A case of legitimate envy

Throughout history and across many societies envy has always been qualified as an intrinsically "negative"emotions. Christians rank it among the seven deadly sins and Buddhists advocate for the suppression of all wishes, effectively including envy along the way. And it is true that envy can be very dangerous for a community, because it attacks its very roots, it pins neighbor against neighbor and makes collaboration and reciprocal help impossible. In fact, a call for help by the envied person often results in an even more negative response: the schadenfreude, the feeling of "it serves you right" or "you had this a long time coming". But what are the roots of envy?

Without any intention of being rigorous, I would say that there are two different cases with radically different reasons and implications. The first on it the envy in absolute term, when you simply wish you had something that someone else has, normally without any particular argument on your side to support such aspiration. This kind of envy is somehow "toothless" by the admission that the envied person has surely done something to deserve the success that they are enjoying and the implicitly message that we have done no such merit. The other case arises precisely when we do believe that have done the work (what I would call "comparative envy") and it is much more dangerous than its "absolute" cousin because it has reasons to feel legitimate and is therefore much harder to dispel.

Photo: lamazone

The principles of comparative envy go back all the way to the time of our own upbringing. In Western communities the implicit social contract states that anyone should be able to support themselves with a reasonable work effort, and that increasing that effort would naturally improve their standard of living. However, this conceptual framework, which one could dub as "meritocracy", is in practice heavily tainted by luck, prejudice and ill intents.

We have discussed several times before the effect of luck by the way of privilege, but let us consider today pure luck through the case of two screenwriters who have written two scripts: the first one mails the script to a producer who, being very busy, gives it only a cursory look before dismissing it. The other screenwriter happens to sit next to a different producer in a three-hour flight, manages to strike a conversation and tell the producer in reasonable detail what the script is about. By a case of simple luck one script gets 5 minutes of attention while the other gets a full hour, regardless of how the scripts compare in quality or merit.

Prejudice is another cause for unequal results: a paper by a well-known professor is much more likely to have a positive reception in the field than a similar one by his very own assistant. This, again, has nothing to do with the merit of the work, although it can be argued that the quality of previous papers can be considered as a contributing factor to the success of the new one.

Finally, many people would allow themselves to be lead by other issues, such as personal friendship or enmity, which do not add or detract from the quality of the work under evaluation but can definitely sway the outcome.

Under these circumstances, is it not legitimate to display your envy, to protest unequal treatment, to curse your bad luck and shake your fist to the heavens? Sadly this is true now more than ever. In the middle ages every peasant was aware of the fact that they were at the mercy of the weather, calamity and the whim of their lord, so they know better than to have big expectations, praised their luck in the good times and accepted the bad ones without a shimmer of surprise. But in the Western capitalist societies every on gets the promise of a brighter future if they apply themselves, only to be let down when they do not succeed or, even worse, others much less prepared get better rewards with less effort. Is this fair?

We all grow up being fed the milk of hope, which later turns out to be spoiled and make us sick. Whose fault is it when the society fails to deliver on its promise of fair rewards? Can the society complain about the rise of a class of malcontents, when it allows an outrageous level of inequality? Those who are not ready to make the effort will never cry "Foul", and even if they do their case could be easily dismissed with solid arguments. But those who put the work and still fail to earn a living for themselves have a name. they are victims of a society that needs them to keep running but then turns a blind eye when they are treated unfairly. so let us try not to condemn the victims, because their complaints are solid. Theirs is a case of legitimate envy. Have a good evening.