"ALL CAPS IN DEFENSE OF LIBERTY IS NO VICE."

Friday, May 04, 2007

You Shall Have No Gods Before Envy

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy; its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery. --Winston Churchill

If you are a true leftist, then you shall covet. Your life is built around a chronic feeling of lack for which you imagine that others are responsible. Unlike some of the other commandments, which at least rouse the person into action -- however evil the action -- envy is entirely passive and internal, and can be done from the discomfort of your own head. While it can become active, it is generally powerless unless it embodies a pathological cultural value system or is translated into a collective political movement. Absent the collective will of envy, it can only ruin your own life.

Why is the commandment to envy so central to the nihilistic left? Lying, stealing, murdering and adultery all harm others, but envy seems only to affect oneself. True, it is absolutely corrosive to the self, but why should it be among the five horizontal commandments governing man-to-man relations?

Because envy is not just an emotion, or mental state. Rather, it is a relationship. It is a relationship with an other whom one feels possesses something lacking in oneself. It is actually first an internal object relationship, only projected outward. In other words, there is an envious mind parasite in dynamic rapport with a frustrating object it feels is "withholding" that to which it feels entitled -- ultimately it is a frustrated infant imagining a bountiful breast that is selfishly keeping its infinite supply of milk and other goodies to itself. Therefore, it will either seize the breast or attack it so that no one else can have it. At various times leftists can adopt either strategy toward the breast, which they call their "economic policy."

Now importantly, the leftist necessarily operates in an "insight free" zone, so he naturally focuses on the object of envy, and in fact, builds his entire worldview around feeling enviously entitled to the object he lacks.

The above is just a small excerpt from Gagdad Bob

(For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, EDUCATION WATCH, GREENIE WATCH, POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, GUN WATCH, SOCIALIZED MEDICINE, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS, DISSECTING LEFTISM, IMMIGRATION WATCH and EYE ON BRITAIN. My Home Pages are here or here or here. Email me (John Ray) here.)

1 comment:

Reliapundit said...

actually, the sin is COVETOUSNESS, not envy.