Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

412 SOCIAL REVOLUTIONS
There is also a report about the systematic decimation, by the dictator's
strong-arm police, of the relatively successful middle class in Haiti
today. The massacres in Indonesia in 1966, this time of communists,
with one hundred thousand victims, also involved the death of many who
had in some way provoked the envy of their fellow villagers-by starting
up a taxi service, for instance. According to the available reports, this
Indonesian 'blood-letting' killed off not only communists but more
particularly those who were 'unequal. '
Our thesis that it is the most talented in the developing countries who
are exterminated is borne out by what has happened in Nigeria since
1962, where the lbo, more intelligent and more adaptable to modern
requirements, are being systematically persecuted and killed by the other
. tribes, who feel themselves to be inferior.
Whereas in many rebels, blood lust against the 'leading' members of
the community may simply derive from primitive envy-hate, there is also
the possibility that such massacres are based on the calculations of
specialists trained in these 'revolutions. '
Widely different ideas and concepts, and their concomitant emotive
states, will serve, either singly or together, for a polity's social and
political basis. To integrate human beings there are concepts such as
progress, solidarity, honour, renown, love, transcendental ideas, the
concept of an historical mission, and even outward-directed hatred, or
feelings of inferiority fed by envy, in regard to other groups. But there is
one state that no society can live in for any length of time, accepting it as
official doctrine, and that is mutual envy. It is, of course, possible to use
it as a rallying-point in order to prepare for, and successfully carry
through, a class revolution, but no sooner has this been achieved than the
envy must be deflected onto a few scapegoats within the society which
are regarded, perhaps wrongly, as expendable-or, better still, deflected
onto groups and symbols of prosperity situated outside the nation.