Ors write bestsellers about digestion, have a dream apartment or millions on bench. And I? Just have my envy. But it’s really all right. January 30, 2018, 11:21 Uhr130 comments Content
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My apartment is completely unlovingly furnished. I drove to IKEA and bought everything you need to survive in half an hour, a corkscrew and vanilla scented candles. When friends visit me in my involuntarily minimalist, small Altbaubox, re is nothing that y might be interested in commenting on. “Oh, vanilla scented candles,” y say, and look at me a little pityingly. I’d spend money on furniture, but I just don’t have a good taste. He’s just so good that I realize how bad he is.
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I can also do nothing, no holes, no furniture to screw toger and do-it-yourself videos I only look for calming when I wake up at night panicked. When I stand in nicely furnished apartments, I feel very clearly: envy. It is an okay kind of envy, only remotely related to resentment: I also want to live nicely, but I don’t want my friends to live in a Altbaubox like mine.
Envy has a lousy reputation and is about as glamorous as a dam cut. Envy is not fun, envy makes ache and envy are weak people. No, of course one is not envious that Tatjana was promoted, one would have wished only one team boss with more web design experience. And of course, author, who has been on bestseller list with a book about gut for two hundred years, is success. So somehow. Not right. I mean, it’s about gut. The gut! Why does someone who looks’m and holds a PhD get so much money for a book about a digestive organ? The poor author can’t do anything about how smart and beautiful she is, and I don’t want to take away many millions, I just want same thing. My envy has little to do with what I have. Always only with what I’d like.
Envy has social relevance
You see: Not particularly beautiful, such an envy, and it is also not particularly justified. I am well. Only envy does not care, because it feeds on comparison. I am, for example, surprisingly little envious of 13-year-old who, in his PhD sis, thinks about a brake pad from big bang matter.
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And thus envy is not only uncomfortable, but also has a catalyst function. What I am envious of, reveals much about my aspirations. And because I consider my envy to be extremely interesting, but many time-online readers justifiably do not: envy is not only my private pleasure, but has social relevance. Envy is not only unglamorous, but also powerful. Envy shatters families, envy topples governments, envy creates revolutions. Envy brings a Donald Trump into office, envy can be art and show injustice. Envy Fuels religion and politics, creates progress and hinders it.
Every discussion round at Anne Will’s end is an envy discussion. Envy is power to which no one stands. And even if envy, like every feeling, is not an argument per se, it can show very precisely where injustice is perceived.
If AfD in Saxony celebrates ir greatest successes, it may be because many citizens feel left behind or disadvantaged. Even if it is objectively not true that refugees in this country are housed in mansions, while an unemployed from Freital ends up on road. Envy is fired, can be exploited, instrumentalized, and that even though this word is used exclusively to disavow an argument. “You are just jealous,” says one, and Zack, problem lies only with one self and not in matter.
