Thanksgiving & Envy Thwarting

Thanksgiving is nice, but a more spiritually efficacious holiday might be StopResenting. Or at the very least, these two are complementary: it is impossible for a resentful person to feel thankful, while a thankful person isn't bitter, resentful, and envious.

Even a secular person understands this relationship, or at least I did. Back in graduate school one of the more important theorists we studied was Melanie Klein, whose work focused on the ins, outs, and what-have-yous of primordial -- which is to say, constitutional -- envy.

Why is envy even included in the standard package of humanness?  Is it the shadow or exaggeration of a healthy impulse, or is it a pure privation, or negation, or mind parasite?  We'll get back to that.  Suffice it to say that it appears quite early in our vertical adventure, on page 3. There it describes how, even in paradise, humans find a way to be resentful instead of thankful.  

Note as well that the adversary recognizes this weak link in the human psyche, and exploits it to the hilt.  Could it be that envy is the human kryptonite throughout history, right down to this morning's headline?  Signs point to Yes, but we need some further analysis.  

Let's say the serpent is the very spirit of envy. This cunning spirit puts the bug in Eve's ear that she deserves more -- that someone, somewhere, is having more fun than she is, in this case, God.  

Given the close relationship between man and envy, is it possible that human beings couldn't exist without the potential for envy?  I'm going to say Yes, but with an explanation. Analogously, we could say that human life can't exist without water. Does this mean man must drown? 

If envy is a pathology, or exaggeration, or privation, the question is, of what? Of what healthy impulse or striving?  For we don't want to posit a dualistic or Manichaean cosmos with two ultimate principles fighting it out for supremacy, i.e., an eternal struggle between giving thanks and taking offense.

Let me begin by reviewing my psychoanalytic learnin's, which I haven't looked at in many years. Envy "is a destructive attack on the sources of life, on the good object, not on the bad object."  

This is key, for not only is it an attack on the good object, but envy transforms the good into a bad object.  In other words, the object doesn't start off bad, which then justifies the envious attack; rather, it starts off good until it is transformed by envy.

For example, consider the very next biblical story about Cain and Abel.  Cain envies Abel to the point of murdering him, but not because Abel's offering is bad. Cain is subsequently cursed for his envy, but this might be another way of saying that envy is the curse, for no one who is envious is happy. "Of the deadly sins," writes Joseph Epstein, "only envy is no fun at all" (in The Politics of Envy, by Hendershott).

Hendershott notes that "the envious want the unattainable -- and they want it all."  Being that the unattainable is by definition unattainable, it is as if the envious person has discovered a perpetual unhappiness machine. We are tempted to say that socialism is the collective institutionalization of this machine, but be patient. We'll get to the insultainment.

Why is there a movement to "forgive" college debt? Could it be that these people are unusually envious - even that they went into debt in order to pursue advanced degrees in resentment, and that doing so only made them more resentful?  

Is it possible to eliminate the envy of of the envious by placating it? Or is it preferable to shun envy and marginalize the envious?  The progressive obsession with "equality" is founded on the notion that we can create economic conditions in which envy will disappear.

Is it possible to create conditions that would eliminate other human foibles, say, gluttony or lust?  Knowing what envy actually is, how could one possibly believe it could be eliminated?  Indeed, there is reason to believe that the attempt to eliminate it only aggravates it, largely because indulging a bad habit only fuels it. 

Never underestimate the human ability to justify envy over the most trivial of differences:

History has shown that envy increases in communist countries because the stakes become so small that even the smallest advantages are envied.  

Why do our corporate and technological elites embrace envious socialism?  Easy: to deflect the envy that would otherwise be directed at them.  

Wealthy mediocrities -- celebrities and the like -- know full well that they don't deserve their wealth (nor for that matter do they not deserve it; it's just a fluke of the free market, or a consequence of the greater good of freedom).  Claiming to support socialism is analogous to a business putting up a BLM sign: don't attack me! I'm on your side!

In simple societies, the fear of envy is very high. Tribal people believe that they will be envied by their neighbors for any advantage they may gain, and they are likely to believe that the hostile wishes of their neighbors can harm them...

Exactly.  Simple societies like San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Hollywood, Manhattan.   

Question: is envy socially constructed? Or is it innate?  Trick question! For there is no such thing as a person outside a social context.  As we've discussed in manyposts, We is ontologically prior to I, and is its necessary ground (no We, no I).  

Now, there are many possible links within this We, for example, love, curiosity, empathy.  But there can also be envious or greedy or hateful links. Could it be that envy comes down to a persistent intrapsychic link within the structure of the self, only projected outward?

That's what I think, for what it's worth.  Its why envy cannot be eliminated by being indulged.  You can project the unwanted contents of your psyche all day long, but this doesn't actually eliminate it. 

Still, externalizing it is preferable to introspecting and realizing what a rotten and envious person you are.  Better to accuse Trump of racism, or fascism, or being power-hungry, than to confront one's own inner tyrant. Better to cry "structural racism!" than own up to one's failure.  What a seductive -- and addictive -- temptation. 

Is envy getting worse in our day?

Although all generations have been vulnerable to the anxiety caused by the movement to an other-directed society, millennials, the first generation raised on the Internet and social media, have been the most affected by the shift.

Thanks to the internet, we are exposed every day, all day long, to things we can't have and people we'll never be.  

Now, when is it time to reach for one's revolver?

when envy masquerades as resentment or righteous indignation, the envious feelings become legitimated -- even moral.  

Antifa, BLM, feminism, Critical Race Theory, et al. What are these but envy that has been to college? And wants you to pay for tuition?

Demagogues appeal to envy because they believe that promising to destroy the advantages enjoyed by others will win votes and inspire loyalty.

Now, does this mean Biden & Co, will actually destroy the advantages enjoyed by their class? You're not too bright, are you?  No wonder you spent all that money on a worthless degree.