Comprehensivist Wednesdays: The Poison of Comparison
Details
In this meetup we will explore why someone else's success can feel like our own loss. Our starting point is David Hume's section "Of Malice and Envy" from A Treatise of Human Nature. Hume argues that we rarely judge things by their actual worth. Instead, we judge by comparison. A modest income feels rich next to a poorer neighbor and poor next to a richer one, even though the income itself hasn't changed. From this idea Hume explains two unflattering feelings. Malice is pleasure in someone else's misfortune, because it makes us look better off. Envy is pain at someone else's good fortune, because it makes us look worse off. Hume also notices that we don't envy people far above us, only people close enough to compare ourselves with. A poet doesn't envy a general, but he may envy another poet.
We will then turn to Pushkin's short play Mozart and Salieri. Salieri has spent his life mastering music through hard work, and he has earned his success. Then Mozart arrives: carefree, cheerful, and brilliant without seeming to try. Next to him, Salieri's achievements suddenly look small. The tragedy is that Salieri may be the only person who truly understands Mozart's genius, and that understanding is what turns him toward murder. If Hume is right that we judge by comparison, can envy be overcome, or is it built into how we measure worth? And can we admire someone deeply without also envying them?
Sources
- A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Part II, Section VIII, "Of Malice and Envy" (Standard Ebooks) https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/david-hume/a-treatise-of-human-nature/text/section-2-2-8
- Mozart and Salieri, translated by Genia Gurarie (Wikisource)
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Translation:Mozart_and_Salieri - George Yeager (about 25 minutes). "Of Malice and Envy" is track 20.
Listen or download (MP3): https://archive.org/download/treatise_human_nature_2_1107_librivox/humannature_vol2_20_hume_64kb.mp3
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Welcome to the series "Comprehensivist Wednesdays." Transdisciplinarity, Renaissance humanism, homo universalis, and Polymathy are some of the ways of describing this approach which Buckminster Fuller called Comprehensivity and described as “macro-comprehensive and micro-incisive.”
See the calendar at https://www.meetup.com/52LivingIdeas/events/calendar/
We record all our Meetups and post them on YouTube. Feel free to keep your video on or off as you prefer. Watch Past Meetups here.
Welcome to "Comprehensivist Wednesdays"
Explore transdisciplinarity, Renaissance humanism, homo universalis, and polymathy in ways Buckminster Fuller described as “macro-comprehensive and micro-incisive.”
A Meetup For Everyone!
Join us every weekday at 8 pm or 9 pm ET. We record all our meetups and post them on YouTube. Feel free to keep your video on or off as you participate.
Watch Past Meetups here.