Women in Saudi Arabia just won the right to vote, but are threatened with whip lashings if they attempt to drive to the polls to exercise that right.
Why do women there face such an uphill battle to get behind the wheel?
Is it ENVY of women that fuels this continuing injustice? What do you think?
As tweeted by Christiane Amanpour of ABC News,
‘A story from Absurdistan.’
Cool post on ambition & ENVY from Douglas Eby. Lots of insights, including mention of a title from the 90’s we haven’t yet explored but will — Bonnie Friedman’s Writing Past Dark: ENVY, Fear, Distraction and Other Dilemmas in the Writer’s Life.
Friedman calls ENVY ‘the writer’s disease.’ Yup. 🙂
Thanks to Kim Carlson, who posted Eby’s work on Facebook.
She’s blonde. Thin. Rich. Married to a rock star. Charmed-life liver. What’s not to ENVY about G.P.? The envied one talks candidly about her haters.
http://www.popeater.com/2011/04/14/gwyneth- paltrow-cookbook-magazine-glee-album/
Do you agree that ‘hard work’ makes a person’s luck?
FOMO = Fear of missing out. The phrase attributed to Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake about the #ENVY being generated on Twitter these days.
On the front page of today’s New York Times the headline reads:
“Twitter users are tiring of it: the sharp pang of envy that comes when someone they are following on the social networking site is clearly having a better time than they are — right now.”Tweets from this year’s SXSW had other users questioning whether tweeters were “showing off rather than sharing.”
Read the rest of this thoughtful article from the Times’ Amy Harmon on all this: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/us/19twitter.html?_r=1
Check it out. Let us know what you think! Are you tired of celebrity sightings and name dropping? Do you ever feel envious of a tweet? Is the Twitter tide changing? Will the underdog win with the Twitter audience?
Amazing humor and spot-on insights on the myriad ways ENVY is playing out in the financial crisis unfolding nationwide, with unions in a starring role as punching bag. Big money pitting worker against worker. Nice.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/03/01/jon-stewart-critiques-wis_n_829618.html
Accepting the award for this ENVY sighting, our brilliant grant writer, Joanna Rabiger. 🙂
Great article from HuffPo and the author of The Progressive Revolution: How the Best in America Came to Be
Mike Lux writes:
“Conservatives love to write off progressive populism as “the politics of envy,” saying we envy the rich instead of recognizing them for being the hardworking entrepreneurs they are. Given that, the current conservative exercise of attacking public employees for getting pensions, decent health care coverage, and occasional salary increases is irony on a scale rarely seen. Republicans and conservatives’ basic argument is that since private-sector workers have been so thoroughly screwed on wages, health care, and retirement plans in recent decades, those same workers should be mad that teachers and cops and social workers have gotten a little more economic security than they have. If that ain’t the politics of envy, I don’t know what is.”
Read the full post here
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.
In a 1990 interview published in the Paris Review Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Literature, relates a warning he received from Pablo Neruda about the envious backlash that comes with fame.
I remember the day we celebrated Neruda’s birthday in London. He wanted to have the party on a boat on the Thames. Fortunately, one of his admirers, the English poet Alastair Reid, happened to live on a boat on the Thames, so we were able to organize a party for him. The moment came and he announced that he was going to make a cocktail. It was the most expensive drink in the world with I don’t know how many bottles of Dom Pérignon, fruit juices, and God knows what else. The result, of course, was wonderful, but one glass of it was enough to make you drunk. So there we were, drunk every one of us, without exception. Even so, I still remember what he told me then; something that has proven to be a great truth over the years. An article at the time—I can’t remember what it was about—had upset and irritated me because it insulted me and told lies about me. I showed it to Neruda. In the middle of the party, he prophesied: You are becoming famous. I want you to know what awaits you: the more famous you are, the more you will be attacked like this. For every praise, there will be two or three insults. I myself have a chest full of all the insults, villainies, and infamies a man is capable of withstanding. I wasn’t spared a single one: thief, pervert, traitor, thug, cuckold . . . everything! If you become famous, you will have to go through that.
Neruda told the truth; his prognosis came absolutely true. I not only have a chest, but several suitcases full of articles that contain every insult known to man.
~Mario Vargas Llosa
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