Mere Automatons of Misery
People are less dissatisfied by what they lack than by what others have.
Deuteronomy Chapter 5, verse 21 says:
"Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbor’s wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor’s house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbor’s."
That's one of the Ten Commandments.
As hard as I try, I simply cannot get beyond two things I believe are driving the chaos and division of the past half century. They do not spring from race, not from income or wealth, not from sex or gender - but each of those are in the toolbox.
The two I've settled on are envy and power, and the combination of these two - how envy is leveraged by the unscrupulous in the quest for power.
Envy means that people are far less concerned with what they lack than by what others have - and that is what drives every attack on the American variant of Western civilization. If white person has something a black person does not, that's white privilege. If a fat woman (I'm sorry, a "body positive woman of size") wants to talk about yoga because skinny women can do poses better then they can, it is fat shaming and the "existence of white supremacy and cultural appropriation in American yoga."
In 2012, long before President Trump drove George Will mad as a hatter, he noted the following"
"Try a thought experiment suggested decades ago by University of Chicago law professors Walter Blum and Harry Kalven in their 1952 essay “The Uneasy Case for Progressive Taxation,” published in their university’s law review. Suppose society’s wealth trebled overnight without any change in the relative distribution among individuals. Would the unchanged inequality at higher levels of affluence decrease concern about inequality?
Surely not: The issue of inequality has become more salient as affluence has increased. Which suggests two conclusions:
People are less dissatisfied by what they lack than by what others have. And when government engages in redistribution in order to maximize the happiness of citizens who become more envious as they become more comfortable, government becomes increasingly frenzied and futile."
There is something about Will’s conclusion that hits to the core of the issue for all of us in 2021, something that will impact both the envious and their targets, and it is this:
"People are less dissatisfied by what they lack than by what others have."
In our "modern" world, satisfaction is not about what you have but a constant and pervasive obsession with what others have that you do not. Because envy operates on a sliding scale, it is a relative concept rather than an absolute concept - and that is why, as the 1952 Blum/Kalven essay reveals, it will never go away.
Intellectually speaking, it is difficult to logically process when I am called selfish for simply wanting to retain as much of the money I earn as possible. I also want to keep the property that I accumulate as a result of being moderately successful and when someone wants to take it from me to give to someone or some cause not of my choosing is not acceptable to me.
And yet, my resistance apparently makes me selfish and immoral.
Never mind that I freely choose to “redistribute” my earnings in tithes to my church and to several different charities.
I don’t defend the 1% because they are rich, I defend them because to take wealth from someone solely because they have it is simply wrong. It is immoral and is just as much theft as if it was property taken during a home invasion. There is simply no moral support for taking property from someone else simply because you don’t think they deserve it…period.
Of Democrats, I have asked the key question about taxes, as many others have: "You say certain people do not pay their 'fair share' - just how much is a 'fair share'? Since the top 1% already pay more than the bottom 95%, where does it stop?"
Today, taxes aren’t really about funding government, they are about finding ways to redistribute to others - but this redistribution is rarely according to need. In reality, money flows to those politically connected, the favored constituencies (minorities, immigrants or retirees) or simply to those in the mainstream of the retail industry of politics (lobbyists) - the goals of these rivers of cash are to create dependence, purchase loyalty and institute control.
Taxes are always coerced contributions to government, when taxes are levied not to efficiently fund government but to impose someone's notion of redistributive justice, government is always the first, and often the principal, beneficiary of that taxation.
As previously noted, envy is relative, not absolute. That also explains why the door will always be kept ajar for Marxism to enter - because Marxism is rooted in the idea that "equity" can be created and class envy/warfare resolved by bringing the top down rather than bringing the bottom up.
Envy will never go away, and a long as envy is a useful tool in the quest for the Holy Grail of ultimate power, that quest will continue.
Thomas Jefferson, in his letter 1816 letter to Samuel Kercheval wrote:
“A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, and to have no sensibilities left but for sinning and suffering.”
Here we are.
Well put and sadly true. I try and discuss just this with young people but it’s very discouraging as they lack curiosity and any ability for critical thinking.....and know zero knowledge of history, basic economics etc.
it’s all emotions and baser instincts. I’m very discouraged.