"Hating The Good"

Why do so many people hate the good things in life? 

There they are; right over there.

You can’t possibly miss them; they lurk next door in every family, tribe, institution, business, profession, city, state, nation, and in all categories of human enterprise.

They are the petty and pathetic human beings who absolutely hate, detest, and reject the "good" for being the "good".

Instinctively, rationally, and philosophically, the lovers of freedom and rational existence know these people are always a quantum subtraction from the family of man.

So, what is the prism through which these people view the world?

What is the most fundamental cause of their hatred of the "good"?

The Prism of GOOD

                                                                                 
Even mules can suffer.
                                                                                            

 It’s NAMED:

"ENVY"

Schadenfreude or Neid in German. La envidia in Spanish. Invidia in Italian.

Hasad in Arabic.

It’s raw, rancid, and repugnant.

Once you fully understand the implications of this behavior-defining word, you’ll likely agree it’s the most obscene four-letter word in the English language. Obscene in any language, actually.

That's what this essay is about; leveling a laser beam of light on understanding envy and its impact on mankind.

In no particular order:

• Who envies. 
• What is envy. 
• Where it occurs. 
• When to expect an attack. 
• How to defend and counterattack.

More "Good" Things

Good Stuff is comprised of wonderful things, attributes, and characteristics to which most humans desire and aspire.

Things we rationally value. Things we want to own, emulate, and celebrate.


 

Consider now these wonderful characteristics of living human:

Dr. Helmut Schoeck.

In my opinion, Professor Schoeck (originally from Mainz, Germany) has written a world-class masterpiece on the subject.

Titled "ENVY" — it is an insightful and profoundly interesting book that I first read in 1973.

Here are some of his thoughts.

"A Definition in German:

As early as the nineteenth century, Grimm’s German Dictionary had a definition of envy comprising all the essential elements we need for our inquiry.

‘Today, as in earlier language, envy [Neid] expresses that vindictive and inwardly tormenting frame of mind, the displeasure with which one perceives the prosperity and advantages of others; begrudges them these things and in addition wishes one were able to destroy or to possess them oneself: synonymous with malevolence, ill-will, the evil eye.’ [Mal Ojo]

We shall now examine the elements of the definition:

1. Vindictive, inwardly tormenting, displeasure. These represent a feeling of aggression already conscious of impotence, so that from the start some of the aggression and a good measure of the anguish and torment are somewhat masochistically turned back upon the subject……
   
   … that the intensely and chronically envious man may indeed be a person possessed by the desire — from whatever cause — to destroy himself, yet unable to tolerate that others who enjoy life, or at least courageously endure it, should survive him.
    
2. It is anguish to perceive the prosperity and advantages of others. Envy is emphatically an act of perception….. there are no objective criteria for what it is that stimulates envy.
   
   And, herein lies the error of political egalitarians who believe that it is only necessary to eliminate once and for all certain inequalities from this world to produce a harmonious society of equals devoid of envy.
    
3. One begrudges others their personal or material assets, being as a rule almost more intent on their own destruction than on their acquisition. …… Beneath the envious man’s primary destructive desire is the realization that in the long run it would be a very demanding responsibility were he to have the envied man’s qualities or possessions."

Professor Schoeck continues:

"Let us advance some theses on the phenomenon of envy, in each case citing a popular saying.

1. Envy is above all a phenomenon of social proximity: American sociologists use the term ‘invidious proximity’, or in other words, proximity that arouses envy.
   
   Envy is always between neighbors — The envious man thinks that if his neighbor breaks a leg, he will be able to walk better himself.
    
2. It is not the absolute differences between men which feed envy, but subjective perception, the optics of envy. In other words, the envious man sees what confirms his envy. The Russians say: Envy looks at a juniper bush and sees a pine forest.
    
3. Envy is a very early, inescapable and unappeasable drive in a man, which induces the envious man to constantly to react to his environment in such a way that his envy cannot be assuaged. Hence it is utterly hopeless to strive for a society which could be freed of envy by social reform….. Envy and jealousy are immortal, but friendship and love brittle.
    
4. The envious man is perfectly prepared to injure himself if by so doing he can injure or hurt the object of his envy. Envy stews in its own juice, — The envious man will often suffer injury himself so as to bring it on his fellow man.
    
5. Proverbs in many languages agree that the greatest damage done by the envious man is to himself. Envy is described as an utterly destructive, uncreative, and even diseased state of mind for which there is no remedy. Envy has never made anyone rich — Envy cuts its own throat — Envy envies itself — Envy devours its own master.
    
6. Like primitive peoples, whose fear of their fellow tribesmen’s black magic invariably ascribes to them the motive of envy, proverbs repeatedly indicate how easily the passively envious man can become an aggressive criminal. No sooner is envy born than he consorts with the hangman and the gallows — Envy never laughs till a ship founders with its crew — Envy makes corpses."

Finally, more prescient words by Professor Schoeck; words related to today’s War on Islamo-Fascists and other terrorists:

"….. Islam’s ethics and wisdom in proverbs regard envy [Hasad] as one of the greatest ills.

Al-Kulani writes:

• ‘Envy devours faith as fire devours wood’, the prophet is held to have said.
   

• ‘Fear Allah, and be not envious among yourselves’ is a saying ascribed to Jesus.
   

• Another Imam declared: ‘The true believer is he who wishes others well and who does not molest them, while the hypocrite is a man who is envious and who does not suffer any other to be happy.’ "

Tragically, no population on earth is so monumentally saturated with envy as the ...

Islamo-Fascists.

While this does not include all Muslims or followers of Islam, it does include every terrorist.
 

From The Ayn Rand Lexicon — Edited by Harry Binswanger — comes this description and definition:

"Today we live in an Age of Envy.

Envy is not the emotion I have in mind, but it is the clearest manifestation of an emotion that has remained nameless; it is the only element of a complex emotional sum that men have permitted themselves to identify.

Envy is regarded by most people as a petty, superficial emotion and, therefore, it serves as a semi-human cover for so inhuman an emotion that those who feel it seldom dare admit it even to themselves.

That emotion is hatred of the good for being the good.

This hatred is not resentment against some prescribed view of the good, with which one does not agree…. Hatred of the good for being the good means hatred of that which one regards as good by one’s own (conscious or unconscious) judgment. It means hatred of a person for possessing a value or virtue one regards as desirable. 

If a man regards intelligence as a value, but is troubled by self-doubt and begins to hate the men he judges to be intelligent, that is the hatred of the good.

The nature of the particular values a man chooses to hold is not the primary factor in this issue (although irrational values may contribute a great deal to the formation of that emotion.) The primary factor and distinguishing characteristic is an emotional mechanism set in reverse: a response of hatred, not toward human vices but toward human virtues.

To be exact, the emotional mechanism is not set in reverse, but is set one way: its exponents do not experience love for evil men; their emotional range is limited to hatred or indifference. It is impossible to experience love, which is a response to values, when one’s automated response to values is hatred.

Consider the full meaning of this attitude. Values are that which one acts to gain and/or keep. Values are a necessity of man’s survival, and wider: of any living organism’s survival.

Life is a process of self-sustaining and self-generated action, and the successful pursuit of values is a precondition of remaining alive. Since nature does not provide man with an automatic knowledge of the code of values he requires, there are differences in the codes which men accept and the goals they pursue.