Axiom About Envy

"We can often be vain of our passions, even the guiltiest ones; but envy is so sneaking and shameful that we never dare confess it"
Francois de la Rochefoucauld

"It is better to be envied than pitied"
Herodotus

"Envy is the basis of democracy"
Bertrand Russell

We perceive the world with nothing but our feelings. My opponents say that I’m concerned with something ephemeral, not material. I believe that material is much more ephemeral than feelings, which never abandon us and can be used to judge whether I’m right or talking nonsense.

Earlier I listed eight statements—eight axioms—about human feelings that should be taken into account by anyone, who debates about economics, politics, law, social philosophy or life itself:

About Humanism: Only humans feel; collectives do not feel.
About Isolation: Feelings of other people can be judged only by their acts.
About Insatiability: It is impossible to overcome all needs.
About Tastes: People value powers differently.
About Egoism: Strangers' needs are not important.
About Love: Loved ones are only few.
About Justice: The worse the offense, the more offender is hated.
About Envy: The richer the person, the more he is hated.

We have already discussed seven axioms. Today it’s turn of the eighth axiom—about envy.

We don’t sympathize to the success of rich strangers. Not only it doesn’t bring joy, when their powers increase, it even brings sorrow. Conversely, their losses bring joy. Dislike towards the richer and their acquirements, as well as joy of their losses is a performance of envy.

The majority sympathizes to Robin the Hood. He robbed the rich and shared loot with the poor. Politicians make use of sympathy of the majority towards heroic bandits and demonstrate willingness to rob the rich people to share the loot with poorer ones. Such demonstration gives them more votes on elections. The majority of voters does not like rich people; that’s why majority likes politicians who promise to make rich people more generous and force them to share with the poor ones. The faith in democracy lead to universal right of suffrage, which in its turn lead to progressive taxation, labor law, governmental social security, fight with big enterprises (monopolies) and so on.

Envy is much more mean and dangerous feeling than insatiability or egoism. Insatiability and egoism may prompt to seize other’s property despite of will of its owner. But insatiable egoists do not have to destroy the property, kill or cripple its owners, if owners do not resist such seizure too much. Expropriators may even love their victims in certain sense, as farmer loves his cattle that give him milk, wool and meat. But envy makes people enjoy other’s suffering, or makes them suffer because of other’s joy. Envy may prompt the enviers to eliminate the property of those who they envy. It may lead not only to elimination of victim’s property, but also to elimination of victims themselves. This makes envier more dangerous than a robber, whose main target is to seize—not to destroy. Destruction without seizing is a waste of time for robber. Envier enjoys destruction even when he doesn’t take advantage of victim’s property. Unlike insatiability or egoism, envy is always inhered with hatred, enmity.

Envy is a shameful feeling. That’s why it is being disguised or denied. This is how Paul Krugman—a winner of Nobel Prize in economics—disguises and denies his envy:

“The fact is that vast income inequality inevitably brings vast social inequality in its train. And this social inequality isn’t just a matter of envy and insults. It has real, negative consequences for the way people live in this country. It may not matter much that the great majority of Americans can’t afford to stay in the eleven-thousand-dollar-a-night hotel suites popping up in luxury hotels around the world. It matters a great deal that millions of middle-class families buy houses they can’t really afford, taking on more mortgage debt than they can safely handle, because they’re desperate to send their children to a good school—and intensifying inequality means that the desirable school districts are growing fewer in number, and more expensive to live in” (Paul Krugman. The Conscience of a Liberal. The Costs of Inequality).

Insulting comparison with rich people, who are popping up in luxury hotels around the world, prompts Krugman to dissolve justice, dissolve the bounds to declare the “right” of middle-class on someone’s wealth. In order to do so he writes that “the lion’s share of economic growth in America over the past thirty years has gone to a small, wealthy minority, to such an extent that it’s unclear whether the typical family has benefited at all from technological progress and the rising productivity it brings. The lack of clear economic progress for lower- and middle-income families is in itself an important reason to seek a more equal distribution of income” (same as above).

Nietzsche called envy “the privy part of the human soul” (F. Nietzsche. Human, All Too Human. Man alone with himself). No one would confess that he is driven by envy to successful people. This is why projects inspired by envy are called income equalization, antitrust policy or anti-globalization. The list can be extended.

The most dangerous part of envy is that the vast majority of contemporaries mistake envy for justice. This majority is ready to believe any nonsense about rich people only on the ground that they are rich. Absolutely illogical, false “proof” of capitalists “expropriation” of workers works just fine because it’s being nurtured by envy.

All humans are insatiable and egoistic, but envy distorts the picture, endowing only rich men with insatiability and egoism. Left politicians use this distortion, encouraging to rob the rich ones by the means of nationalization or progressive taxation. Successful struggle against left political views is impossible without exposure of envy to the rich, inherent to these views.

Envy and justice are essentially different feelings. To substitute justice with envy is to harm the justice. Envy prompts to confront successful people, while justice prompts to confront wrongdoers, not the rich people. Enviers’ struggle against rich people makes richer those who in charge of this struggle, not the poor ones.

Axiom About Justice

Someone asked, “What about returning good for evil?” Confucius answered, “Why should one return good for evil? Treat evil with justice and return good for good.”

Analects of Confucius, Book 14, chap. 36

Earlier I listed eight statements—eight axioms—about human feelings that should be taken into account by anyone, who debates about economics, politics, law, social philosophy or life itself:

About Humanism: Only humans feel; collectives do not feel.
About Isolation: Feelings of other people can be judged only by their acts.
About Insatiability: It is impossible to overcome all needs.
About Tastes: People value powers differently.
About Egoism: Strangers' needs are not important.
About Love: Loved ones are only few.
About Justice: The worse the offense, the more offender is hated.
About Envy: The richer the person, the more he is hated.

Each of these axioms cuts away a huge mass of statements as antiscientific ones. And only the statements not contradictory to these axioms can be considered as scientific.

We have already discussed six axioms. Today it’s turn of the seventh axiom—about justice.

A feeling called morality, conscience or justice inheres within our soul. This feeling allows us to judge acts separating them into right, moral, just, fair on one hand and wrong, immoral, unjust, unfair or dishonest on the other. The Harvard biologist Marc Hauser conducted a survey amongst many people of different nationalities, cultures and religions, and found that their descriptions of bounds between moral and immoral are amazingly similar. Moreover, their consensual assurance was much stronger than their ability to distinctly explain the reasons for their views. Their assurance was intuitive. Hauser made a conclusion that this amazingly similar moral choice was made at some very deep, subconscious level.

Our task is to reinforce the intuitive moral choice between right and wrong with logic, with science.

Scarce (and thus valuable) alienable powers, or in other words—property—is a subject of competition between people, who don’t feel love towards each other. Competitors may seize property (or assets) with violence or deceit, or they may mark bounds—borders that divide assets between them and protect valuable unalienable powers. Bounds turn valuable powers into someone’s rights. It is forbidden to use alien rights. It is forbidden to destroy or damage alien rights. If solidarity in protecting the rights is high, then one can be confident that it will be applied to protection of his rights as well. Acts respectful to bounds become right acts; acts disrespectful to bounds become wrong acts; fight against wrongdoers becomes public affair.

Respect towards bounds does not mean their rigidness. Voluntary alteration of bounds in the form of trade or gifts is also respectful towards bounds. Violation of bounds occurs when someone forces their alteration. This is called a wrongdoing or offense. However using force can be right act if it’s applied towards wrongdoer. Wrongdoer gets punished. As such, he can be forced to compensate damage to those who had suffered from his wrongdoing.

Wrongdoing or offense is a dangerous act that almost everyone agrees to ban.

Wrongdoings include following acts:

1. Violence, when people get killed, crippled or tortured, property gets destroyed, damaged or forcefully taken away;
2. Threats, when threatened one obeys without violence, but because of the threat of violence;
3. Deceit, when property is taken away secretly or promise is broken.

However, although dangerous acts look bad, they cannot be banned completely. Absolute ban of dangerous acts leaves no room for fighting wrongdoers, while convincing and moral suasion may not work on them.

It is just to use violence, threats and deceit towards wrongdoers if it’s adequate to their offense. Thus violence, threats and deceit can be right acts, and it is wrong to ban them. Not all dangerous acts should be considered as wrongdoings and banned, but only those of them, which considered wrong.

By defining wrongdoings through wrong dangerous acts we use recursion. Recursion is hard to grasp; many think of any recursion as a vicious circle. But I don’t see any other way to define wrongdoing. Perhaps recursion in definition of offence causes so many troubles with good laws and commandments. “Thou shalt not kill!” But what if there’s no other way to stop the murderer? Is it just to condemn the murderer of murderer?

Recursion in the definition of wrongdoing gets even more complicated, when we discover that there’s another dangerous act that should be banned:

4. Avoiding fight against wrongdoers.

Fight against wrongdoers is a public affair that no one should avoid. Fence sitting is wrong here.

Extreme individualism is wrong. It is everyone’s debt to make his contribution into fight against wrongdoers: with money, personal participation in militia, testimony, etc.

Demand of solidarity, which is appropriate in fight against wrongdoers, is wrong when it’s tried to be stretched on other affairs—social care for example. This wrong demand of wide solidarity, inherent in today’s world, weakens solidarity of right people in their fight against wrongdoers and strengthens the wrongdoers. Helping the poor is just, when it’s driven with love, and it’s wrong when it is being forced. Not the poor ones benefit from such forced struggle with poverty, but those, who are in charge of it.