When Good Turns to Evil: The Ethical Structure of Celebration and Envy

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Does celebrating someone hurt others?

"Happy birthday."

Such words can sometimes tighten someone's chest.

There is someone being celebrated, someone celebrating, and a scene of pure goodwill.

However, when there is someone who could not join that circle,
a quiet "evil"can be born there.

Why does celebrating sometimes cause pain?

Deep within this question lies a complex structure where ethics, emotions, and relationships intersect.

For whom is a good act truly good?

The act of celebrating a birthday is socially considered clearly "good."

The one celebrating (the celebrant) and the one being celebrated (the honoree).
There is no clear malice there.

It violates neither law nor morality.

However, outside that space,

if one or more people

who were not celebrated (a third party) are standing there?

If that person held affection or special feelings for the person being celebrated, or for the person celebrating?
The goodwill of celebration can cast a shadow of

envy in that person's heart.
Emotions disrupt ethics—the structure of a love triangle

This structure is composed of three parties:

•

Celebrant (A): The one celebrating with goodwill •

Honoree (B): The one being celebrated •

Third Party (C): The one placed on the outsideIn this triangle, the act of goodwill itself does not change.

But depending on the arrangement of the relationship, there are moments when that good is felt as "exclusion" by others.

The act of celebration defines the inside and outside of a relationship.

And for the person placed on the outside, it holds a meaning beyond the fact of

"not being celebrated."

To whom does the evil belong? — The distribution of responsibility

Then, in this structure, the "evil" that arises,whose responsibility is it?

This relational structure can be summarized as follows.

Position: Celebrant (A)

• Ethical responsibility: Low to medium

• Comment: Can become an unintended perpetrator.
Unawareness of the relationship can take on a violent nature.

Position: Honoree (B)

• Ethical responsibility: Low to medium

• Comment: Even if passive, one can become complicit in the exclusion of others.

Position: Third Party (C)

• Ethical responsibility: Medium to high

• Comment: The emotion of envy is unavoidable,
but how one handles it is left to the individual's choice.

The "evil" generated here was not born within any one person, but was generated within the relationship itself.
That is why it cannot be reduced to a simple schema of perpetrator/victim.

It is not intent, but placement that determines good and evil

This structure shows that good and evil are determined not by intent, but by the placement of relationships.

Even words of goodwill, if spoken in a place that ignores the relationship,
become pain for someone.

Conversely, silence without malice can also become a kindness that protects someone.

It is not the words or the act itself, but the perspective of
who is placed "outside" of those words that becomes the key to shaking ethics.

Emotions transcend us

The emotion of envy is unavoidable, no matter how much reason or morality one possesses.

People cannot live without comparing themselves to others.

That is not a weakness, but proof that we are beings who live within relationships.

That is why what is important is
not having the emotion itself, but how one responds to it.

Instead of dismissing it by saying, "That emotion is your problem,"
we need a perspective that thinks together about "how to reconstruct the space where that emotion was born."

Ethics as responsibility to respond

This issue is also a matter of responsibility.

When there was someone who was not celebrated, where did your words reach, and where did they fail to reach?
Did that silence not serve as proof of 'non-existence' for someone?

Ethics is not a symbol of righteousness, but a sensitivity to relationships that asks, 'Who did it reach, and who did it fail to reach?'

In Conclusion: The Potential for Violence in Good Intentions

Good intentions reside not in the intent, but in the structure.

Celebrating someone can sometimes exclude someone else.

That does not mean you are a bad person.

However, 'being innocent' and 'being unrelated' are different things.

That is precisely why we must continue to ask ourselves:

'Who does this blessing include, and who does it exclude?'

It is impossible to ensure that words of blessing reach everyone.

However, we can surely cast a gaze of silence toward someone standing “outside” those words.


Appendix | Auxiliary Lines from the Ethics of Emotion •

Strawson: 'Emotions, like actions, are also objects of ethical response.' •

Levinas: 'The face speaks. The silence does not end until the one who sees responds.' •

Arendt: 'Action creates space. Who is there and who is not there is politics and ethics.'

The article that explores the outcome of this ethics is as follows.

▼ A story of 'those who could not act' seen from the inside
'The Story of a Man Whose Heart Was Torn Apart by Gangsters'
Just as the arrangement of relationships can hurt people, the structure of loving can sometimes bring the pain of being unable to act.
But within that pain, one man begins to quietly reconstruct himself.

▼ Related Essay: 'When Someone Who Has Given Up on Love Starts Directing the Love of Others'
Just as a blessing can become an exclusion, 'talking' about love can also become interference or domination.
When someone's love is used as a subject for discussion, the narrator's own void is hidden within it.

Another ethics that depicts the structural violence of those who control love by not engaging in it themselves.