Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

128 ENVY AS SEEN BY THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
A disinclination to concern oneself with envy may also be connected
with the following: Almost without exception all research concerning
man has, when faced by envy, seen it as a serious disease. The latent
ubiquity of this ailment is known, but it is also known that no society
could exist in which envy was raised to the status of a normative virtue.
Invariably it is emphasized that envy, once having taken root, is incurable,
although it is not part of our normal endowment. Even superstition,
the primitive 'anthropology' of simple societies, sees envy as a disease,
the envious man as dangerously sick-a cancer from which the individual
and the group must be protected-but never as a normal case of
human behaviour and endeavour. Nowhere, with very few exceptions, do
we find the belief that society must adapt itself to the envious man, but
always that it must seek to protect itself against him. 19
19 The extent of envy-avoidance in a population can also be ascertained from opinion
polls. In the summer of 1966 the Institut fUr Demoskopie at my request repeated a
question which had been put to the West German people some ten years before. The
tendency to avoid envy had actually risen slightly. Of those asked, 53 per cent thought
it sensible not to show how well one had got on. Among civil servants the figure rose to
63 per cent. The breakdown of the answers according to religion, refugee or native
citizen, region, small or medium-sized town, shows only insignificant differences.
West Berlin alone is noticeable for having less tendency to understatement.