We closely follow @ebertchicago on Twitter. This morning, he posted this:
Godard and Truffaut were best friends in 1949. Ten years later they were creating the New Wave. But then…
We wonder if ENVY reared its head here. So many friendships have been poisoned — suddenly & irrevocably — by ENVY. Has this ever happened to you?
On a lazy Saturday morning a few months ago, I posted something like this as my Facebook status: ‘Enjoying my big mug of coffee with a teaspoon of ENVY.’
Does the endless barrage of smiling good cheer on Facebook make us sad? That’s the question posed in this Slate article— we found it via old friend Terry Baker — on, you guessed it, Facebook.
Some interesting angles in the discussion of Facebook ENVY here. Check it out.
http://www.slate.com/id/2282620/
Interesting post on Salon.com from an escort who writes: To all the girls who ENVY my life…
“There’s something profoundly human about wanting to be sexually valued, and it transcends genders. More than one young man has told me he envies my life, too. I suspect these young men are hinting at the same longing for affirmation as the young women who e-mail me. We all want to know that we matter, and being paid is one way of knowing we have value. It may be inelegant and often impersonal, but because money is quantifiable, its message is indisputable. Where do you go for reassurance if you doubt your physical and sexual desirability? Talk is cheap, so you take cash instead.”
Read the full article “Escort Girl Life” at Salon.com
Our friend — the musician, photographer, and all-around artistic talent — Cassis was inspired to write this song after hearing about the ENVY documentary project. Thank you, Cassis!!
Find out more about Cassis Birgit Staudt here: http://www.filmmusicvision.com/
We like its funky originality. What do you think?
After reading the New York Times article Behind Tunisia Unrest, Rage Over Wealth of Ruling Family about the riots in Tunisia we asked psychologist and scholar Dr. Carolyn Ellman her thoughts on the role of envy in these riots, she wrote:
The real envy is about the wife who the people see as part of them and are enraged about her acting as if she is above them… It isn’t really about envying the rich (that’s common enough) but when someone like you gets something that you feel you are excluded from it is a much deeper feeling of destruction. Generally other people that are rich (such as the President) are too far from one’s aspirations to feel them as part of the self.
Dr. Ellman adds
that obviously the amount of abuse that this family committed plus the fact that there are many educated women in Tunisia having to work at menial jobs added to the impetus to overthrow the government. I wouldn’t simply point to envy. Envy shows itself in some aspects of the destructive behavior in which they just wanted to burn and destroy things without any benefit to themselves. Obviously, in the larger picture people are fighting for equal and fair justice in their society.
I just read a very interesting article about ‘Pension Envy’ by Dave Johnson on Truth-Out.org. He writes:
Since the 80s many employers have stopped offering health care, pensions and other benefits to their employees. Many are also cutting pay and hours, while increasing the workload. So more and more people are hurting. As more and more of us fall further and further behind, corporate/conservative propagandists use resentment to drive anti-union feelings. They tell people to oppose unions, saying, “Why should they have it so good?” The real question you should ask is, “Why should we have it so bad?”
The article also addresses “crab mentality”:
Crab mentality, sometimes referred to as crabs in the bucket, describes a way of thinking best described by the phrase “if I can’t have it, neither should you.” The metaphor refers to a pot of crabs. Individually, the crabs could easily escape from the pot, but instead, they grab at each other in a useless “king of the hill” competition (or sabotage) which prevents any from escaping and ensures their collective demise. The analogy in human behavior is that of a group that will attempt to “pull down” (negate or diminish the importance of) any member who achieves success beyond the others, out of jealousy, conspiracy or competitive feelings.
Read the whole article here.
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