The Evils of Envy
The worst feeling of all is when you can sense that people envy and despise you, and it can be for the smallest and most insignificant of reasons. You don't have to have a big ego to come up with this conclusion you just feel it. Some dismiss it and chalk it down to paranoia, but it is very real. It’s like an aura of darkness and hostility emanating from someone; but it’s usually buried under a plastic smile.
You can just sense it and it can come from those closest to you, a sibling, a cousin, a friend, a workmate, a neighbor, or a perfect stranger. It’s an unmistakable feeling and it’s wrong to assume that it’s not a big deal, because it is.
People, good and bad, spend an extraordinary amount of time plotting how to defeat others who they view as too successful and thus a threat to them. They can plot to release a malicious rumor, for example, to ruin the reputation of a good, kind, and generous man, and find a way to take away what he has. they do this not to get it themselves, but only to revel in their victim's defeat and suffering. These machinations as evil as they sound happen every day a thousand times over in every kind of human interaction imaginable across the globe.
This pattern of behavior is determined by our aggressive mammalian origins, neither God nor the Devil have anything to do with it. Of course religion, law and fear of punishment or an eternity in Hell tempers it a bit, but sooner or later in liberal societies where free thought is protected and encouraged and people become lax in observance of faith, we soon revert to our animal nature.
I see this behavior every day in our cats, the way the more aggressive (and smaller cat) is never content with the food she has in front of her, she pushes her head into the more docile cat’s bowl and eats from her food as well, and when she can’t eat of her food, she sits in the bowl to prevent the more gentle cat from eating. She derives not benefit from his behavior that I can see except watching the other cat suffer from hunger. This is not something uniquely human, on the contrary, it’s primordial and basic and it lacks fineness. Only the elevated in spirit and serene in nature avoid it and are unaffected by it.
Maybe it’s because we believe other people’s grass is always greener. Maybe that is why cars on the road seem envious of the space between my car and the car in front of me, maybe that is why when I signal my intention to change to the right lane, cars behind me quickly honk and flash their lights to prevent me from going in, lest I take something that should by right be theirs’.
I never figured out the Lebanese until now or at least the majority of the Lebanese. Most of them grew up in the midst of conflict where their animal instincts kept them alive, but now that the war is over their animal instinct is all they have and all they trust, even if it is that very instinct that will likely plunge their country into another civil war.
Envy is a zero sum game: ‘I want what he has and if I can’t have it then neither will he.’ It’s self destructive, not Shatara. Its how our Zuama ‘play’ politics. Everyone is so busy digging a hole for his neighbor that they all fail to recognize that the ground beneath their feet is beginning to shudder and shake and is about to give way taking them all that much closer to Beelzebub.
I feel anger as any one would when I face this kind of hostility; it’s simply a reaction to what I regard as bullshit. In a modern interconnected world like ours, however, angry reactions, hostility, envy, hate, are all counterproductive. We have designed our world in such a way as no man or community on Earth can live in complete isolation. We need each other and therefore it is in our interest to be nice to each other. We’re not doing anyone any favors here, we are simply surviving.
So, like me, you out there who feel unfairly treated or unjustly targeted, get over it, and move on. Treat others like you want to be treated by them, not like they deserve to be treated. I know its hard, but its just common sense.
You can just sense it and it can come from those closest to you, a sibling, a cousin, a friend, a workmate, a neighbor, or a perfect stranger. It’s an unmistakable feeling and it’s wrong to assume that it’s not a big deal, because it is.
People, good and bad, spend an extraordinary amount of time plotting how to defeat others who they view as too successful and thus a threat to them. They can plot to release a malicious rumor, for example, to ruin the reputation of a good, kind, and generous man, and find a way to take away what he has. they do this not to get it themselves, but only to revel in their victim's defeat and suffering. These machinations as evil as they sound happen every day a thousand times over in every kind of human interaction imaginable across the globe.
This pattern of behavior is determined by our aggressive mammalian origins, neither God nor the Devil have anything to do with it. Of course religion, law and fear of punishment or an eternity in Hell tempers it a bit, but sooner or later in liberal societies where free thought is protected and encouraged and people become lax in observance of faith, we soon revert to our animal nature.
I see this behavior every day in our cats, the way the more aggressive (and smaller cat) is never content with the food she has in front of her, she pushes her head into the more docile cat’s bowl and eats from her food as well, and when she can’t eat of her food, she sits in the bowl to prevent the more gentle cat from eating. She derives not benefit from his behavior that I can see except watching the other cat suffer from hunger. This is not something uniquely human, on the contrary, it’s primordial and basic and it lacks fineness. Only the elevated in spirit and serene in nature avoid it and are unaffected by it.
Maybe it’s because we believe other people’s grass is always greener. Maybe that is why cars on the road seem envious of the space between my car and the car in front of me, maybe that is why when I signal my intention to change to the right lane, cars behind me quickly honk and flash their lights to prevent me from going in, lest I take something that should by right be theirs’.
I never figured out the Lebanese until now or at least the majority of the Lebanese. Most of them grew up in the midst of conflict where their animal instincts kept them alive, but now that the war is over their animal instinct is all they have and all they trust, even if it is that very instinct that will likely plunge their country into another civil war.
Envy is a zero sum game: ‘I want what he has and if I can’t have it then neither will he.’ It’s self destructive, not Shatara. Its how our Zuama ‘play’ politics. Everyone is so busy digging a hole for his neighbor that they all fail to recognize that the ground beneath their feet is beginning to shudder and shake and is about to give way taking them all that much closer to Beelzebub.
I feel anger as any one would when I face this kind of hostility; it’s simply a reaction to what I regard as bullshit. In a modern interconnected world like ours, however, angry reactions, hostility, envy, hate, are all counterproductive. We have designed our world in such a way as no man or community on Earth can live in complete isolation. We need each other and therefore it is in our interest to be nice to each other. We’re not doing anyone any favors here, we are simply surviving.
So, like me, you out there who feel unfairly treated or unjustly targeted, get over it, and move on. Treat others like you want to be treated by them, not like they deserve to be treated. I know its hard, but its just common sense.
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