December 2005 | Back Woods
Evil Territory
Knowing where jealousy stops and envy begins is a path to healthier
self-esteem
By Silja J.A. Talvi
When envy breeds unkind division; there comes the rain, there begins confusion.— Exeter, Earl of Warwick in King Henry VI, William Shakespeare.
Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies.— Gore Vidal, best-selling author
What particular person, object or situation invokes or provokes your envy?
Is it the sight of your neighbor’s new car, or the fact that your best friend is off in Tahiti, enjoying a two-month vacation?
Is it the fact that your co-worker turns heads nearly every time he or she walks in the room? Are you full of envy, perhaps, for the person actually able to afford a two- or three-bedroom home in Seattle? Do you feel envious when you hang out with the person who is happily married with two adorable kids, or conversely, when you go drinking with your single friend who isn’t tied down to anything, much less anyone else?
Perhaps the object of your envy is someone you don’t even know personally? Could it be the likes of George Clooney or Angelina Jolie; the skier or boarder who flies by you on the slope while carving sharp, seamless turns; the person who sits next to you on the airplane and pulls out a shiny new laptop. Or maybe even the meditation guru whose disarming calm and grace you feel like you can’t possibly ever attain?
Envy should not be confused with jealousy, which can be an ugly and powerful emotion in its own right.
Joseph Epstein’s wonderful little book in the Oxford University Press’ Seven Deadly Sins series makes the distinction clear: “Jealousy is not always pejorative; one can after all be jealous of one’s dignity, civil rights, honor. Envy ... is always pejorative. If jealousy is ... spoken of as the‘green-eyed monster,’ envy is cross-, squinty-, and blearily red-eyed.”
Small wonder that envy has been the subject of so much religious, artistic and literary contemplation. (Writers themselves, it should be said, are often the worst offenders where professional envy is concerned.) Externalized, unchecked envy can lead to everything from street-level squabbles to regional wars. Internalized envy can breed self-hatred and self-disgust–the nagging feeling one is never good, smart, handsome or successful enough.
In this sense, it could be argued that envy might motivate some of us to do better, to do more, to attain more, to strive for bigger and greater things. But if envy is the primary motivator for those resulting actions, isn’t it likely that those accomplishments will only suffice until one finds the next enviable object, person, or status?
In his 1996 book, The Kabbalah of Envy, Rabbi Nilton Bonder writes that envy is “a vampire who feeds not on his own vitality but on that of others.”
Everyday people participate in this kind of vampirish behavior when they gossip cheerily about a celebrity’s drug-related arrest or illicit affair or, worse yet, do their own bit to smear envied colleagues or acquaintances with some form of rumor or innuendo. Children learn to do it remarkably quickly. Preteens and teens seem to practice it constantly, perfecting the art of psychological cruelty in the process. Most adults just like to pretend they’re above it all. In truth, they are simply better at hiding it.
When others fail
There’s another fitting word for it: schadenfreude, or the act of taking pleasure in another’s failure or defeat.
Nasty stuff, isn’t it? All the surviving cultures in the world recognize the awesomely destructive path that envy can carve through the cohesion of families, communities and societies. In Semitic and Indo-European belief systems, for instance, envy is often conceptualized as “The Evil Eye.”
This Evil Eye thing isn’t taken lightly in the least. Many Jews and Muslims alike decorate their houses or bodies with hand-shaped necklaces or charms (alternately known as the Hand of Fatima or Miriam). They respond to compliments–about their children in particular–with responses intended to defuse or deflect the compliments. For Jews, protecting against the Evil Eye can involve spitting at the ground--or pretending to by acting it out with a sound akin to “peh-peh-peh,”
Another popular phrase is kein ayin hara (no evil eye), usually muttered under one’s breath. Some Roma (gypsies) weave, braid and crochet mirror charms into their clothing to reflect the Evil Eye back to the source. Tibetan Buddhists in Nepal have the Eye of Buddha amulet, to reflect the envy back in similar fashion.
I have not come to any conclusions on the merits of such rituals, even as I admit to participating in some of them. I don’t even want to weigh in on the issue of whether a theological framework is necessary to truly combat envy’s ills and temptations. It’s enough for me to know that this much time and thought has been put into combating envy, and yet it is as pervasive and destructive a force as it ever was.
In his final analysis, Epstein offers up his opinion that envy amounts to poor mental hygiene.
“It blocks out clarity, both about oneself and the people one envies,” he writes. “It ends by giving one a poor opinion of oneself.”
True enough, and especially relevant as the holiday season settles in. Kick envy to the curb, and do so with vigor, whenever and wherever possible.
Peh-peh-peh.
Silja J.A. Talvi writes The EM Column and is senior editor of In These Times.
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