Jealousy: Part One.

The primary human instinct is solidarity. Man is a social animal whose every instinct works towards his self-actualization and his ultimate self-transcendence. Via self-transcendence he helps his fellows to self-actualize and to self-transcend, the ultimate effect of which is a society of equals living in harmony and unity under the banner of Unconditional Love and Justice.

The primary impetus for our discussion is the pain of the victim. I suffered, and to find meaning in my suffering (and thus to transcend that aspect of my SELF) I must first ask the moral question: am I or am I not guilty?

It is obvious that I had observed every nicety. Besides that, my intent was pure, my demeanour trusting and appropriate. I accommodated her needs to the best of my ability, thinking nothing of self-preservation. I pardoned the delay of our first meeting, gladly rescheduling to a later day on behalf of her histrionic friend. This friend I held no grudge against, even going so far as to travel to their college on a WHIM the moment that I learned that the friend was suicidal again. I dared not to allow any harm to come to my beloved, and I trusted that my beloved, unlike you, cared about her closest friend enough to die for her should any danger arise to that friend’s well-being. I could not risk that fate, so I demonstrated my sincerity by taking the long and arduous trek to San Diego State University, where by God’s will I first met her.

My second meeting with her was scheduled to nurture her need for music. I was likewise accommodating you. God had intended for us to perform at Kettle coffee, and it was outside that same café that I met the production student who gave us our recording gig.

I have followed God’s path with ardent adherence and faith. It is from this faith that I assure you that He did not intend me, at least, to suffer.

You owed me your trustworthiness and loyalty in exchange for my trust. I was doing God’s work, and God did not intend for me to be sacrificial lamb. Yet your path was deviant from God’s. So you took the earliest opportunity to destroy my relationship with her. And I have had to spend the last two years resolving your error.

The question of Jealousy arises.

Jealousy is not a Universal Human Emotion. Its consequences are never positive, so we are not universally entitled to it. It alienates us more than it can bring us together. It misses the point of solidarity, an ideal without which it would be meaningless to even speak to one another.

There is no doubt that you were afflicted with jealousy. It was your solitary motive and excuse for your treachery. It was a frequent affliction and a dangerous double-standard that you set and violated, as tends to be the case with double-standards that the one who sets it violates it. It was singularly responsible for your loneliness. And it became responsible for mine.

I thought initially that it was jealousy on MY part that had produced my pain. Were that so I would have shared in guilt, especially if jealousy had blinded me to sympathy. But it is obvious now that I never suffered from a jealousy of my own origin. Ockham’s Razor dictates that the simplest explanation is the best. The simplest explanation is NOT that I was jealous, for there is no evidence for that; after all, in act I was totally innocent, so why should I be guilty in affect? The simplest explanation is rather that YOU were jealous, and I could feel it. I had SENSED this strange, aggressive feeling as though it were OUTSIDE of me long before I felt it in my own Heart. It came FROM YOU; I was simply Empathic enough to pick up on it. And in my empathy too I felt YOUR LACK of empathy towards me. I felt at once YOUR DELIGHT and MY SORROW, and it was this contradiction that drove me mad.

Had we both been jealous and you had been sympathetic, you would have seen your own affect reflected in mine, and you would not have dared to act as though yours were the sincere of the two sets of feelings, the other set being mine. But this did not occur. So clearly it was not that I was guilty in any respect. If I was jealous and unsympathetic, as were you, the simple fact that I had been a VICTIM still grants me the first and final word upon the matter, for it was YOUR SOUL that produced the tragedy. Even if we were both jealous, your lack of sympathy would have been your sin. Even if you had been sympathetic, my lack of jealousy stands as my vindication. And the evidence ultimately produces this: that you were as unsympathetic as I was unjealous, and the same Empathy that had allowed me to PERCEIVE your jealousy as my own all so gave me clarity regarding your own lack of sympathy.

And this Empathy you lacked as well!

Dm.A.A.