Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

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ENVY IN LANGUAGE
Were envy a fever, the world would have been dead long since. (There
are German, Danish, Italian, Latin and Swedish versions of this proverb.)-If
envy were an illness, the world would be a hospital.- He who
would be without envy must not tell of his joy.-The envious die, envy is
inherited.-The more kindness is shown to an envious man, the worse
he becomes.
This latter observation is particularly important because psychopathology
has repeatedly confirmed it. The more one seeks to deprive
the envious man of his ostensible reason for envy by giving him presents
and doing him good turns, the more one demonstrates one's superiority
and stresses how little the gift will be missed. Were one to strip oneself .
of every possession, such a demonstration of goodness would still
humiliate him so that his envy would be transferred from one's possessions
to one's character. And if one were to raise him to one's own level,
this artificially established equality would not make him in the least
happy. He would again envy, firstly the benefactor's character, and
secondly the recollection retained by the benefactor during this period of
equality of his erstwhile material superiority.
4. The envious man is perfectly prepared to injure himself if by so
doing he can injure or hurt the object of his envy. Many criminal acts, in
some cases perhaps even suicide, become more comprehensible if this
possibility is recognized.
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
will eat nothing but its own heart.-Envy envies itself.-Envy brings
suffering to the envious man.-Envy devours its own master.-Envy is
its own scourge.-Envy flogs itself.-Envy makes life bitter.-The
envious man injures no one so much as himself.
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. For the envious man it is not enough to wait until