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> Everyone jealously scrutinised everybody else all the time – something easy to do when all social life was conducted in a public space. They took careful note of what others ate, what others owned, what others received or gave as gifts, and whether or not they were sufficiently generous in return.
This was typical small village behavior in Nordics less than 100 years ago. When your survival depends on the village coming to your help when you are in trouble, you pay for it by giving up some freedoms. Social control is used to keep everyone in line.
Economic historians have noticed how egalitarian small village farming limited the innovation in agriculture. You could not adopt new crop or radical new technology easily unless everybody was on board even if everyone was farming their own piece of land (you need to come together for investments, risk sharing and emergency work). In contrast, independent big landowner changing something was just one man doing the decision.
What is the best socioeconomic system depends on the circumstances. For long term survival purposes conservative, cohesive and close willage/tribe and demand sharing/palace economy is probably the best.
I found your comment quite enlightning, and I thought it ended well with an open-ended "What is the best socioeconomic system depends on the circumstances."
But you then pick out a specific socioeconomic system as "probably the best" without specifying those circumstances - unless you mean "long term survival" to be those circumstances? If so, survival of what? Village/tribe systems? The problem seems circular, put this way. I'd even suggest that circularity is the root of the uncertainty in your "probably."
I hope I don't sound like I'm picking a fight; my reaction is just what springs to mind, and you're touching on a topic I find important.
> What is the best socioeconomic system depends on the circumstances.
Yes, just as life must bend to the contours of the environment it inhabits or otherwise perish, and there are a lot of permutations to the environment so life has evolved in so many ways, the best socioeconomic system is the one that serves the unique needs of a population. Whether it's encouraging social cohesion, resource sharing, trade, resource management, religion etc. it needs to be considerate of the people it binds.
The right tool for the job.
> "For while a particularly spectacular kill was always cause for celebration, the hunter responsible was insulted rather than flattered."
This seems to have the same purpose as the Law of Jante[1] we have in the Nordic countries.
As somebody who lives in the nordic countries but is a foreigner I think that the law is not really a specific thing to Nordic countries but just an amusing social commentary of certain types of society. It's the same nearly everywhere that 'boasting' is a bad thing and the most respectable person is the one who silently gets stuff done.
The "Law of Jante" is formulated in a novel by the Danish-Norwegian author Axel Sandemose. He explicitly states that the law is used by the proletariat to keep each other down, and that it is a universal phenomenon - just as strong in Brooklyn as in Jante, the (semi-fictional) Danish town of the book. A critical part of the book is his description of the "Law of Jante" among a dysfunctional multinational crew of sailors on a ship. (He ends up murdering one of the crew-members, and blames the "Law of Jante" for the murder!)
It is rather interesting that it is more often interpreted as a national characteristic - something uniquely Scandinavian - than a characteristic of the lower classes, which was the intention of the author.
>and the most respectable person is the one who silently gets stuff done.
Except even in this case, others must be aware of the person getting things done. If you managed to do a lot of work and people literally didn't notice or attributed the work to someone else, you won't be respected by them. So what ends up earning the most respect is the ability to spread knowing of your accomplishments without appearing like you are boasting about your accomplishments. That said, in such a system the people likely think they are valuing the person quietly getting things done, ignorant of what they actually value.
Depends on the scale of course, but the US the best are idolized and boasting is expected (even encouraged), and this is true in other countries as well (though it is my experience the US is by far the leader).
As someone who have lived in a few countries and visited many more, I think the law of jante is a description of the social dynamics of scandinavian societies much more than of anywhere else (Denmark much more than Sweden)
There are other dynamics with somewhat similar results - a French friend told me that 10 years ago, starting your own company in France was the thing you did after you failed to get a job delivering the mail - leading to very little entrepreneurship - though he said it is changing in the last 5 years.
Have you ever lived in a Mediterranean country?
Yes, I believe all of our emotions probably serve some evolutionary purpose.
Does that mean they're useful in modern society? Not necessarily.
Being anxious might have helped my ancestors prepare for unexpected famines. Being aggressive might have helped them lock down the resources they needed to survive.
Do those emotions help me as an adult software engineer in Houston? Heck no. Anxiety and aggression just get in the way of a well-lived life.
That's a very misguided view of things. Aggression will help you fight for higher wages for yourself more often than if you weren't as aggressive. Anxiety will drive you towards actions that will decrease your anxiety, and those actions will generally be useful for you and sometimes the people employing you.
I think you're not really in touch and being honest with yourself if you don't think both aggression and anxiety play a crucial role in your life. Or maybe you just have different definitions of those words than I do.
> Do those emotions help me as an adult software engineer in Houston? Heck no. Anxiety and aggression just get in the way of a well-lived life.
Heck yes!
Anxiety instills fear in the consequences of bad code being released into the wild.
Aggression allows speaking your mind when others around do not meet the standards you espouse.
That does sound anxious (and one could read aggression into it, too). But there are so many more emotions below and on top, that maybe they serve at least some coordination effort. Here you exaggerate the emotion for display, but you virtue signal that you are concerned and signal the concern itself, not to be anxious. So it's a reflexive emotion.
Such things remind me all too often of the fix point combinator and what not. But I'm anxious to miss the point, because at some point logical reasoning doesn't work anymore and leads into a trap, e.g. in case of greed.
Your comment reminded me saying:
Hard times create strong men, Strong men create good times, Good times create weak men, Weak men create hard times.
Anxiety makes you consider consequences of your choices and take action based on it. Aggression helps you fight for what you think is important.
As always, we notice bad things and forget about good. Maybe your life wasn’t so well-lived if these emotions were turned off for you or, e.g. for entire Houston.
Also known as the Crab Effect, where the other crabs in a bucket will pull an escaping crab down if he tries to escape - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality
There is a lot of this in the West too, although to a lesser degree and in a less open way. Its one of those ancient behaviors and systems of values that we keep applying today that don't make much sense anymore.
We don't live in small villages anymore, doing hunter-gathering or communal agriculture.
In today's society, everyone should feel free to try new things, learn and achieve their full potential, without having to deal with this constant social pressure that leads us to be as average as possible, in order to avoid standing out from the group and get punished for that.
It's not clear if this pull to be as average as possible is something embedded in our genes or if its purely cultural.
Wow. I did not know that there was such a thing as crab effect! I thought was anecdotal similar to the story of frog doing because of water heating slowly. Would you know if the frog story is true or anecdotal?
Likening it to crab buckets misses a key point: That "status" has value, and is transferable. Pulling a "human crab" isn't a purely destructive act, as it prevents a peer from gaining status and power that could be dangerous to the one pulling down.
Even among crabs (where the wikipedia page doesn't provide source to back up its claims as to the crab's intent), pulling another crab down creates a stepping stone opportunity for another crab to climb out. In the absence of clear trusting coordination (like you see in army ants, ignoring the fact that many ants sacrifice their lives toward a goal), crab-bucket fighting maximizes individual survival chance.
What an odd site to link to.
I was taught that it is okay to be envious, what isnt okay was to wish that someone will lose the things we envied about.
When I see someone bought a new car, I will pray “I hope his car is useful and he can benefit from it, I hope that someday I will have a car like his or even better”.
While it might be hard in practice, so far it helped me stay positive to everyone.
In the german language there are the two words Neid and Missgunst.
Both could be translated as enviousness but have a slightly different meanings. While Missgunst is definitely negative and maybe even destructive, Neid does not need to be negative and can have the meaning like in the example you gave.
The correct word for the positive emotion is feeling emulous -- which means you are filled with admiration and the motivation to emulate the achievement you see, or to do even better. To feel envious involves a grudge and a desire to take away/undermine the achievement or possession of another person.
Example: do you wish you had a beautiful, new, fast car like your acquaintance; or do you wish they had an accident and lost their car (and/or got injured while in it)?
Helmut Schoeck wrote a great treatise on the subject of Envy. [1]
My experience is that envy when you have nothing can be really demoralizing. But envy when you're comfortable but others a thriving can be motivating.
Nobody ever truly has nothing. You still have something most people that have ever existed in the world don't, life. You can respond, learn, and grow. No matter how far you've gone down a path, you can always turn back.
We can only ever trick ourselves into believing we truly have nothing.
The author's final conclusions take, as a matter of fact, that inequality is what drove revolutions of the past. It seems that the more precise cause of these revolutions throughout time has not been the lack of equality, but the lack of fairness. And these are two very different things. If we take 1000 people and give rewards in proportion to performance at some task, it will be extremely unequal - yet fair. If we take these 1000 people and instead give identical rewards in accordance with who a grand arbiter thinks would be somehow 'better', it would be radically unfair. Even if the final result in the distribution of rewards is the same, the general view and tolerance of such distribution would be very different.
The example most commonly cited as a revolution of inequality is the French Revolution, yet the people did not protest because the ruling class enjoyed feasts of wine and meat while they ate grain and water, as had been the case since time immemorial. It happened because the masses were required to pay ever larger taxes to subsidize a government that was increasingly in debt with very little to show for it, all because of the actions of those that lived in luxury. And this happened at the same time that famine was sweeping the nation magnifying the absurdity of it all. Put another way, those in power were destroying their nation and demanding the poor pay for their failures. That's not about inequality, it's about unfairness.
And I think this generalizes to the entire article. People do not generally seem to care about equality -- they care about fairness. The Waltons and Elon Musk are both billionaires, but they are perceived in vastly different ways. Imagine if we lived exactly as we do today, yet the vast majority of wealthy obtained their wealth and behaved in a fashion similar to the Waltons. The stability of this nation would be quite different.
> If we take 1000 people and give rewards in proportion to performance at some task, it will be extremely unequal - yet fair.
How can you possibly claim it's fair if those 1000 all started with different opportunities, different abilities, and different privileges?
This is a really interesting take, and I think explains why so many young Americans feel disillusioned. It's not the inequality that bothers them per se, it's the fact that they can't afford to buy homes and that their educations have put them in a lifetime of debt. It's the fact that millennials will end up poorer than their parents and won't achieve the standard milestones of adulthood until later in life.
I agree, fairness != equality. While I'm a great believer in fairness, the problem with it is that it opens up to arbitration. What I consider fair may not be what you consider fair. Equality OTOH is measurable.
> yet the people did not protest because the bourgeois enjoyed feasts of wine and meat while they ate grain and water, as had been the case since time immemorial.
Well, no, the food crises immediately preceding the revolution meant that the people weren't even getting their expected grain and water. But the bourgeoisie (a class that was the middle class in the pre-capitalist economy of the time and which hadn't really existed “since time immemorial”) wasn't the target of the Revolution, indeed, while the masses and their discontent were powering it, the bourgeoisie was largely leading the Revolution.
> For while a particularly spectacular kill was always cause for celebration, the hunter responsible was insulted rather than flattered. Regardless of the size or condition of the carcass, those due a share of the meat would complain that the kill was trifling, that it was barely worth the effort of carrying it back to camp, or that there wouldn’t be enough meat to go around
Seems to me, a lot of people in modern society still excercise this ritual.
Yes they do.
Perhaps the insulting was ritual in the sense that an airport check-in person asks if you packed your own bag today. They're listening to the tone of your reply rather than the words. Similarly, if the insulters of the successful hunter are truly envious then there will be a different tone to their insults. Then a problem is exposed. Note that this ritual isn't encouraging envy (which is a harmful emotion). Rather it is helping to expose any envy that may have arisen, in a safe manner.
The flipside is that some people try to arouse envy in others. In modern times by conspicuous consumption, bling, expensive shoes, super-yachts, bragging on social media, etc. Such people deserve to be mocked until they've updated their idea of success.
Yet we are morally obliged to differentiate between them and those who've made original contributions: artists, inventors, innovators, problem-solvers and so on. Our survival in the long term actually depends on the latter group. After all we shouldn't be aiming to thrive for an 'extraordinarily long period of time', but indefinitely, just as the Ju/’hoansi would no doubt have preferred to.
“Namibian hunter-gatherers deride those who stand out.“
It depends on what the goal is. If the goal is to produce abnormal outsized returns: they likely come from standing out. Being somewhat contrarian against the tribe helps with finding new pastures - infact it might be the only way.
If the goal is to maximize egalitarianism, which is a worth-while goal, then having mimetic/conforming attitudes would be a virtue. Envy is a by-product of our mimetic desires.
Feeling envious might be good as long as it enforces you to take a positive change in your life.
Feeling envious for someone who has purchased a new house, a new car or established a new business would make you strive to have one for yourself would be regarded as a positive influence of envy.
That sounds more like aspiration than envy to me.
Envy might be a virtue?
Virtues of a software developer:
1. Lazyness. Lazyness is the first step towards efficiency. Why was the dishwasher invented?
2. Impatience. Impatience is the first step towards performance optimization.
3. Being Anti Social. This allows hyper focus.
4. Pride. The desire to strive ever harder for better code, simplicity, maintainability, more features, etc.
Those interested in this topic should read Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour by Helmut Shoeck
Suppose you are playing go and losing. You can see in the future and know you will lose. Now imagine go is life. Pray for reincarnation, to play again.
I've figured there's exactly one place where envy makes sense: If someone else has more than you because some authority is distributing things, and is supposed to do it one way but is doing it another way, then it makes sense to be mad... at that authority. It still doesn't make sense to be mad at the recipient of the extra stuff, unless they are in some way aiding and abetting the authority in its unfair behavior.
I think you should be mad at the whole disgraceful debacle. The expropriator and the recipient of expropriated goods/services are in a collaborative effort to harm you. They're both willing and delighted participants in your demise and the incentive structure created by these actions undertaken by both parties ensure that you continue to suffer in their collective hands.
I honestly don't know where you're going with this and I'm not even trying to malign you.
Similarly, having grown up in a Socialist Republic with a Communist party, envy was a big motivator for crime against your neighbor.
While some would never have a thought of harming another over perceived better off neighbor, most would take action as some form of irrational justice. And if they were found out or caught, the 'actual' justice would never be forgiven, despite all this being their own doing.
Many leave this type of village environment for different cultures and more maturity.
Envy is deplorable and there are few to zero things that would justify it. It quite frankly is very strange to see it being somewhat justified or even outright glorified by some here.
I'm of the opinion that egalitarianism is not a desirable outcome. Hierarchies (but not necessarily ultra-hierarchies as I like to call them) are much more preferable and have demonstrated to be the better pick for humanity.
would love to read more about this if you have recommended resources
The title is easily misunderstood - the article describes a type of envy in Namibian hunter-gatherers which resulted in a behaviour that is not usually seen as ok in most Western societies. They would insult and demean whatever windfall or wealth the person got, and also demand some of it.
This meant that those who were successful hunter gatherers didn't start believing they were superior or more deserving than their fellow tribesmen:
> just as the humility shown by good hunters and others with something to brag about was ascribed to “embarrassment.”
The article goes on to say how this behaviour has discouraged members of this group taking on higher management and political roles, which mean this community are under-represented on a national level, and also still very poor.
I found it a thought-provoking article. I seem to remember a time when the rich I met were somewhat embarrassed about their money, whereas I feel like at the moment people seem to be showing off their wealth a lot more. But maybe that is more to do with my social circles, or the facebook effect, or a different time in my life.
Personally, I find envy to be a very toxic emotion, which sways me and others to make life-choices that don't necessarily increase our happiness. I find I'm starting to avoid people who seem to care too much about their own and other's financial (and other) types of achievement.
Maybe I should take a leaf from the Ju/Hoansi and start insulting people's bragging rights. 'My! That is a shit bathroom you've got! And to think you spent that much...'