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"...
in the much more virulent cases of hatred, masked as envy ... the creature
... does not desire the value: it desires the value's destruction."
Superficially, the motive of those who hate the good
is taken to be envy. A dictionary definition of envy is: "1. a
sense of discontent or jealousy with regard to another's advantages, success,
possessions, etc. 2. desire for an advantaged
position possessed by another." (The Random House Dictionary,
1968.) The same dictionary adds the following elucidation:
"To envy is to feel resentful because someone else possesses or
has achieved what one wishes oneself to possess or
to have achieved."
This covers a great many emotional responses, which
come from different motives. In a certain sense, the second definition
is the opposite of the first, and the more innocent of the two.
For example, if a poor man experiences a moment's
envy of another man's wealth, the feeling may mean nothing more than a
momentary concretization of his desire for wealth; the feeling is not
directed against that particular rich person and is concerned with the
wealth, not the person. The feeling, in effect, may amount to: "I
wish I had an income or a house, or a car, or an overcoat) like
his." The result of this feeling may be an added incentive for the
man to improve his financial condition.
The feeling is less innocent, if it amounts to:
"I want this man's car (or overcoat, or diamond shirt studs, or
industrial establishment)." The result is a criminal.
But these are still human beings, in various stages
of immorality, compared to the inhuman object whose feeling is: "I hate
this man because he is wealthy and I am not."
Envy is part of this creature's feeling, but only
the superficial, semirespectable part; it is the
tip of an iceberg showing nothing worse than ice, but with the submerged part
consisting of a compost of rotting living matter. The envy, in this
case, is semirespectable because it seems to imply
a desire for material possessions, which is a human being's desire. But, deep
down, the creature has no such desire: it does not want to be rich, it wants the human being to be poor.
This is particularly clear in the much more virulent
cases of hatred, masked as envy, for those who possess personal values or
virtues: hatred of a man (or a woman) because he (or she) is beautiful or
intelligent or successful or honest or happy. In these cases, the
creature has no desire and makes no effort to improve its appearance, to
develop or to use its intelligence, to struggle for success, to practice
honesty, to be happy (nothing can make it happy). It knows that the
disfigurement or the mental collapse or the failure or the immorality or the
misery of its victim would not endow it with his or her value. It does not
desire the value: it desires the value's destruction.
"They
do not want to own your fortune, they want you to lose it; they do not want
to succeed, they want you to fail; they do not want to live, they want you to
die; they desire nothing, they hate existence ..."(Atlas
Shrugged.)
By : Ayn Rand
First published in THE OBJECTIVIST, July-August 1971, and
re-published as a chapter in “Return
of the Primitive : the Anti-Industrial Revolution”
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