Besetting Sins

If I Cannot Have It, Nobody Can

Envy is a besetting sin of our age.  It is also the sin few people talk about, which may just be a clue as to how pervasive and enslaving it has become.  Envy is covetousness on steroids--its most egregious expression. 

Kevin Williamson describes envy thus:

Of the seven deadly sins, envy may not be the wickedest, but it is the most embarrassing. To be possessed by envy is to admit a humiliating personal inadequacy: We do not envy others those attainments that we think we too might achieve, but those we despair of ever possessing. Wrath, greed, pride, lust — all assume a certain self-possession. Sloth and gluttony are practically standard issue in times of plenty such as these. Wrath and pride are the sins of great (but not good) men. Envy is the affliction of the insignificant. It is the small man’s sin.

But when does covetousness elide into envy, its most extreme manifestation?
Covetousness becomes envy when one is more satisfied with the destruction of the object of envy than anyone possessing it.  It is the spirit of, "If I cannot have it, nobody else can either."  It is indeed, in that sense, the small man's sin. 

An infamous example of envy at work  is found in I Kings 3, when two prostitutes both claimed the same child as their own.  One was the genuine mother; the other had smothered her own child to death accidentally at night.  She surreptitiously swapped her dead child with the living child.  The mother whose child had been stolen sought for justice before King Solomon.  In this celebrated court case, Solomon asks for a sword to be brought and the child to be divided.  The genuine mother of the child pleaded with the king not to do that, but to give it to the other woman.  We take up the story at verse 23:

Then the king said, "The one says, 'This is my son that is alive, and your son is dead'; and the other says, 'No; but your son is dead, and my son is the living one.'" And the king said, "Bring me a sword,"  So a sword was brought before the king.  And the king said, "Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other."  Then the woman whose son was alive said to the king, because her heart yearned for her son, "Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and by no means put him to death."  But the other said, "He shall be neither mine nor yours; divide him."  Then the king answered and said, "Give the living child to the first woman, and by no means put him to death; she is his mother." 

The envious mother would rather that her opponent had no child and be as she was, than the child be let to live.   Envy wants to bring all men down to my (or my group's) disadvantaged, poor, benighted position.  "If I cannot have it, nobody can have it," is the shibboleth of envy.  It is the most destructive and extreme form of covetousness.  Its motive is malice and hatred of mankind.

Another face of envy is hatred of alms and the generosity of others.  Envy would rather the wealth of the more better off be destroyed than be given to others.  As Edmund Spenser wrote about Envy personified:

He hated all good works and virtuous deeds
And him no less, that any like did use
And who with gracious bread the hungry feeds
His alms for want of faith he doth accuse.
[Cited by Williamson in National Review Online]

Then again, envy would rather that no-one get ahead, rather than one or two excel.  We call this, in New Zealand, the Tall Poppy Syndrome.  Anyone who excels, succeeds, gets ahead can be subject to withering criticism and general opprobrium.  Envy wants all to be at our level, and its malice takes more satisfaction at the mighty falling than we aspiring to and achieving their level. Envy's social organising principle is enforced egalitarianism. 

Envy broods over the disparity between rich and poor, and becomes apoplectic when the gap widens.  Never matter that the poor might have become better off in aggregate.  It's that the rich got more rich, at a faster rate.  Better that no-one (including the poor) got richer or better off than the gap between rich and poor become bigger.  If I cannot have what you have got, then nobody should have it.  Thus, envy's malice. 

Finally, note the envious chord in the Obama doctrine about increasing taxes upon the wealthy.  When it was pointed out to him that there is absolutely no evidence that taxing the wealthy more did anything to make the poorer better off, he responded with something along the lines of, "I don't care.  It's the principle of the thing." 

[The envious]  convince others — and themselves, probably — that they are driven by compassion, but they are in fact driven by envy: Note Barack Obama’s insistence that tax rates on the wealthy should be raised even if doing so produced no fiscal benefit — it’s just “the right thing to do,” he said, necessary “for purposes of fairness.” The battle hymn of “Nobody needs that much money!” has a silent harmony line: “And I get to decide how much is enough!”

The principle of envy is, "If I (and my fellows) cannot have it, nobody can".  Better that neither of us have the baby, than the baby live and that other woman have it.  Envy is covetousness on steroids.