Politics of Envy

Envy is a deadly sin, and my species seems to be almost hardwired to feel envious. When offered a choice of being better off ourselves or seeing the more fortunate fall to our level or lower yet, we frequently derive greater satisfaction from the latter. To see the mighty fall is great entertainment, and it is hard work to love other folks enough to derive any satisfaction from their success, especially if it eclipses our own.

The key to defeating envy is love for our conspecifics and for God who has seen fit to bless us all differently. This, however, involves considerable moral effort.

I grew up in a farming and working class family and never really wanted for anything, and I realized that there were folks who were much wealthier than we were and that there were probably even more folks who were not as well off. I was taken aback in the fifth grade to learn that some of my poorer classmates regarded my family as "rich". Compared to some of them, I suppose I was rich. There were classmates who did not get enough to eat and who showed signs of malnutrition. Some had polio and other diseases that had been largely eradicated in the higher socio-economic classes. Others lived in abject squalor and made their living rummaging through the county landfill or on handouts from charitable neighbors.

What I learned from being both richer and poorer than others in a relatively stratified society and what was expressly drummed into my head by my family and society was that I was as responsible for avoiding the excitation of envy in the hearts of my less fortunate neighbors as they were for overcoming any envy that they might feel. For the most part, my economic betters practiced restraint and did not lord their possessions and positions over the rest of us. The richest folks with the oldest money lived fairly simply, albeit in large stately homes, and avoided ostentatious displays of wealth or status. No such rich man in my hearing ever claimed any moral superiority by virtue of his wealth, and they were more inclined to attribute their wealth to luck and unwarranted blessings from God.

It was the newly rich who were most apt to violate the rules against inspiring envy, and they would usually succumb to peer pressure to tone down their pretensions to grandeur. The joy of lording it over others wears off pretty quickly when you find that your supposed inferiors and new set of peers actually hold you in contempt.

Lately, in decrying the politics of envy, some of my Republican conspecifics have taken to calling themselves the "productive class" and "wealth builders" and "job creators". The implication is that of moral superiority to the hordes of envious undeserving parasites in the working classes. This kind of talk does little to quell envy and, in fact, is likely to make folks derive even more satisfaction out of one's comeuppance. It would be better if my Republican conspecifics would take moral responsibility for their own role in arousing envy and recognize that their good fortune is not an indicator of character. This is especially true in the case of those whose McMansions and Hummers are the products of crippling debt and whose wealth is only an illusion.

Perhaps it is the Republicans who benefit most from a politics of envy by playing to this class of strivers and status seekers who imagine themselves to be so far above their fellows by virtue of their suburban, middle class trappings. They think they are so far removed from the working class, but they are no more financially independent and are often only a few months away from utter ruin. They derive satisfaction from the envy of others less fortunate than themselves, and they irrationally associate themselves and conflate their interests with the oligarchs and corporatists and mercantilists in power. In fact, their interests are probably much more aligned with those of the working class of whom they are so contemptuous and from whom they wish to distance themselves.