care about your plight.” That serves as a defense against the realization that pursuing life on society’s terms, without a chance to define their own principles on struggled-over terms, left them miserable, even in their achievements.

For both the advantaged and disadvantaged person, fulfillment would be better found through the social relation between them, that both reject in order to double down on individualistic social competition. Both cling to individualistic image and achievement, in competition, and out of pride, which then causes them to refuse the other, and thus refuse what is “other” in oneself.

It is a route towards sharpening self-image like a blade, but one with no handle, that slices through your palm as you drive it into the other’s neck.