Conservative sociologists self-servingly marvel at
peaceful proximity of abject poverty and ostentatious affluence in American - or, for that matter, Western - cities. Devastating riots do erupt, but these are reactions either to perceived social injustice (Los Angeles 1965) or to political oppression (Paris 1968). The French Revolution may have been last time urban sans-culotte raised a fuss against economically enfranchised.This pacific co-existence conceals a maelstrom of envy. Behold rampant Schadenfreude which accompanied antitrust case against predatory but loaded Microsoft. Observe glee which engulfed many destitute countries in wake of September 11 atrocities against America, epitome of triumphant prosperity. Witness post-World.com orgiastic castigation of avaricious CEO's.
Envy - a pathological manifestation of destructive aggressiveness - is distinct from jealousy.
The New Oxford Dictionary of English defines envy as:
"A feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else's possessions, qualities, or luck ... Mortification and ill-will occasioned by contemplation of another's superior advantages."
Pathological envy - fourth deadly sin - is engendered by realization of some lack, deficiency, or inadequacy in oneself. The envious begrudge others their success, brilliance, happiness, beauty, good fortune, or wealth. Envy provokes misery, humiliation, and impotent rage.
The envious copes with his pernicious emotions in five ways:
They attack perceived source of frustration in an attempt to destroy it, or "reduce it" to their "size". Such destructive impulses often assume disguise of championing social causes, fighting injustice, touting reform, or promoting an ideology.
They seek to subsume object of envy by imitating it. In extreme cases, they strive to get rich quick through criminal scams, or corruption. They endeavor to out-smart system and shortcut their way to fortune and celebrity.
They resort to self-deprecation. They idealize successful, rich, mighty, and lucky and attribute to them super-human, almost divine, qualities. At same time, they humble themselves. Indeed, most of this strain of envious end up disenchanted and bitter, driving objects of their own erstwhile devotion and adulation to destruction and decrepitude.
They experience cognitive dissonance. These people devalue source of their frustration and envy by finding faults in everything they most desire and in everyone they envy.
They avoid envied person and thus agonizing pangs of envy.
Envy is not a new phenomenon. Belisarius, general who conquered world for Emperor Justinian, was blinded and stripped of his assets by his envious peers. I - and many others - have written extensively about envy in command economies. Nor is envy likely to diminish.
In his book, "Facial Justice", Hartley describes a post-apocalyptic dystopia, New State, in which envy is forbidden and equality extolled and everything enviable is obliterated. Women are modified to look like men and given identical "beta faces". Tall buildings are razed.
Joseph Schumpeter, prophetic Austrian-American economist, believed that socialism will disinherit capitalism. In "Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy" he foresaw a conflict between a class of refined but dirt-poor intellectuals and vulgar but filthy rich businessmen and managers they virulently envy and resent. Samuel Johnson wrote: "He was dull in a new way, and that made many people think him great." The literati seek to tear down market economy which they feel has so disenfranchised and undervalued them.
Hitler, who fancied himself an artist, labeled British a "nation of shopkeepers" in one of his bouts of raging envy. Ralph Reiland, Kenneth Simon professor of free enterprise at Robert Morris University, quotes David Brooks of "weekly Standard", who christened this phenomenon "bourgeoisophobia":
