The useful grievance.(Essay)

IN THE JANUARY-FEBRUARY issue of Quadrant this year I wrote about Thorstein Veblen, whose book The Theory of the Leisure Class stirred up a sensation in the early 1900s. Its thesis: as soon as humans achieve basic sufficiency in nutrition, shelter and physical security, their only drive becomes vainglory--the urge to show off and "big-note" themselves. Veblen supported his case with wit and learning.

Because of the interest readers showed in Veblen, I turned in the July-August issue to another maverick social scientist, Helmut Schoeck, whose book Envy: A Theory of Social Behaviour appeared in the late 1960s. Its message: dig down deep enough, and you will discover that most human motivation rises from roots which feed in the mean but universal passion of envy. Schoeck is as learned as Veblen, though less entertaining; both writers have sunk into general obscurity.

Like many thinkers who are enthusiasts about their own originality, Schoeck and Veblen peg out for themselves territories wider than they can defend. They are like old-time Australian trade union advocates who, without a blush, could present to the Arbitration Court an ambit claim demanding almost a new Heaven and a new Earth.

Sensible people never swallow whole any "theory of everything"; recall those years of truly loony leftwing Marxism. There were decades during which, in the denser kinds of communist literature, one would not have been altogether surprised to find articles on "Raising Guinea Pigs--a Marxist Approach" or "A Marxist-Leninist Interpretation of Dandruff".

Nevertheless, there do appear from time to time books one ought to read, even if it is clear that they overreach. They jolt us into sitting up straight mentally; the very process of refuting their excesses clears out the cobwebs, and sharpens our minds. Veblen and Schoeck are eminently two such books, with their analyses respectively of vainglory and envy. What other "dire symbols of the heart" might reward similar careful study?

What about grievance? Even on the surface there is always a lot of that about; and when (gingerly) you lift the manhole cover of politeness, there frequently you find it, boiling away furiously below, just as fiercely as envy.

Dictionaries define "grievance" as a "real or imagined cause of complaint"; note imagined. There is no obligation for a grievance to be rational, any more than there is with envy.