In the late 1990s, phrases such as “player hater” and “hating on” were popularised by American rap stars. An early reference can be found in the 1998 track, Don’t Knock the Hustle, by Jay Z. Within the hip-hop community, hating on meant being envious of, while a player hater was an envious person. Player hater is nowadays abbreviated to hater (envier), and from Detroit to Dubai, on the lips of YouTube personalities and US presidents, the term has become irritatingly mainstream.
In the UAE, the terms envy, envier and envious were tweeted 5,161 times in 2016; the terms hating on, hater and haters were used 29,593 times. Why have we felt the need to adopt new terms for envy, and why has the need to talk about envy become so popular?
Psychologists Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell have spent many decades charting the rise of narcissism. In their book, The Narcissism Epidemic, they report data from 37,000 college students, documenting a clear decade on decade increase in narcissistic personality traits such as vanity, grandiosity, entitlement and exhibitionism.
One of the most narcissistic compliments we can lavish on ourselves is to imagine that everyone envies us.
Can there be envy without enviable qualities, accomplishments or possessions? The latest edition of the psychiatric diagnostic manual suggests that people experiencing narcissistic personality disorder are extremely needy for the envy of others. Furthermore, one of the diagnostic criteria for narcissism reads: “…believes that others are envious of him or her”.
Imagining we’re envied, or hated on, can be a like a shiny protective shell. Anybody expressing disagreement or dislike for us can simply be dismissed as a hater and, by implication, we congratulate ourselves on our enviable qualities.
This fits with psychological ideas about narcissism being a defence against low self-esteem. In reality though, not everyone who dislikes us is a hater (envious). Perhaps our behaviour does indeed give some people due cause for disdain. Are they haters or are we fools? I think both answers are occasionally correct.
Envy is not all in our heads; haters do exist and we all occasionally get hated on. The Dutch humanist scholar, Erasmus of Rotterdam, saw envy as part of the human condition.
He wrote: “Nature, more of a stepmother than a mother in several ways, has sown a seed of evil in the hearts of mortals, especially in the more thoughtful men, which makes them dissatisfied with their own lot and envious of another’s.”
The evils of envy are widely acknowledged in the Arab world too. One urban legend from the UAE involves a mother whose envy of her daughter’s beauty and happiness rendered the young girl blind on her wedding day. Years later, on the same day the mother died, the girl miraculously regained her sight.
Envy (hasad in Arabic), intentional or unintentional, is viewed as being capable of causing lasting physical harm. For this reason, some people say Masha’Allah (God wills it) when observing a positive (enviable) quality in another person.
The phrase is a reminder that all accomplishments and desirable qualities are given by the will of God. If someone looks at you and says Masha’Allah two or three times, take it as a great compliment with inbuilt envy protection.
Ibn Hazm Al Andalusi, an 11th-century polymath, suggested that the cure for chronic envy was to imagine that the person one envied was from a distant land.
He based this therapeutic technique on the psychological insight that people tend to envy those they view as being more similar to themselves.
Globalisation, however, has made everyone similar and distant lands have now vanished. The world is a village, where people constantly post pictures of their bliss and achievements. Today, it’s harder than ever not to be a hater.
Dr Justin Thomas is an associate professor at Zayed University
On Twitter: @DrJustinThomas
