Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

382 SOCIAL INDIGNATION
begrudging us our frivolity and boldness, will think: 'Here's a man who
had better go hungry for a while!' And perhaps we are suddenly beset by
the thought, 'If I throwaway this loaf now, might there come a day,
sometime in the future, when I shall remember this, and long for a bit of
stale bread?' We know how little this could be influenced by our present,
reasonable decision to eat nothing but wholesome and agreeable food.
And yet the uncomfortable feeling remains with us.
Individual precautions are unsocial
Anyone taking a precaution which does not in the least impair the
opportunities of others must nevertheless often reckon with malicious
animosity and outraged indignation or contempt, behind which lurks
peculiar envy. In order to understand this, we have to go back to primitive
superstitions. Among many primitive people, but also among ourselves,
it is regarded as reprehensible frivolity so much as to name a disaster
which might at some time befall the tribe. Thus, if someone provides
against a possible catastrophe in a really original and thoroughgoing
way, he will arouse the ill-will of his potential comrades in misfortune,
who are partly angered by his foresight and partly fear unconsciously
that his precaution will attract disaster.
Anyone who makes earlier or better provision than other people is no
longer an equal in the fellowship of misfortune, and hence becomes an
object of envy. I have never seen this more plainly manifested than by the
following observation.
About ten years ago I took part in an innocent, casual conversation
with members of a European family. The talk turned to anxiety about
another war. Someone mentioned the fact that early in the fifties a
European intellectual had deposited a large sum of money with friends
in the United States for the express purpose of being sent food parcels
after the Third World War. To my astonishment, the expression of all
those present immediately changed to annoyance. In tones of the utmost
indignation, and in terms more applicable to a visitor who had stolen the
silver, a woman doctor began to abuse this prudent, and to her quite
unknown, individual-whose only desire, if seen rationally, was that he
should not have to beg.
What taboo had he infringed? It should first be said that the people