Mondays remind me the tension between people who hate what they do and people who love what they do.

Mondays make me think about envy.

Monday is a day when violations of the Tenth Commandment are the rule and not the exception. In extreme cases, envy can take the form of hating people who simply don't have to do what others do. Traffic is at its rudest on Monday mornings. Monday mornings are my least favorite morning to do my running, as the cars are more menacing. Little patience for runners, who are considered "in the way." (So it seems, at least.)

The funny thing about the work ethic is that it imposes a feeling of obligation on people to do what they hate (and accept the hatred), even though we are all told that we should find work we like. One of the tragedies of life is that many people never find work they like. Also, tragically, achieving real success is usually impossible unless one likes one's work.

A man's work is that which is not work at all, said Twain. And that is tragically true. People who do what they want are, tragically, often hated by people who are doing what they hate. Whether they achieve success does not do much to alleviate this hatred; a starving artist is about as contemptible as a successful one to those who hate their jobs. I have long believed that one of Howard Stern's dirty secrets of success is that he loves his work but claims to hate it so passionately that his work-hating listeners love him for it. (Perhaps he does have a love/hate relationship with it, but the hate-work part is very endearing to the hate-work crowd.)

It has long fascinated me how an unsuccessful, typical "starving artist" type can be so hated when he is so obviously unsuccessful. If the hatred is grounded in jealousy, though, I would think that hating the successful makes more sense. But I think the reason for the hatred of starving artists (homosexuals often get a similar flavor of hatred), is that the people who hate their lives cannot stand to see unsuccessful people who seem to be having a good time at being unsuccessful, while they toil away never really achieving the success they desire. It's as if the misery of the latter is being ridiculed by the former; whether the artists and homos know it or not, that's what they're doing. The fact that this may be wholly unintentional, if anything, only adds fuel to the fire.

This ties in with what I have noticed about hatred of the casual, "recreational" drug user as opposed to the pity so frequently allowed the addict. We have only to contrast this with feelings commonly evoked by the casual ("social") drinker as opposed to the alcoholic; the hatreds are curiously reversed, and the alcoholic is hated more.

I am not saying all people think this way; but the feelings are there. To ignore them is to ignore stuff that goes to the heart of the Culture War.

Ditto abortion. While late-term abortion is considered more heinous both in a logical and moral sense, the outcry against the morning-after pill takes on near-hysterical proportions among the activists who spearhead anti-abortion ideology, and elaborate arguments are constructed to prove that this pill is the precise moral equivalent of the Holocaust. Why? I think it's because of this feeling that women who take that pill are getting away with something, and avoiding consequences which would become self-apparent if they waited longer.

Gay marriage, similarly, by granting homosexuals a way to escape the stereotypical loneliness, debauchery and despair (which might engender at least a grudging feelings of pity), is seen as offering an "escape" to people who, in a "just" world should bear the full brunt of "consequences" for a poorly "chosen" lifestyle.

The problem is, this stuff is not logical. My attempt to analyze it forces me to engage in stereotyping I'd rather not engage in. But I'd rather think about it at the risk of indulging in stereotyping myself than dismissing the angry moral conservatives as "illogical." To call them illogical, regardless of how true that may or may not be true, misses the tragedy of misplaced envy.

An envy which dare not speak its name?

I think that's the worst kind.