lil philosophy moment for the jealous girls
From an existentialist perspective, jealousy protects us from the truly existential threat of losing our loved one’s affirmation of our being. it’s bad faith / self deceptive because it relieves us of the work it takes to actually build and strive for meaning and value and instead we simply want it to be bestowed upon us. Jealousy in women is endemic because we live in a culture which has taught us from a young age that our worth and meaning is contingent on man’s ability to perceive it within us. It places us in a perpetual state of dependency on men and in a constant state of rivalry and competition with other women.
From a Marxist perspective, jealousy is a product of bourgeois love morality — it’s about having a proprietary attitude towards our loved ones. Under capitalism, we come to view other people’s entire being as property and possession. We feel we are owed our beloved’s complete interiority.
Jealousy in both cases is rooted in possessiveness and has a social function: it protects the social institution of ownership, property, possession. It is not a triangulation between owner, object, and rival — but rather a quadrangulation between owner, object, rival/trespasser, and public. There are forms of jealousy which are institutionally suppressed (in legitimate competition for property) and forms which are encouraged (at the illegitimate trespass onto one’s property), because they preserve the fundamental institution of property
