Dear Friends,
It seems to me, one of the philosophical leaps we as a species have to make, to move to the next level, is to stop hating success. It’s a fundamental tenet of humanity that we envy the successful. Because, to the immature, the successful represent our failures. We wax resentment of their success until we wish them harm. All the more so if they’re an ethnic group we can single out due to some identifiable feature. Though, hate of the guy in our class who made it will do, in the absence of a hated group. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how this holds us back. Look at the example of the Kulaks. They were successful farmers in Ukraine during the 1917 revolution. Lenin needed a distraction, and the Kulaks were hated anyway… so he fed the envy of them, then exterminated them… leading to famine.
Some personality types are subject to jealousy. It’s in their make up. Each of us has a distinct personality. Some claim that the Myers Briggs MBTI is a useful metric, others the enneagram system, and the experts now have reached a consensus, that the big five is the only useful tool. All systems however have types that tend towards envy. While there are others that lean away from it. Jealousy of a group seeps past this barrier though. Because it’s not individual, although the source is the individual, but societal. Since we’re enmeshed in society and culture, it’s unavoidable. The secret then is to think of a way to counter envy in the individual, so we can counter it in society and culture. Law is a poor means to change society and culture though… as the 20th century taught, and we’ve yet to learn.
Envy is perhaps the most corrosive emotion. Because it causes stupidity. People acting against their own interests to harm someone else out of spite. Does it get more stupid than that? The extermination of the Kulaks in Ukraine was a joyous time for Ukrainians. Those hated successful peasant farmers had shown them up for the last time. Lenin had trains pick up whole families, grandparents to babies, haul them to Siberia in the middle of winter, and force them off the train into the snow… to die. Who knows how many families perished this way. A few years later, because of a lack of food production, Ukraine experienced waves of famine. Millions of Ukrainians starved to death. Because they envied, then hated, and therefore had exterminated the Kulaks… for being successful peasants.
Socialism is based on envy. The unsuccessful’s jealousy, over the success of the successful, leading to people acting stupidly. Holding back the go getters so those without a whit of gumption can feel better about themselves. Even as everyone’s ego is ground under the weight of lack of opportunity. The whole operation amounting to a grist mill, grinding the work ethic, souls, and humanity, out of a people. History is unambiguous on this, socialism always leads to economic collapse, the moment the printing press fails, or other people’s money runs out. Then the elite failures, blame everyone but themselves, for their failure. Once socialism, the economics of envy, has run its course, it becomes North Korea. An unstable tyranny where thought crimes have to be punished more severely than murder.
If we could get past our envy, that leads us to hate the successful, the lot of Mankind would be drastically improved. Since that philosophical leap would get us past the chasm of hatred, envy and oppression… to the other side. Who knows what’s over there? You can’t know what you don’t know, until you learn it. No one in colonial America could have imagined what the philosophical innovation of capitalism would create, and we can’t imagine the wonders, economic, scientific and moral that we will experience over there. First we have to try our best to rid our own hearts of envy. Then we have to find cultural ways to rid society of it. That’s the key to moving to the next level. Our own jealousy is the red named boss we have to defeat. Watch the fire bombs, wire traps and eye lasers… Fight well.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
