On Envy

I change my monkey-photo to Planet Of The Apes. These apes got along afterall.

Monkeys, one observes, are happy to be rewarded for their work with cucumber slices unless one of the group receives grapes. Then they get snarky and no longer do the work. It turns out that envy, or the 6th deadly sin and probably the least acknowledged, is passed along via evolution. More, reports the NYT, the vibe's unpleasant sensation equal to its opposite or schadenfreude - seeing your rival stumble. This measured by brain activity. I read this BTW awaiting Katie's doctor appointment and wonder about the past eight-years: Americans (and Brits), driven to keep up with the Joneses, did stupid things like buy unaffordable houses or Humvees. 


 It's too easy to call these people assholes (and many are) but our system's deep inequalities, accelerated during Bush and hyper-visible in our mythology (90210! Baywatch! The Sopranos!) have turned many citizens into twitching miseries (very different, mind you, than the more socially tolerable jealousy). Personally I have seen MBAs making $millions hateful of their status because it ain't more. 


 Of course envy is not an American phenomenon - in Nairobi I met seven Kenyon runners under 2:15 for the marathon and several unhappy about not making the elite squad. Yet those Africans work together and their comparisons did not seem corrosive. The runners happy to be blessed, alive and... running. Pretty simple. So today Barack signs the stim-u-lator and we will see how the country manages its schadenfreude.

Madeleine and Eitan at the age when they compare everything. It generally effects their happiness - for instance, the other night Madeleine thought Eitan's ice cream more and she could not enjoy her desert. Brother. As a parent, it is my job to cut this off somehow at the quick so it does not dog them the rest of their lives. Oh boy, seen and done that before.