Without provocation? Yes, people who dog on successful young people are likely harboring some sort of jealousy or unrestrained envy.
JSZ
um... again... folks who act like dicks seldom recognize how their behavior comes across to others.
You can defend it all you want, think yourself perfect, and ascribe it all to jealousy... go ahead... but that doesn't mean you are correct in doing so.
Sure... SOME of it is jealousy, with some people. In fact, a lot of folks will be jealous... but, as an artist who has had a lot of success, I never saw anyone jealous of my success, other than a handful of other artists.
Folks NOT in my field never show jealousy, because they tend to think my talent at something they can not do warrants my success.
When folks who have no evident reason to be jealous of you seem to begrudge your success... it is because they perceive ( rightly or wrongly) that you are no smarter than they... that you do not work any harder, or even as hard as they, or that your success is likely largely due to either a stroke of pure luck, or some advantage you had that they did not.
...or to some unethical action on your part.
frankly, I have met a lot of folks who made themselves rich... two thirds of them can trace their success to one or two events in which they did something questionable because the opportunity presented... for example, one made 3 million dollars because he was the realtor for a rural property the owner did not know was being scouted for some large corporate campus... as his realtor, he should have brought the deal to him... instead, he bought the property, himself, thru a dummy corporation he created for the purpose, and then sold the property for 3 million more than he paid- he lied to the person he was legally supposed to be representing.
Some would say he was just capitalizing on the information he had that no one else had... that's business... but in fact it was a dick move... it revealed his true character as unscrupulous, ruthless, and untrustworthy...
Most people who knew this guy were unaware of how he made his first 3 million....( i found out thru his son ) but they ALL thought he was a dick.
Trust me... folks opinion of him was not founded on jealousy over his money... it was because you can not really hide the fact that you are a dick.
So... if you're a dick, at heart... there's not much you can do about that... but its not jealousy over the fact that you are more successful... it just folks reacting to you being a dick.
And, if it IS jealousy... often its jealousy founded in the fact that folks who know you can SEE that you are not any brighter or more able than they... that you just have had good luck... or a head start.
Sometimes its jealousy over the fact that you Are more able... but that would only be seen in folks who can tell that... your professional peers.
But the once scenario you CAN do something about, is when that jealousy or ill feeling is founded in your own attitude that you are more successful BECAUSE you are better... because you work harder, or are smarter, or are just more capable.
It MAY be true... but to rub folks face in it is to act like a dick.
Most often, it is Not true... you were just in the right place at the right time... ( be that in applying for a career making job, or being born into an affluent and/or well connected family ) in which case lording it over others about how you DESERVE to be better off is just being a dick.
Usually, it takes a reversal to teach young upstarts how much of their good fortune is fortuitous, and they become less conceited.
But you can also just examine your own behavior and try to asses whether you are allowing your good fortune to turn into an assumption of privilege being deserved.
Like all those conservative assholes who imagine the poor are poor because they just don't work hard enough. ( no one works harder than a migrant field worker )
To feel you Deserve the wealth you have because you are better is the self centered attitude that lead to the notion of aristocracy, or class division.
Its bullshit.
I was born into a middle class, white family in California in the middle of the baby boom... the greatest period of growth in middle class wealth.
My parents had a home because of the G.I. bill ( a government assistance program) my country's wealth was growing because of the Interstate highway program, a government jobs and infrastructure program that tripled the GNP of the US and pumped billions into the blue collar working class, whose purchases fueled my father's rise in retail. I attended one of the best public high schools in the country, because government spending on schools was at a peak in the state I was being educated in.
And I managed to have my own first home thanks to financial assistance in the form of money from my grandfather and parents... and their allowing me to live with them for a few years at low cost.
All of these things that I had that billions did not, that I had nothing to do with other than the good fortune of being born into them, gave me an advantage that most of the worlds population never had.
Sure, I did something with that advantage, I made my own success in a small way...
But I have no way of knowing if I could have overcome the ennui and desperation of being born into poverty... that circumstance might have left me as bleak and frustrated as it does most people who suffer it.
And I have no way of knowing what I might have achieved had my parents been able to buy me my first car at no cost to me... or send me to an ivy league school where I would have met a different class of people, or help me get a plum position, or finance my first venture...
Or, how far I might have gone if I were more willing to act unethically, or commit a crime, or fuck over someone who trusted me...
I don't know how different circumstances I might have been born into, or might have been born into me might have resulted in very different outcomes...
and neither do you.
Maybe you're more capable than the average... but you almost certainly had advantage before you even started.
And how many people, even smarter than you, more capable, more driven, are left stymied by disadvantage that no amount of pure pluck can overcome?
Either way... thinking you have it better because you 'earned it' all on your own is certainly not the whole picture... and it makes you tend to look down on everyone who doesn't share your circumstances.
And THAT would make you a dick.
go ahead, Call others haters.
But the well-off often act pretty hateful.
The GOP, for example.