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.
