Begrudgery hasn't worked. It's time to break our addiction to 'failure porn'

In the light of everything we’ve been through in the past few years, it’s not surprising that “failure porn” has emerged as something of a cultural meme. Anglo The Musical – that’s about failure. The Four Angry Men tour? More failure.

It is worth bearing in mind that begrudgery is not a uniquely Irish characteristic: the Scandinavians have a similar phenomenon they call the Law of Jante and the Australians have tall poppy syndrome. But we’ve got the best word for it and I’m willing to bet we do it better than anyone else.

Begrudgery as a social force

But let’s not be too hard on ourselves. For a small and relatively insular population, begrudgery might actually serve a purpose.

The sociologist Max Weber argued that in certain, closed societies with fixed hierarchies, the perception exists that there may only be a limited amount of attention, authority and material resources to go around. In this type of society, for someone to rise in status, another must fall.

In the closed society we call home, with its hierarchy of builders, developers, bankers and senior politicians, Weber’s theory seems particularly relevant. As things “got boomier”, in the words of one former taoiseach, it was the golden circle that benefited most.

And later, when things “went bustier”, their yachts floated up on the rising tide of misery – and then sailed off to stiller, sunnier climes.

The begrudgers, of course, expected all this. They looked at the guy in the mansion on the hill and they knew that he would never have got there without over-generous lending on the part of banks, an absence of proper planning, lax financial regulation, and a property bubble fuelled by government-funded tax breaks.

But here’s the rub. Resentment towards the kind of people who bought the hot tubs, took out the expensive golf club memberships and drove the 2006 SUVs didn’t do anything to curtail the madness, any more than being proved right will bring the naysayers much solace now.

If begrudgery’s purpose is to put a brake on the hubris, then it’s safe to say it hasn’t worked.

So yes, our inability to appreciate the success of others might be part of who we are; a natural response to finding yourself part of a small, closed society – a society where, historically, a privileged few called the shots, and opportunities for advancement were largely determined by who you knew – but it probably isn’t doing us any good.

And that’s why Collins is right. Maybe it is time we stopped fetishising failure and focused on the good news.