Schoeck_2010_EnvyATheoryOfSocialBehaviour.pdf

BLACK MAGIC VERSUS PERSONS UNKNOWN
Black magic versus persons unknown:
envy of the other's easier future
The primitive man-and sometimes also the less primitive man-who
uses black magic to make things equally unpleasant for others; the
wealthy father or trustee who is tight-fisted so that the next generation
shall, as students, have as hard a time as he did; the factory manager, the
departmental head, the board of directors who oppose the acquisition of
air-conditioning plant or labour-saving machinery because that wasn't
the way things were when they joined the firm-all these irrational
embodiments of a Spartan complex have fundamentally the same object.
Someone they know, and often enough someone they don't, has to suffer
on equal terms the lot that was theirs in the past. True, the proverb says
that sorrow shared is sorrow halved. But the true companion in sorrow is
the one who, through no action on our part, either voluntarily or as a
result of external circumstances, endured the painful situation at the
same time as ourselves. If, merely to appease his own recollection of
having suffered a disagreeable experience, a difficult examination, say,
or a repellent task, someone takes it upon himself out of a sense of
Schadenfreude to burden another person's future with the same difficulties,
he is elevating his envy to the status of a Goddess of Fate. But a
case like that of an older person, for objectively convincing educational
reasons-reasons not serving merely to disguise envy-imposing
something difficult upon a younger person either to test him or to temper
him physically or mentally does not come under this heading. Again, one
may still sympathize with genuine mountaineers who try to sabotage a
scheme for a funicular to the finest peaks, because in their opinion only
the man who has braved the dangers and difficulties of the climb
deserves the view at the end of it. There might be a suggestion of
jealousy about the mountain itself, but hardly of envy. Yet the person,
often designated typical by the natives themselves, who practises sorcery
against the stranger only because the latter might otherwise have an
easier life than himself, is found in the most diverse parts of the world
and within the framework of widely differing cultures; his persistent
recurrence gives rise to the fundamental question as to what human drive
or motive is involved, especially as traces of it are on occasion perceptible
in some of our affluent contemporaries.
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