By D.S. Cook for Apostoic Venn.
Welcome back to the Respect in Ruins series. This is now part three, and if you haven’t started at the beginning, I highly recommend that you pause here and do so. If you are interested in the topic of envy replacing respect, the stage must be appropriately set before my discourse will land as intended. You must go back and read the prerequisite questions and defining statements. You must understand what a Nominal Conquest Fallacy is (NCF).
The Respect is Envy NCF
We have now arrived at the 2nd Nominal Conquest of the word “Respect.” It is the one that posits that respect is achieved when another human being looks at your belongings or status, and desires them. In other words, respect as previously defined, honor or admiration on the basis of certain characteristics or traits, is replaced by a smug sensation of others envying your possessions or position.
Envy Costs Time and Money
A man, if he chooses, may expend many hours of his labor for the power to buy a vehicle that is considered highly desirable in fashionable society. A vehicle, you might note, has the primary function of transporting your body from one place of existence to another. But in this instance, the primary purpose of the thing is not the motivator, for another of a simpler kind could fill that purpose handily, and for far fewer hours of life in trade. The utility of the vehicle is not more or less than that of a less expensive version, and the primary benefit of owning such a thing is to engage the eyeballs of others.
Nor is possession of the thing itself the desired benefit of its owner. In a zombie apocalypse movie, when one man is unlikely to meet another during the course of his drive, you will find that his attention suddenly and drastically shifts from the desirability of its appearance to the fortitude of its walls. He will abandon the Ferrari for a Hummer, at his first opportunity. This very familiar example, while wild and fictional, rightly describes the nature that is inherent to mankind. The personal possession itself is not the “good” that is desired, but the exhibitionistic display of the possession to the eyeballs of others that is the true desire.
When you have gained the covetous glances of your fellow man, you have gained no honor or admiration for your characteristics or traits. No, a more accurate description is this: You have gained his desire to possess the item that you possess. But respect is not envy. Are we so foolish as to think that virtue has been achieved when its primary purpose is to make others less virtuous? As the famous cybernetician and management theorist Stafford Beer succinctly stated: “The purpose of a system is what it does.”
Another great Stoic passage hits this nail right on the head. In Epictetus’ Discourses, Book 1, Chapter 21, entitled “Against Those Who Wish to be Admired” the wise fellow says:
When a man holds his proper station in life, he does not gape after things beyond it. “My wish has always been that those who meet me should admire me, and those who follow me should exclaim, ‘Oh, the great philosopher.’” Who are they by whom you wish to be admired? Are they not those of whom you are used to say that they are mad? Well then, do you wish to be admired by madmen?”
As it turns out, being admired by the mad means no more than that you are the chief madman. And being admired by those who seek fashionable material means no more than that you are the chief materialist fashionista.
And by far the greater authority on virtue, Christ himself, does not beat around the bush in addressing this as the sin it is. In addition to being the giver of the 10th commandment (Thou shalt not covet) he tells those that would follow him in Luke 12:15:
Take heed and beware of covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of the things he possesses.
If coveting the possessions of others is vice in the eyes of God, then desiring or causing coveteousness in others cannot be virtue in those same eyes. Yet when many people say that they want the respect of their fellow man, this is precisely what they mean. They wish for others to covet what they enjoy. They wish to feel and know that others envy them.
Virtue Also Costs Time and Money
Let’s examine the production of this backward moral construction. What is the true effect on the minds behind the envious eyeballs?
Are these onlookers, drooling over the apparent luxury in which the man lives, incited to greater love for the man himself? No, generally the opposite. The richer you appear to be, the more despised you will be, and the more blame for society’s ills will be placed on your shoulders (fairly or unfairly).
Are they incited to go out and do more good in the world? No. In fact, they are encouraged to sacrifice their ability to do good (time and money) in order to obtain similar luxuries, and be the recipients of similar gazes to their own. They are inspired to do as you have done, so that they may become the covetees rather than the coveters.
Is one more hungry orphan fed, or a widow comforted (pure and undefiled religion, per the Apostle James) by your possession of a Ferrari? Certainly not. One might reserve only half of the time and dollars expended, purchase a vehicle still better than all those of his neighbors, and still have the means left over to fund multiple adoptions, placing fatherless children in good homes.
Is one’s fellow man encouraged to go out and pursue greater virtue, rather than greater comfort? Certainly not.
In short, they will love you not an ounce more, and go out and do not one more good deed on God’s earth, as the result of your expensive display. Instead, the wise among them will respect your person not one whit, instead shaking their heads at your vanity and resolving to avoid the pit into which you have fallen. The foolish among them will resent the fact that you have something they don’t. They will want what you have for themselves. This is the definition of envy, not respect.
Respect = Envy
Utter nonsense.
Conclusion
No respect is commanded by gaining envy as a substitute. Pursuing envy and conflating it with respect is a trap; it unloads your limited resources, which might have been used for doing good, in exchange for the green glances of strangers. Do not sacrifice yourself on that altar, while failing to gain legitimate honor. Do not auction your own dignity off to the highest consumerist bidder. As Epictetus says “Consider at what price you will sell your own will, and that it be no mean sum.”
Chase the kind of life that is respectable by the wise and discerning. Ignore the applause of a fool, however well-styled he may be. Let Epictetus’ “madmen” applaud their own chief. You and I have better things to do.
Coming up next: Respect as Moral Equity – Erasing “Better and Worse”
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