I do know envy! Yes, Salieri envies.
Deeply, in anguish envies—O ye Heavens!
Where, where is justice, when the sacred gift,
When deathless genius come not to reward
Perfervid love and utter denial,
And toils and strivings and beseeching prayers,
But puts a halo round a lack-wit’s skull,
A frivolous idler’s brow? … O Mozart, Mozart!
—PUSHKIN1
And this man
Is now become a god, and Cassius is
A wretched creature and must bend his body
If Caesar carelessly but nod on him.
—SHAKESPEARE2
Hatred is active displeasure, envy passive. We need not wonder that envy turns so soon to hatred.
—JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE3
There is much more to be said about envy and its link with schadenfreude. I have given little attention to one feature of the emotion that has huge implications for how it works within the psyche of the average person suffering it. This concerns what most scholars assume is the largely suppressed or subterranean way that envy operates in everyday life. Generally, we deny feeling it. We keep our distance from the emotion, especially in how we present ourselves to others and often even in our private, internal owning up to it.4 My aim in this chapter is to show that this feature of envy actually makes schadenfreude much more likely if the envied person suffers, and it facilitates actions that bring about a misfortune.5
Admitting envy, even in our private thoughts, is to concede inferiority, as I stressed in the previous chapter. Most of us work hard to maintain the opposite view. Even if the evidence of our inferiority is obvious, we are quick to repair the narcissistic wound. We are well equipped and well practiced with defenses against such assaults to our self-image. When one defense fails, another seems to erect itself, and then another. As I emphasized in Chapter 2, this is why most of us can believe that we are better than average despite this being a mathematical impossibility—everyone cannot be better than average. When we weigh our strengths and weaknesses, we are usually guided by the preferred image of a superior self. This is the self who, despite demonstrable failings in the actual world, can still view itself as an important if not heroic figure, battling slights and injustices. This self, a kind of god unto itself, plays out fantasy roles of victory and revenge over those who seem to thwart its interests. This self is rarely inclined to envy, or so we convince ourselves. Admitting to envy would be demeaning and unbecoming. Other people may be plagued by this petty emotion, but we are not.6
Most of us also resist acknowledging our envy because of its hostile and thus repellent nature. It is unlikely that we feel at ease knowing we dislike, perhaps hate, people and might even enjoy seeing them hurt simply because they have advantages over us. What have they actually done to deserve such hostility? This is hostility directed toward a blameless target; this is an unjustified, even pathetic thing to feel. It smacks of meanness and spite, a conspicuous defect in moral fiber and another threat to the high opinion we like to have of ourselves.7
Adding to this private resistance to admitting our envy is the concern for our public image. Recognizing the inferiority revealed by our envy is painful enough in our private thoughts, but confessing it to others piles on the pain of humiliation. Few people have the patience to listen to the petty whining of the envious. They have contempt for the nasty ill will underlying the envy as well. Understandably, most cultures develop strong norms against feeling envy or expressing it, or, more surely, acting on the feeling. Therefore, expressing envy almost certainly receives censure from others. The hostile nature of envy, together with the embarrassment of inferiority, means that when people reveal their envy, they will probably feel further diminished and ashamed.8
Is there a religion that approves of envy? Not likely. Judeo-Christian traditions warn against it. Consider the familiar 10th commandment from the Old Testament of the Hebrew Bible:
Thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shall not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbor’s.9
Some of its details sound almost quaint, but the point is broad and anyone can comprehend the core command: don’t envy what another has. Even feeling it is a crime of thought.
Anyone with a passing familiarity with the Bible knows that the theme of envy is part of its narrative fabric. This helps explain why the text can read like a pot boiler.10 Envy is likely the main reason that Cain killed his brother Abel. Both Cain and Abel brought offerings to the Lord. The Lord frowned on Cain’s “fruit of the ground” and accepted with warmth and respect Abel’s “firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof.” And so, Cain “rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him” causing the Lord to send Cain away, cursed, to wander in the Land of Nod, to never again have the luxuries of tilling rich soil.11 In this fashion, envy caused the first murder, leaving us with an early and clear moral lesson: don’t envy. If your brother has it better than you, address your own failings—the solution is not to respond by killing him.
Christian conceptions of envy, sometimes personified in Satan, link envy to evil, as in John Milton’s magnificent poetic creation:
Satan—so call him now; his former name
Is heard no more in Heaven. He, of the first,
If not the first Archangel, great in power,
In favour, and pre-eminence, yet fraught
With envy against the Son of God, that day
Honoured by his great Father, and proclaimed
Messiah, King Anointed, could not bear,
Through pride, that sight, and thought himself impaired.
Deep malice thence conceiving and disdain,
Soon as midnight brought on the dusky hour
Friendliest to sleep and silence, he resolved
With all his legions to dislodge, and leave
Unworshiped, unobeyed, the Throne supreme.12
Satan, although powerful in his own right, is overloaded with envy of Jesus, who has God’s greater favor. Weakened by this, his pride wounded and his malice aroused, he plots revenge and releases evil into the world. Is there a more alarming vision of what envy, unleashed, can do? It is hard to read this and think about envy in a benign, cheerful way.
Christian traditions also include envy in the cast of the deadly sins. Although the pain of envy is its own kind of punishment, the consequences of the sin of envy are singularly unpleasant. In Dante’s vision of Purgatory, the envious have their eyes sewn shut with wire.13 This seems fitting, for the root of the word envy derives from in- “upon” + videre “to see.”14 People feeling envy look at advantaged others with malice, casting an “evil eye” upon them—and look with pleasure when misfortune strikes. Envy may also be a sin that catalyzes others. Christian philosopher George Aquaro makes the case for envy being the core emotion driving most sinful behaviors, the one that creates the necessity for other commandments.15 Without envy, Cain may not have murdered Abel. Alas, because the commandment to avoid envy may be impossible to follow, we must also have “thou shalt not kill.”
It doesn’t take a scholar of religions to see that envy is likely to be a troublesome problem for any faith, and so religious beliefs must provide a palliative for those less fortunate. According to the Bible, Jesus said, “Again I say to you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”16 It is the meek rather than the wicked, powerful, and arrogant who will inherit the earth. This is good news for the disadvantaged person because it gives moral worth to inferiority and promises rewards for it in the long run. And yet the gnawing, immediate fact of disadvantage is hard to ignore in the moment. Inequality—and the envy that can result, regardless of commandments against the feeling—probably eats away at the foundations of a particular religion’s explanation and justification for such inequalities. Envy signals a destabilizing discontent with one’s lot that can place religious beliefs under suspicion and on shaky ground. The supreme being and creator of all things is implicated when envious discontent arises in response to his or her handiwork. Envy may initiate a questioning of the wisdom of the plan itself.17
The effect of envy’s link with an inferior self and with a repellent reputation is that envy produces multiple levels of self-deception and public posturing. Again, most certainly, people will avoid confessing their envy. Scholars, such as anthropologist George Foster, give examples of how envy is detected in its opposite, so much do the envious try to hide their true feelings. “Against whom is that eulogy directed?” is the line Foster cites from a novel by Migel de Unamuno to capture this jolting idea.18 People can concede their envy in private, of course. They can come clean both in private and in public. But envy is frequently, as social and political theorist Jon Elster writes, “suppressed, preempted, or transmuted into some other emotion”19 because there are “strong psychic pressures to get rid of the feeling.”20 This means that many people are feeling envy, perhaps acting out of envy, but are unaware of it—even though others may label them as envious and motivated by the emotion.21
There is another important element to throw into the blend: envy often comes mixed with a sense of injustice. When we feel envy, we are also likely to think that the advantage enjoyed by the envied person is undeserved, or at least that our own disadvantage is undeserved.22 We resent the envied person’s advantage. Why is this? The pioneering social psychologist Fritz Heider saw envy as emerging from a strong tendency toward the “equalization” of lots.23 We believe that others who are similar to ourselves in background characteristics ought also to have similar rewards. Otherwise, a core sense of balance and rightness seems violated. Because envy is most likely to arise between people similar to each other24—except for what triggers the envy—the advantage will seem to violate this sense of what ought to be. Thus, envy often comes flavored with resentment.
In a similar vein, Freud claimed that the very origins of justice feelings come from the child’s envy over inequality. Claims of unfairness might serve as a way of appearing to legitimately cry foul over unequal treatment. An element of our reactions to inequality, even as adults, may therefore have roots in how we reacted to inequality when we were children. According to Freud, the preoccupations of our younger self leave a strong residue. In this sense, the child is father to the man because we never quite rid ourselves of this early childish insistence on equality.25
I suspect another factor contributing to a sense of injustice in envy is that so many of the things creating envy are beyond the average person’s ability to change.26 One can only do so much to adjust one’s physical beauty, intelligence, athletic ability, and musical talent—the list of attributes goes on and on. Even things such as wealth and family background are often insurmountable differences that separate people permanently at the starting gate of life. Such inequalities are undeniably important contributors to success in life, both in work and in attracting romantic partners. Hence, they are raw ingredients for envy. To this extent, people feeling envy cannot be blamed for their inferiority and therefore do not “deserve” it. Neither, to this extent, do envied people “deserve” their advantage. Even so—and this is an important point—these differences are not considered an unfair basis for meting out rewards, at least in most cultures. On the contrary, they are sources of merit. If Anna is less gifted at math than Susan, she will have no cause to cry foul if Susan is the one selected for the quiz bowl. If Mary attracts Paul’s attention because of her physical beauty, plain Jane cannot take Mary to court over this advantage, “unfair” though it may be. From the subjective view of people feeling envy, these advantages can seem unfair, but this unfairness must be suffered without redress. If the emotion driving the sense of injustice is envy, most cultures insist on the grievance remaining a private one. These lines from Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám capture the frustration that fate can bring:
The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: not all your Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.27
Envy can imprison us in a paradox because we feel both a sense of injustice and a sense of shame. In Heider’s words, “Envy is fraught with conflict, conflict over the fact that these feelings should not be entertained though at the same time one may have just cause for them.”28 Envy, by this logic, is a hostile feeling that seems justified and yet damnable. It comes with an aggressive urge having a subjectively righteous character, and yet, acting on this hostility in a way that reveals one’s envy is a repugnant move. A private part of oneself wishes to assert one’s rights, because, as I outlined in Chapters 5 and 6, a desire for justice is a powerful motive. Furthermore, to a degree, a self-assertive impulse seems adaptive for succeeding in life. But cultural norms against envy create hesitation. In fact, you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t.
Evolutionary psychologists Sarah Hill and David Buss give another reason to think that envy joins itself with resentment. From an evolutionary psychology perspective, envy serves an important adaptive function. It alerts us to conditions in which we rank lower than others in domains important for survival and reproductive success. The unpleasant nature of envy does not diminish its adaptive value but rather enhances it. In the competitive arenas of life, envy should lead to actions that increase resources compared to rivals and that upgrade social status and the benefits that follow from higher social status. Envy, by this logic, is both an alarm and a call to action. Hill and Buss suggest that envy may have evolved as a way of construing oneself as more deserving of scarce resources compared to rivals. They also argue that it is adaptive to find even the deserved advantages of other people as undeserved, at least to a degree; for example, by finding reasons to view the envied person as morally corrupt. The anger, hostility, and resentment created by perceiving the envied person’s advantage as undeserved will make it more likely that people feeling envy will compete vigorously for the valuable resource. The process of natural selection is, as Hill and Buss phrased the point, “inherently competitive, selecting for individual phenotypes—and the genes that code for them—based on their ability to outperform existing alternate forms in domains that affect fitness.”29 The fusing of resentment with envy is an adaptive blend.
Max Scheler, guided in part by ideas originated by fellow German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, wrote about a chronic state of mind that he argued originated in envy and other, related painful states of frustration. Like Nietzsche, he borrowed the term ressentiment to give the phenomenon a label. One way this state can emerge, he argued, is when prolonged experiences of envy produce a sense of impotence so debilitating that one begins to suppress the emotion, despite its potency. This, in turn, produces a grudging, rancorous, embittered attitude toward life. In this psychologically poisoned state, envied things become reduced in value. This is no fun, but at least we need no longer accuse ourselves of envy. The things we once desired no longer seem worth having. However, because ressentiment is born of repressed envy and the actual valuing of these things, it is a conflicted, unhealthy brew. And, among other toxic effects, it creates particularly ugly emotions when advantaged people suffer. In the end, aggression, even cruelty, may result—as I will explore in the next chapter.
Although these ideas inspired by Nietzsche and Scheler are hard to test empirically, a series of studies done with Dutch participants by social psychologists Colin Leach and Russell Spears provides some support. These researchers’ main goal was to show that feelings of inferiority would prime people to take out their frustration and anger on successful others, which would emerge as schadenfreude if successful others fail. In one study, undergraduate participants were told that their own university had done poorly in their league on a quiz competition called “IQ.” Their feelings of inferiority and shame were measured immediately afterward. Then they learned about the winner of another league and reported how this success made them feel. Finally, they found out that this successful university had lost to the winner of their own league, and they again reported their feelings over this outcome. Indeed, these students were likely to find the loss of this other university pleasing. The students’ pleasure was related to their prior feelings of inferiority and shame, as well as to the anger they felt over the other group’s initial success. Specifically, students who felt inferior and ashamed over their own group’s failure tended to be the ones who also felt angry over the other group’s success. And this anger was closely linked to schadenfreude when this group suffered a defeat. Leach and Spears evoke Nietzsche’s notion of the “vengefulness of the impotent” to capture this process.30
Another empirical contribution comes from work by Zlatan Krizan and Omesh Johar, who have examined the role of vulnerable narcissism in envy and schadenfreude.31 Vulnerable narcissists have a complex jumble of features. Like all narcissists, they are usually self-absorbed and interpersonally tone-deaf. They are also apt to fancy themselves superior to others and to expect that the world concurs with this assessment. As a result, they typically feel entitled to special treatment and are taken aback if they don’t receive it. But vulnerable narcissists, compared to “grandiose” narcissists, are less confident about their superiority and less confident in how others see them. Their narcissism may mask a core low self-esteem, and their behavior tends to reflect defensive efforts to convince themselves of their own superiority. Vulnerable narcissists should be especially susceptible to envy and schadenfreude because of their low self-esteem.
Studying how narcissism might combine with envy to cause schadenfreude is a particular challenge. Narcissists are especially unlikely to reveal their envy because, as social worker and psychotherapist Hotchkiss notes in her book, Why Is It Always About You?: The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism “to admit envy would be to acknowledge inferiority, which no good narcissist would ever do.”32 But Krizan and Johar employed a clever procedure that minimized the likelihood that participants would know that the study’s focus was on envy and schadenfreude. Undergraduate participants thought they were simply giving their reactions to the format of news stories. They expected to see two related stories, one on a computer screen and the second on paper, and then give their reactions to the different formatting. They also completed a personality measure of vulnerable narcissism, but this was done in a mass screening at the beginning of the semester. There was little chance that participants would detect the researchers’ interest in narcissism or envy. The first article contained an interview with another student who was either of high status and enviable or of low status and unlikely to be envied. Then, participants were taken to a different room and given a memory test (to distract them from the true purpose of the study). Finally, they were given the second story, which detailed how the same student from the first story had been found guilty of plagiarism and received a one-year academic probation.
As in other studies mentioned earlier, participants found the student’s downfall more pleasing when it happened to the high-status person than the low-status person. And envy, reported just after the first article, was a big factor in explaining why. Moreover, vulnerable narcissists were even more likely to feel envy, and this envy resulted in more intense feelings of schadenfreude at the envied individual’s misfortune. These results provide convincing evidence that our private self-views, when they are threatened by another person’s superiority, set us up for feeling envy—and schadenfreude if the envied person suffers. And some of us, if we possess a shaky self-esteem joined with narcissism, are even more likely to follow this pattern.
The film Amadeus, as I noted earlier, contains a good example of this tension between the sense of injustice, which is often part of envy, and the social censure also linked to the emotion.33 Salieri, the respected court composer, envies the young and miraculously talented Mozart. But he avoids fully admitting to envy, construing Mozart’s talent as an injustice committed by God. Salieri views Mozart as immature, indecent, and undeserving of his musical gifts. He resents Mozart’s talents and is outraged at the injustice that he, Salieri, has only the capacity to appreciate Mozart’s talent, rather than to duplicate it. He is a frustrated prisoner of mediocre abilities. Can he cry out against this injustice? No, because differences in ability are not considered an injustice by the standards of his culture. Ability and talent are sources of merit. Therefore, Salieri blames God, whom he deems to be responsible for awarding ability and talent among people. He knows that he will get no sympathy from others, however, if he makes any open efforts to right this wrong. Furthermore, he would not want others to think that he is envious because this would add public shame to his frustrations.
Salieri, mediocre by his own and others’ verdicts, suffers many humiliations as Mozart outperforms him at every opportunity, usually in front of others, who laugh along with Mozart. In one scene, Mozart is performing impromptu at a lavish costume party and imitates the style of well-known composers. Salieri, disguised and incognito behind a mask, is in the crowd and calls out for Mozart to do “Salieri.” Mozart proceeds to mock Salieri to the howling delight of the rest of the crowd. Salieri’s mortification shows through his mask when Mozart takes on the look of a Neanderthal and with slow deliberateness plods his way through a Salieri melody. He literally apes Salieri.
The now-vengeful Salieri vows to undermine Mozart’s career and plan his death. The success of both efforts brings him intense schadenfreude. He decides to feign a liking for Mozart and becomes his apparent friend and supporter. His actual feelings are hostile and vengeful, fed by a sense of injustice that we, the viewers, can easily recognize as envy. He encourages Mozart to include a section of ballet in his opera, The Marriage of Figaro, despite his knowing that the Emperor Joseph II will object when he views its initial performance. He watches Joseph’s reaction as he views a rehearsal and anticipates with pleasure Joseph’s disapproval. This fails to happen because Joseph enjoys the piece, and Salieri’s hopes are dashed. But later, when the full production debuts, he receives a “miracle.” Although Salieri realizes that the opera is path-breaking in quality, he also knows that Joseph’s attention span is short. In the final number, Joseph yawns once, a signal that the opera will only have a few performances. This failure is a triumph for Salieri, and he smiles the smile of satisfying schadenfreude. Later, when Mozart’s magnificent Don Giovanni also suffers a short run, Salieri once again silently exults.
Eventually, he pivots toward murder. “Before I leave this earth I will laugh at you,” he vows in secret, his whole being now fully poisoned by envy and a desire for revenge. Mozart is already physically weakened by overwork, made necessary by financial woes. Concealed by a mask, Salieri visits Mozart and offers him extra work composing an opera, hoping that this will direct Mozart to an early grave through physical exhaustion and illness. Mozart accepts the offer, and, as he works, Salieri watches for hopeful, happy signs of Mozart’s weakening physical condition. He is pleased to see Mozart almost delirious as he conducts an inaugural production of The Magic Flute. He is elated when Mozart collapses at the keyboard. He supervises bringing Mozart home and arranges a way to keep Mozart working by offering to record the notes as Mozart composes. He is gratified to see Mozart’s strength fade while he works to meet the deadline for the commission. Mozart does indeed die of exhaustion and illness—again, much to Salieri’s pleasure.
The experience of Salieri may be unusual in certain respects. He is actually more aware of his envy than others who might reach a vengeful state propelled by fully repressed envy.34 Also, his anger is egged on by intentional humiliation from Mozart. Such deliberate humiliations enacted by the envied person may be rare in everyday experiences of envy; nonetheless, the film dramatizes the point that envy can lead to an extreme endpoint created by powerful tensions stirred up within the envying person. Invidious comparisons register in our emotional solar plexus. Usually, altering the pecking order is unrealistic—a reason why the emotion is so painful. The disadvantage remains a stubborn fixture, creating a persistent need to cope with inferiority, repugnant feelings of hostility—and frustrating resentment over being unfairly treated. This is mainly why the emotion can transmute itself into a private grievance no longer having the label of envy.35 Once transmuted, events can more easily trend toward a justified pleasure if the envied person suffers and even justify vengeful actions that bring about the suffering, also resulting in pleasure.
This way of thinking about envy crosses over from the commonplace to something sinister. Common envy is often disturbing enough in its consequences, but the example of Salieri suggests that it can slope toward something uglier—toward a schadenfreude laced with malice and aggressive intent.
It is important to keep the hostile, potentially violent endpoint in mind. It is the difference between laughing over the seemingly benign joke and the willingness to stand happily by while another person suffers—or worse, to be responsible for perpetrating the harm. Generally, social norms keep hostile actions at bay. But because envy can be such an ugly, yet also a righteous feeling, and because owning up to it threatens the self-esteem of the envying person, its transmutation into a more palatable emotion, such as pure indignation and resentment, is a frequent outcome. Again, once transmuted and relabeled, the envying person need no longer wait in frustrated anticipation for a misfortune. Transmuted, this passivity can take a holiday, even a permanent vacation. A more certain virtuousness replaces shame and provides a license for something more active. Now, the envying person might take action to bring the misfortune about.
The progression from finding a bad thing amusing to wishing that it happens, and from anticipating it to engineering the deed, is difficult to unpack given the complicated motives that drive the change. Envy, I think, motivates in ways that deceive both the self and others, creating its own opportunities, manufacturing its own clever justifications, energized by the pain of the emotion and masked by its relabeling. This is the evil eye of envy, so feared in most cultures. The envied person is now the voodoo doll, vulnerable to attack. And so, Salieri is more easily able to take action against Mozart because he largely sees his decision as revenge against injustice.
In Richard Russo’s novel Bridge of Sighs,36 the narrator, currently in his 60s, looks back with improved understanding and describes a boyhood event in which he caused the injury of a friend, Bobby, whom he both liked and envied. On Saturday mornings during one summer, they would go with the narrator’s dad when he delivered milk in his truck. They would play at “surfing” in the back of a truck, a game that meant balancing on milk crates as the truck navigated through the streets. The trick was to stay balanced on the crate even as the truck took turns. Bobby was better at the game, as he was at most things, and this created mixed feelings and desires in the narrator. Although he liked Bobby, even loved him in a way, this did not prevent envy and its attending hostile leanings from taking hold. I think Russo captures perfectly how envy-triggered aggression can happen, and it is well worth quoting in full:
[A]s the summer wore on I became troubled by the knowledge that part of me was waiting for, indeed looking forward to, my friend getting hurt. It had, of course, nothing to do with him and everything to do with my own cowardice and jealousy. The jealous part had to do, I think, with my understanding that Bobby’s bravery meant he was having more fun, something that my own cowardly bailing out had robbed me of. Each week I told myself I’d be braver, that this Saturday I wouldn’t reach out and hold on for safety. I’d surrender control and be flung about, laughing and full of joyous abandon. But every outing was the same as the last, and when the moment came, I grabbed on. Gradually, since wishing for courage didn’t work, I began wishing for something else entirely. I never wanted Bobby to be seriously injured, of course. That would have meant the end of everything. But I did wish that just once he’d be hurt bad enough to cry, which would lessen the gulf I perceived between him and me.
And so our milk-truck surfing ended the only way it could. I didn’t actually see Bobby break his wrist when he was flung against the side of the truck. I heard the bone snap, though. What saved me from suffering the same fate was my cowardice. I’d seen the curve coming and at the last second reached out and grabbed one of the tied-off milk crates. Bobby, taken by surprise, went flying.37
For a few minutes after the event occurred, they sat quietly beside each other in the back of the truck while the narrator’s father drove them home. Bobby broke the silence and said, “You didn’t call the turn.”38 These words clarified the initial ambiguity of what had happened and why it had happened. His failure to warn of the curve was by hidden inclination, needing a sober accusation to let the motive break the surface. He wanted the accident to happen because of his envy, and, when it happened, part of him was happy over it. This was the essential truth of the matter, made clear once the narrator matured.
There is a sense that schadenfreude, when linked with envy, often exists in a kind of fantasy world of frustrated anticipation and privately articulated hopes for misfortune. During moments allowing for reflection, the wished-for misfortune, perhaps in fine detail, takes shape. Primed by mere imagination, the real thing, if it ever happens, is an extraordinary bolt out of the blue. When we have taken no role in the misfortune, if luck grants us this outcome, it is a thing of beauty. We can be free of any guilt that might arise.
As pleasing as a misfortune might be to witness when the envied suffer, the sad rub (for the rest of us) is that people who are envied tend not to suffer. They have it better. We are the ones who suffer. Whatever our dreams may be, they are living them.39 But as envy goes underground, feelings of injustice and outrage can overtake envy in its manifest form, providing a foundation for unimpeachable, justified action—in the form of a kind of revenge and its dark thrills.
This is not a process to trifle with. In the next chapter, I take this transmutation of envy into righteous revenge to its furthest extreme and ask whether it might help explain the extreme, brutish treatment of the Jews by the Nazis.