Like love and hate, envy and greed are two sides of the same coin. That envy should become greed is perfectly plausible with the shoe on the other foot and deprivation turning into abundance. In both cases, a compromised self-formation makes it extremely difficult to slow down what are compelling - and ultimately destructive - psychic processes.
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After all, there is something to be said about corruption - or unregulated consumption - in a social landscape scarred by centuries of deprivation. Greed is inevitable in this context; as it happens, it turns out to be the cousin of envy too. Both states suggest preoccupation with a prized commodity: the man of envy is powerless over its supply; the man of greed devours it as he wishes, when he wishes. The desire of one is frustrated by lack; the desire of the other cannot be sated even by plenty. One looks on forlornly from the sidelines; the other is on the field of play, feasting, snout revelling in the trough.
I have maintained over the course of this book that various forms of inequality reverberate in the subterraneous life of South Africans, and that the major fallout has been the corruption of our relational needs. But is there empirical evidence of such a link between our external and internal worlds?
But the basic point is this: the intersubjective cultivation of hope - in the absence of actual material prospects - amounts to little more than another cheap kumbaya moment for the masses. Hope cannot exist within a psychological matrix of shame, envy and impasse while a material base marked by rampant inequality remains locked in place. As for the observable correlates of everyday violence, ressentiment-driven value delusions and alienated consumerism, these should remind us that nothing less than our shared humanity is at stake.
The wish for recovery, in other words, is not the same as the will to be analysed: among other things, psychological mindedness means working with the idea of an increase in self-knowledge generating relief from psychic pain. Similarly, in the much more formidable case of a nation on the couch, the prospect of psycho-social improvement begins with an act of faith - specifically, faith in the value of understanding. I am referring to a process of understanding that begins in the unlikeliest places: to understand where it all went wrong for human beings - not just South Africans - we have to go back to the start of civilisation, the start of violence, and the start of deep compassion.
The jealous person doesn’t have to find it in himself to love without possessing. The spiritual person has found a way to be good and virtuous. The inferior one doesn’t have to be somebody and enter the fray of life with strength.