Chapter 7 Chapter 6 Jealousy

The leading underlying cause of unhappiness, besides worry, is perhaps next in line to jealousy.Jealousy can be said to be the most common and deep-rooted emotion of human beings.We can obviously find this kind of psychology from children who are not yet one year old, so this kind of psychology must arouse the full attention of every educator.Show a slight preference for a child.And a slight neglect of the other will be immediately noticed by the latter child and cause resentment.If there are several children in a family, the parents must be absolutely fair and consistent with each of them.But children express their feelings of jealousy and jealousy (a special form of envy) more directly and openly than adults.This emotion is as common among adults as it is among children.Take the maid as an example.I remember when a married maid in my family was pregnant, we told her not to lift heavy things. In this way, none of the maids would like to lift heavy things. As a result, any heavy things that needed to be carried had to We do it ourselves.Envy is the basis of democracy.Heraclitus once declared that the citizens of Ephesus should all be hanged for saying, "None of us shall be allowed to rise." The democratic movement in the Greek city-states was almost entirely inspired by this passion. started.The same is true of the rise of modern democracy.There is indeed an idealistic theory that democracy is the best form of government organization.I also think this theory is correct.But in actual political activity, idealistic theories are not sufficient to bring about great change, and when great change occurs, those theories that defend it are always a disguise for emotional tendencies, and the emotional tendencies that drive democratic theory have nothing to do with it. The question is jealousy.Let us read the memoirs of Madame Roland, who often appears as a noble lady who is loyal to the people.You will find that what made her an ardent democrat was the experience of being taken to the servants' chambers on a chance visit to a nobleman's villa.

Among ordinary decent women envy plays a considerable part.If you're sitting in the subway and a well-dressed woman happens to walk down the train, look into the eyes of other women.You will see that every woman, except the few who are more fashionably dressed, will look at her with malice, and will rack her brains to try to put her down.The love of gossip is an expression of this general malice; bad things about other women are immediately believed, even if they have no basis in them.A high morality plays the same role: those who have the opportunity to violate it are envied, and punishment for their vices is considered a virtue.This particular form of virtue is a reward for envy.

However, the same situation can indeed be seen among men, with the difference that women regard all other women as their competitors, while men generally only have this feeling towards men of the same profession as themselves. emotion.Readers, have you ever been so presumptuous as to praise one artist in front of another?Have you ever complimented a politician in front of another politician from the same party as him?Have you ever praised an Egyptologist in front of another Egyptologist?And if you say that, nine times out of ten, you're causing that outburst of jealousy.Some of the correspondence between Leibniz and Huygens lamented the alleged insanity of Newton.They wrote to each other: "Is it not sad that the incomparable genius Mr. Newton should lose his mind and become confused?" These two famous people, in letter after letter, obviously gloated. At the same time, a few drops of crocodile tears fell.In fact, the things they falsely bemoaned never happened, and only a few eccentricities of Newton gave rise to such rumors.

Of all the traits of common human nature, envy is the most unfortunate emotion.Not only does the envious man wish misfortune to others, which he will act on as long as it goes unpunished, but he himself suffers misfortune from envy.He does not derive pleasure from what is his own, but pain from what is owned by others.So far as his ability permits, he seeks to deprive others of their advantages, as if by doing so he would gain them for himself.If this sentiment is left unchecked, it will kill any virtue.Even the use of the most useful special tricks inflicts fatal damage.Why should a doctor go to his patients in a car, while a worker can only walk to work?Why can a scientific researcher spend his time in a warm house while everyone else has to face the storms of nature?Why should a man of extraordinary ability who is of great value be spared the daily chores of housework?On these questions, envy is silent.Fortunately, however, there is a compensating emotion in human nature, namely, the emotion of envy.Whoever wishes to increase his happiness must increase the emotion of envy and eliminate the emotion of envy.

What is the cure for jealousy?For saints the medicine is disinterestedness, though even in saints envy of other saints is not absolutely impossible, for example, I doubt if Saint Simon Stillet knew If a saint can stand longer on a narrower wooden post, will he feel refreshed all over his body.But don't talk about the saints.Happiness is the only cure for jealousy, for the common eating and drinking man and woman; but the trouble is that envy itself is a great hindrance to happiness.I think that the misfortune that man suffers at this time greatly stimulates the formation of jealousy.When a child finds that his brother or sister is more popular than himself, he acquires the habit of envy.Once in society, he looks for the injustices of which he is the object of sacrifice, perceives them as soon as they occur, and imagines their existence if they do not occur.Such people are bound to be unhappy and become abandoned by their friends, because it is impossible for them to remind themselves at all times, so as not to make the imagined minor faults.At the beginning, he thought that no one liked him, and later he proved his opinion with his own behavior.Another misfortune of childhood is that, although the child has parents, he does not get the love of his parents, which will lead to the same result.Although there are no brothers and sisters who are overly loved in their own family, children will find that children from other families receive more parental love than themselves.This will cause him to hate other children and hate his parents; when he grows up, he will think that he has become an Ishmael.There are certain kinds of happiness which are the natural birthright of every one, and who, if deprived of them, must become surly and violent.

But the envious man may say: "What good is it to tell me that happiness is the cure for jealousy? As long as I continue to be jealous, I cannot find happiness; and you tell me that until I find happiness, I will not Get rid of jealousy." But real life will never be so logical.Simply recognizing the cause of someone's own jealousy is a huge step along the path to healing.The habit of comparative thinking is an Achilles' heel.When anything pleasant happens, enjoy it to the fullest, and don't stop to think that your own affairs are not very pleasant compared with what may happen to others. "Yes," the envious person will say, "it's a beautiful day today, full of spring, the birds are singing and the flowers are blooming. But I know that spring in Sicily is a thousand times more beautiful, huh?" The birds in the Likong jungle sing more crisply and melodiously, and the roses of Sharon bloom more vividly and charmingly than the roses in my flower city.” After he thought about it, the sun lost its light, and the singing of the birds turned into a boring noise , the flowers don't seem to be worth seeing.He takes the same attitude toward the joys of other areas of life. "Yes," he would say to himself, "the girl in me is lovely, and I love her, and she loves me, but the queen of Sheba must be much sweeter and more beautiful! Ah, if I had the chance How nice / All these comparisons are meaningless. Stupidity! Neither the Queen of Sheba nor the next-door neighbor is the cause of one's displeasure. Both are useless. To a wise man, he Never stop enjoying what you have because someone else has what you don't have. In fact, envy is a defect, part moral, part intellectual, which never sees things in themselves but only See the relationship between things. Let me make an analogy. I earn enough wages to spend. I should be satisfied, but then I hear that someone who is no better than me earns wages Twice as much as I am. If I am a jealous person, all of a sudden, my satisfaction with what I have disappears, and I sink deep into a sense of injustice. The effective cure for all this is Mental cultivation, even the habit of not thinking about useless things. After all, what is more enviable than happiness? If I can cure myself of jealousy, I can achieve happiness and become envied by others. That A man who earns twice as much as I do, no doubt, is troubled by the same thoughts, because another man in turn earns twice as much as he does. The situation can be infinitely advanced. If you desire Glory, you may be jealous of Napoleon, but Napoleon is jealous of Caesar, Caesar is jealous of Alexander, and Alexander, dare I say it, is jealous of Hercules" who never existed!So you can't get rid of jealousy just by being successful, because there are always people who are more successful than you in history or legend.You can get rid of jealousy by enjoying the pleasure you get, by doing what you have to do, and by avoiding comparing yourself to imaginary, and possibly quite false, people who are luckier than you.

Unnecessary modesty has much to do with envy.Modesty is often regarded as a virtue; but I doubt, in my view, whether it, in its more extreme forms, deserves to be regarded as such.Humble people need a barrage of reassurances and are often too afraid to attempt tasks they are capable of.Humble people believe they are inferior to those with whom they spend a lot of time.Therefore they are prone to jealousy, which leads to misfortune and hostility.Personally, I think it's very important to raise a child so that he knows he's a good kid.I don't believe that any peacock will be jealous of another peacock's feather tail, because every peacock thinks its feather tail is the most beautiful in the world.The result is that peacocks are peaceful and docile birds.Imagine how unlucky a peacock would be if it were told that it was evil to think highly of itself!Whenever he saw other peacocks spread their tails, he would say to himself, "I can't think my feathers are prettier, because it would be complacent to think so. But, alas! How I wish I were more beautiful." Be more beautiful! That ugly bird thinks it's beautiful! How about I rip off some of its feathers? Then I don't have to be afraid of being compared to it." Maybe he'll go find a pie to prove that peacock's behavior Improper, evil and hateful.So it would condemn the peacock at the chiefs meeting.Gradually, he will make such a rule: all peacocks with particularly beautiful feathers and tails are almost always evil, and the clever ruler of the Peacock Kingdom will choose the peacock with only a few bald feathers as the leader .After this rule is accepted, he will execute all the most beautiful peacocks, and in the end, the truly dazzling tail feathers will become something that only exists in Yaolong's memory.This is the triumph of envy over counterfeit morality.But when each peacock thinks he is more beautiful than the others, there is no need for such repression.Every male peahen wants to win first place in this competition, and because they respect their female partner, they all think they have achieved this good result.

Of course, jealousy is closely linked with competition.We do not envy fortunes which we consider hopeless.In that era of strict and fixed social classes, the lowest class would not envy the upper class, because the boundary between rich and poor was considered to be appointed by God.Beggars don't envy millionaires, even if they envy those who are more successful than themselves.The fluidity of social status in the modern world, and the egalitarian doctrines of democracy and socialism, greatly expand the scope of envy.It now appears to be an evil, but one that must be endured in order to achieve a more just social system.When a rational thought is given to inequalities, they are seen as unjust unless they are based on a height of entitlement.Once this inequality is seen as unjust, there is no other remedy for the envy it arouses than to remove it.Our age is thus an age in which jealousy plays a peculiar role.The poor are jealous of the rich, the poor are jealous of the rich, women are jealous of men, and chaste women are jealous of women who are not punished for their chastity.On the one hand, it is true that envy is the chief motive of just relations between classes, peoples, nations, and sexes; This justice does not so much increase the happiness of the unfortunate as it diminishes it.The same passions that play havoc in private life play the same role in public life.Therefore do not think that anything good can come out of such an evil emotion as envy.Those who, for idealistic reasons, wish to bring about profound changes in our social institutions, or to see great developments in social justice, must seek other forces - not envy - to promote these changes. occur.

All bad things are interconnected, and any one of them can be the cause of the other.Fatigue, above all, is a frequent cause of envy.There is a general feeling of dissatisfaction when a man feels powerless at the steps he is about to take, which, when too full, takes the form of a jealousy against those whose work is easier.Therefore, reducing human fatigue is one of the ways to reduce jealousy.But the most important thing is to find a stable life that can satisfy one's instincts.Much jealousy that appears to be purely professional actually has a sexual root.A man who is happier in marriage or child-rearing is less likely to be envious of others who are wealthier and more successful in business; as long as he has enough money himself to raise his children in his own way, he has nothing to do with it. begging.The essence of human happiness is so simple that even those who are experienced in the world have to admit what they are lacking.Those women whom we have mentioned before who are envious of every well-dressed woman, their instinctive lives are certainly not happy.In English-speaking countries, especially among women, there are very few people who are naturally happy.At this point, civilization seems to have gone astray.To lessen envy, some means must be found to remedy the situation; and if this means cannot be found, our civilization is in danger of being destroyed in the flood of hatred.Once upon a time, people only envied their neighbors because they knew nothing about other people.Now, by means of education and journalism, people at all levels of society are fairly well known, though not necessarily personally at those levels.Through movies, they learned about the life of the rich; through newspapers, they learned about the shortcomings of other nations and countries; through propaganda, they learned about the brutal behavior of people of different races from their own skin color, yellow people hate white people People, white people hate black people, etc.You might say that all this hatred is fueled by propaganda, but that is only a superficial explanation.Why is propaganda more successful in inciting hatred than kindness?The reason is clear, because modern civilization has produced a human soul more inclined to hate than to kindness.Because he is dissatisfied, he tends to hate; because he often, or even unconsciously, feels that he has lost the meaning of life, so he feels that it is not himself but someone else who has obtained the joy and happiness that nature bestows on people.The happiness that people enjoy in life today is definitely much more than that in primitive society on the whole, but the pursuit of possible happiness is also stronger.Whenever you take children to the zoo, it's not hard to find a surprising tension and sadness in the eyes of great apes when they're not performing gymnastics or cracking nuts.We can almost imagine them feeling that they should be human, but not discovering the secret of being human.Along the way, they lost their way; their cousins ​​caught up and they were left behind.And this kind of tension and resentment seems to have entered the soul of civilized man.He knew that there was something superior to himself almost within his grasp.But he didn't know where to find it, or how to find it.In desperation, he vented his anger on his companion, but his companion felt as lost and unhappy as he did.We have reached a stage in our evolutionary journey, but it will not be the last stage.We must move quickly through the past, because if we fail to do so, most of us will die along the way, and others will be lost in doubt and fear.So, although envy is evil and its effects are dire, it is not quite a devil.On the one hand it is an expression of the heroic anguish of those who trudge through the night, of those who are moving toward a better resting place, or even death and destruction.To find a correct path in this despair, civilized people must broaden their minds just as they broaden their horizons.He must learn to transcend himself, and thus gain universal freedom.