Envy is a Vice
Saturday, January 01, 2000
There are some people who think envy is a virtue. They push for “equal outcomes” whatever the cost. Their solution to inequality is to make everyone equally unfortunate. They can’t face the fact that life is not naturally fair, and that some disadvantages cannot be fully redressed by human effort.
Some people are just born smarter, better looking, stronger, and/or with a sunnier disposition. Some people are born to parents who are more loving, educated, comfortably off, and/or emotionally mature. Outcomes cannot be predicted with certainty in any one case, but people with these advantages usually do better than those without.
The envy sect would rather hurt the lucky ones than help the unlucky ones. They know that some disadvantaged children will never have the same chances as some others. They find it easier to be angry, controlling and destructive than to help the needy — knowing that they can usually only partly close the gap.
This envy ideology is not really a viable political position. Any state based on it will collapse, because its motive power is negative not positive. It pulls down, it does not build up. It does not celebrate personal excellence and achievement. It is not a workable philosophy of society. It is an unfortunate emotional syndrome — what used to be called a vice.
Unfortunately the envy sect have quite a grip on the school industry. They screwed up the Victorian Certificate of Education. Trying to avoid the usual outcome that children of educated and moneyed parents scored on average better than others, they tried to equate academic accomplishment with technical and artistic talent (“parity of esteem”), and introduced take-home exams.
All they achieved, apart from some unfair final marks, were socially unfortunate outcomes. They taught a whole generation of school-finishers that you cheat to get ahead, or to feel guilty if your parents could and would provide you with the extra help of a tutor. Victoria has, of necessity, since gone back to proper exam conditions.
The only successful path for “social justice” is to measure need objectively, and to assign extra help to those who are behind. Such efforts are constructive, positive, civilised, and create an open society of hope and opportunity. But you will always be able to find correlations between lower outcomes and certain parameters, such as certain suburbs or certain family problems.
Thus the envy sect will always be unhappy — under any regime. No sooner do you improve the hopes of one disadvantaged group than another becomes by default conspicuously unfortunate. Nevertheless we may have vastly improved society over time in a thousand constructive projects. This work will always have to go on, and everyone who is able must contribute to it in some way. It must be accepted as part of civilised life — not a reason to resent, to tear down, or to hate the fortunate.
The same envy sect has screwed up the literacy of many children. They redrew the curriculum so that accuracy in reading, spelling and grammar were no longer important. They called these skills “elitist” — knowing that the children of literate parents had an advantage in these ways before they even started school. Unfortunately for their students though, the society into which we all have to grow up and live and work, still judges people by their literacy — which precisely means their accuracy in reading, writing, and speaking.
There is no form of government assistance that can fully substitute for the natural advantages of a loving and capable family. Government is not omnipotent. The politics of envy is a sin of pride, thinking it can regulate everyone into a commonwealth of sameness. The more it fails, the nastier it gets — envy destroys.
If you hate the fortunate, you suffer from envy. If you reject every improvement because (inevitably) not everyone will prosper equally, you suffer from envy.
Philip O'Carroll