This series of four newspaper columns by Olavo de Carvalho was collected in this order in the book “The Minimum You Need To Know So As Not To Be An Idiot”.
“Dialectic of Envy” explores the complex nature of envy, describing it as a deeply hidden and conflicted human emotion. Envy is portrayed as a conflict between self-aversion and the desire for self-elevation. Olavo discusses how envy is rarely openly admitted and often concealed, as it can be shameful. Envy is seen as a feeling that thrives on secrecy, and it typically revolves around spiritual goods rather than material wealth or power. The column also touches upon the changing motives and expressions of envy in modern times, particularly in the context of revolutionary movements. It suggests that envy can be a driving force behind some social and political movements led by intellectual activists.
“Of Unconfessed Envy” discusses the prevalence of unconfessed envy in Brazilian society, particularly in the context of public recognition and voting. Olavo notes that there is a growing trend where people choose to applaud and vote for individuals who are perceived as less talented or remarkable, not out of genuine admiration, but as a way to avoid feelings of envy. This tendency is seen as a shift from a time when voters recognized and appreciated the talents and qualities of candidates, even if he had flaws. The column highlights how envy has become a pervasive and hidden force in society, influencing public opinion and decision-making, particularly in the realm of politics.
“Affected Contempt” discusses the biggest hindrance to the development of intelligence, which he argues is not economic, social, racial, or familial factors but rather moral ones. He emphasizes the importance of exposure to beauty in various forms from a young age to nurture higher intelligence. Olavo criticizes Brazilian culture for its preoccupation with the irrelevant and contempt for anything beyond his limited comprehension. He uses the example of the Brazilian media’s treatment of Ronald Reagan to illustrate his point that contempt can be a mask for envy.
“The Naivety of Cunning” explores how the 20th century thought of itself as clever by uncovering the flaws and weaknesses in great figures of the past, such as Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, through psychoanalysis and critique. Olavo argues that this modern tendency towards self-criticism and suspicion led to the deconstruction of both divine and human qualities. He criticizes academic trends that focus on highlighting deficiencies in great individuals instead of appreciating their unique qualities and contributions. Olavo concludes that this self-destructive intellectual trend has made the 20th century appear remarkably naive in retrospect.
Dialectic of Envy
Folha de S. Paulo, August 26, 2003
Envy is the most concealed of human emotions, not only because it is the most despicable, but because it consists, in essence, of an insoluble conflict between self-aversion and the yearning for self-elevation, in such a way that the divided soul speaks outwardly with the voice of pride and inwardly with that of contempt, never achieving that unity of intention and tone that evidences sincerity.
To my knowledge, the only openly envious character in world literature is Diderot’s The Nephew of Rameau, a character too caricatural to be real. Even Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground only expresses itself on paper because it believes it won’t be read. People confess hatred, humiliation, fear, jealousy, sadness, covetousness. Envy, never. Admitted envy would nullify itself immediately, transforming into open competition or resigned abandonment. Envy is the only feeling that feeds on its own concealment.
A person becomes envious when they secretly give up on the goods they coveted, believing, in secret, that they don’t deserve them. What hurts them is not the lack of goods but the lack of merit. Hence their compulsion to devalue these goods, destroy them, or replace them with miserable simulacra, pretending to consider them more valuable than the originals. It is precisely in these dissimulations that envy reveals itself most clearly.
There are many forms of dissimulation, but essential, primordial envy has as its object spiritual goods because they are more abstract and intangible, more likely to awaken in the envious person that feeling of irremediable exclusion that makes them a condemned soul in life. Material wealth and worldly power are never as distant, as incomprehensible, as the friendship of Abel with God, which drives Cain to despair, or the mysterious gift of creative genius, which humiliates mediocre intellects even when they succeed socially and economically. Behind common envy, there is always spiritual envy.
But the motive of spiritual envy changes with the times. The modern era, as explained by Lionel Trilling in Beyond Culture, “is the first in which many men aspire to high achievements in the arts and, in their frustration, form a dispossessed class, a proletariat of the spirit.”
For new motives, new dissimulations. The “proletariat of the spirit” is, as Otto Maria Carpeaux already noted in The Ashes of Purgatory, the revolutionary class par excellence. Since the French Revolution, mass ideological movements have always recruited most of their leaders from the crowd of resentful semi-intellectuals. Separated from manual labor by their education, cut off from achievement in literature and the arts by their endemic mediocrity, what remained for them? Revolt.
But a rebellion in the name of ineptitude would self-demoralize immediately. The only one who confessed this, with suicidal candor, was precisely the “Nephew of Rameau.” As if warned by this cruel caricature, the others noticed that a noble pretext was needed for camouflage. This is where the poor and oppressed came in. The ease with which every revolutionary sheds tears of pity for them while fighting against the establishment, then oppresses them as soon as they come to power, can only be explained by the fact that it was not their material suffering that moved him, but only his own psychic suffering. The right of the poor is the hallucinogenic potion with which the activist intellectual intoxicates himself with illusions about the motives of his conduct. And it is the inner drama of spiritual envy itself that gives his discourse that hypnotic emotional intensity that W. B. Yeats noticed in the worst apostles.1 No authentic feeling is expressed with a fury comparable to that of histrionic performance.
Ironically, what gave rise to the grand guignol of modern revolutions was not exclusion but inclusion: it was when the doors to higher cultural activities were opened to the middle and lower classes that the number of frustrated literary aspirants multiplied by millions.
The “rebellion of the masses” referred to by José Ortega y Gasset2 consisted precisely of this: not the rise of the poor to higher culture, but the simultaneous impossibility of democratizing genius. The resulting envy generated hatred for the newly acquired goods, which seemed even more inaccessible to souls as they became more democratized in the world. Hence the general outcry against “elite culture,” just at the moment when it was no longer the privilege of the elite.
Unjustly, but understandably, Ortega was accused of elitism for this. But Eric Hoffer, a worker elevated by his own merit to the level of a great intellectual, also wrote penetrating pages on the psychology of activists, "chattering pseudo-intellectuals full of pose… Living sterile and useless lives, they lack self-confidence and self-respect and long for the illusion of weight and importance."3
Therefore, readers, do not be surprised when you see, at the forefront of “social movements,” citizens from the middle and upper classes, graduates of the most expensive universities, as is the case with Mr. João Pedro Stedile, an economist from PUC-RS. If these movements were genuinely for the poor, they would be satisfied with the fulfillment of their nominal demands: a piece of land, a house, tools for work. But the void in the heart of the activist intellectual, the black hole of spiritual envy, is as deep as the abyss of hell. Not the whole world can fill it. Therefore, the reasonable demand for the simplest goods in life, the initial hope of the mass of followers, always ends up expanding, at the initiative of the leaders, into the mad demand for a total transformation of reality, a revolutionary mutation of the world. And in the chaos of revolution, the hopes of the poor always end up sacrificed to the glory of the activist intellectuals.
Of Unconfessed Envy
O Globo, May 11, 2002
When, at the end of “Big Brother Brasil,” the public surprisingly chose the most unremarkable of the contestants as the winner, even mental health professionals were interviewed in search of explanations. The best explanation came from psychoanalyst Luiz Fernando Py: Kleber had been chosen precisely because he was too insignificant to inspire envy. He had been chosen because anyone could choose him without feeling that they were paying homage to someone better than themselves.
I send my belated congratulations to Dr. Py. In a country where debates generally consist of exchanging clichés with no connection to reality, a precise personal observation is a great intellectual feat. And this one is so precise that it applies not only to one case but to an entire trend that has been gaining ground in the Brazilian soul from year to year, even infiltrating politics: the tendency to use applause and votes not as a means of recognizing the qualities of the elected person but as mechanisms for neurotic compensation of the voter’s poor self-esteem.
Brazil was not always like this. Jânio, Lacerda, or JK may have had all the flaws in the world, except for a lack of talents. The voter knew they couldn’t compete with the inventiveness and theatrical talent of the first, the eloquence and courage of the second, the charisma of the third. Nevertheless, they didn’t shy away from them, avoiding the humiliation of envy and, ipso facto, giving in to it. On the contrary, they applauded their performance with the joy of someone watching a Pelé play. When they withheld their vote, it was for political reasons, without any depreciation of their personal qualities.
All of this has been lost. Envy, the most debasing of feelings, has taken hold of the hearts of Brazilians. Even worse is that unconfessed envy that, in an attempt to hide itself, lowers and corrodes not only the image of the envied person, as would be the case with conscious envy, but also the standard of judgment itself, praising what is stupid and dull in order not to acknowledge being humiliated by the brilliance, grace, and talent of anyone.
Affected Contempt
O Globo, June 12, 2004
As I’ve written before, the greatest obstacle to the higher development of intelligence is not related to economic, social, racial, or familial factors but rather moral ones. It lies in what the Greeks called apeirokalia:4 the lack of experience with the most beautiful things. The soul that, from a young age, is not exposed to the sight of concrete examples of natural, artistic, intellectual, spiritual, and moral beauty becomes incapable of conceiving any reality higher than the limits of its everyday perceptions. Like the frog at the bottom of the well, if asked, “What is the sky?” it responds, “It’s a little hole in the roof of my house.”
This is the chronic ailment of our national culture, always devoted to the irrelevant and full of contempt for anything beyond its meager capacity for understanding.
An examination of the main Brazilian novels already reveals: there is no literature richer in frivolous, mediocre characters devoid of any depth of soul or spirit. It’s a world of small bureaucrats, tormented, in the noblest of cases, by a meager budget, unsatisfied libido, or some intestinal colic. Fiction literature is both a portrait and a symptom: if our fictional cosmos is like this, it’s not just because society is like this, but because writers are too. Their only difference is that they have some gift of critical observation to describe mediocrity in general but not to surpass it. The proof is that when they analyze the situation, they immediately attribute it to economic causes, reasoning in turn like small bureaucrats and numbing themselves to avoid seeing their own inner misery.
In recent times, with official encouragement, national pettiness has become even more narrow-minded and unyielding, adorning itself with uplifting social pretexts. Mental indolence has become a sign of love for the people; lack of culture, proof of high ideals; and unyielding mediocrity, an aura of sanctity around the empty head of a presidential candidate.
The cage of negative feelings and boastful illusions in which the Brazilian people have enclosed themselves ultimately separates them so completely from the universe that they can no longer conceive beauty and sublimity except as deceptive products of the advertising cunning of someone like Duda Mendonça.
Hence the image that has been painted in our media of the recently deceased American President Ronald Reagan.
In the United States, columnist Jack Wheeler wrote: “Ronald Reagan was the greatest of Americans—not just American presidents. More than any other, he embodied the moral ideal described by Aristotle as megalopsychia, the ‘man of great soul.’ Such a person has a character of such undissolved integrity and such accomplishment in the real world that his soul, for Aristotle, expresses the kalon, moral beauty.”
This is more or less the opinion even held by some of his most bellicose political opponents.
A man of such stature can be loved, feared, or hated, but never despised. The affected contempt with which the Brazilian media wrote about him is merely the conventional disguise of the most vile of feelings: rancorous, incurable, and desperate envy that small souls have of the great.
Never has a neurotic camouflage been so transparent, nor has the consciousness of inferiority surfacing beneath the feigned superiority been so painful.
More than a sample of a depressing cultural and political situation, the Brazilian media has become a psychiatric symptom in the strictest sense.
The Naivety of Cunning
O Globo, September 23, 2000
The twentieth century considered itself very astute because it discovered, with Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche, that the highest human qualities could conceal class prejudices, repressed desires, and the pursuit of compensation for resentment.
In light of these revelations, the image of the great men exalted by previous centuries shattered into a cloud of small miseries, to the extent that it became necessary to explain their remarkable achievements and works as imaginary projections of the cultural environment.
By the end of the century, it became fashionable in academic circles to produce pejorative biographies, intent on highlighting sins, flaws, and blind spots in the souls of the best individuals, in order to suggest to the masses of readers that these characters had nothing special about them that had not been deposited there by the vagaries of fame, a well-orchestrated publicity campaign, or arrangements convenient to the interests of the ruling class.
By thus taking the modern propensity for masochistic self-criticism to its extreme, the twentieth century seemed to have no greater reason for pride than the unyielding suspicion that made it, after so many centuries of dreams and delusions, the first not to be deceived.
This strange pride of a cold gaze, which delights in the sight of its own misery because it invests its bearer with the sovereign power to dispel the highest values and hopes with a laconic phrase, is the perfect inversion of Christian humility, which only examines its own sins with similar rigor to exalt through them the glory of divine healing.
While the Christian humbles himself so that God may exalt him, the modern man humbles himself to humiliate others. God frightens us because he holds in his hands, rather than ours, the secret of salvation; the discourse of modernity frightens us because it persuades us that it possesses the ultimate secret to which there is no salvation.
The supreme model of wisdom that modern intelligence aspires to is undeniably the devil. He cannot save us, but he can scientifically justify our damnation more and more. This demonic asceticism has become so widespread and mandatory in academic circles that it has practically become synonymous with the image of scientific knowledge in general. When faith and charity are mentioned today, it is almost always in the tone of a paternal concession that intellectual rigor makes to the childish needs for comfort and illusion, unavoidable in the majority of the human species that has not yet reached the highest levels of consciousness reserved for academics with cold looks and disdainful smiles.
It was in an advanced stage of this development that the idea arose to break apart, after the divine images, the very human qualities that manifested them. The attraction that pejorative biographies and insulting diagnoses of the psyche of great men exert on the mass of “average” readers can be easily explained by the mechanism of seduction. “Seduction” comes from sub ducere, to lead or attract from below: to dominate a subject’s mind by appealing to their worst qualities, weaknesses, and fears.
Especially their envy. Envy is a feeling of inferiority that finds relief in contemplating the real or imagined inferiorities of others. Unable to overcome their own weaknesses, the envious console themselves with the thought that everyone has them in equal measure. It’s the democracy of complexes.
This type of academic literature aims to awaken in the reader what John Le Carré called “the typical corrosive perception of the weak.” Having spread it among the educated classes made the twentieth century feel particularly astute.
But what will seem supremely naive to future historians is that such large portions of the educated classes of an era believed in the possibility of understanding the personality and genius of a Goethe, a Shakespeare—not to mention saints and prophets—based on an examination of the deficiencies and sins they had in common with the rest of humanity, without considering what made them different. Because, precisely, if their weaknesses are the same as everyone else’s, it remains to be explained why not everyone can write Faust or Hamlet—let alone perform miraculous cures or make prophecies confirmed by time.
To alleviate the discomfort of this question, academic engineering conceived theories like deconstruction and reception aesthetics, which, by diverting readers' attention from the structural unity in which the superior meaning of great works is grasped, dispersed their intelligence in the contemplation of the infinite loose elements that compose them or the inexhaustible variety of reactions that audiences from different times and places had to these works.
Invariably, the dispersion of intelligence leads to the disintegration of its object: in the end, what is denied is the integrity of the works themselves, which is the same as saying: their existence.
With this, the discomfort mentioned above is definitively alleviated, as no one feels inferior in the face of what does not exist.
That thousands of envious individuals worldwide would so readily succumb to the temptation of this cheap relief and come to believe fervently in the puerile intellectual tricks designed to obtain it is what will make the twentieth century, in the view of future times, the most naive century in history.
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See “The Second Coming” and “The Leaders of the Crowd” in Michael Robartes and The Dancer, 1921.↩
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La Rebelión de las Masas, 1928.↩
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The Ordeal of Change, 1952.↩
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Editor’s Note: For a detailed analysis of this moral impediment, see the article “Apeirokalia” by Olavo de Carvalho, published in the magazine Bravo!, Year I, No. 1, November 1997, available at: http://www.olavodecarvalho.org/livros/apeirokalia.htm.↩
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