Envy: Vice or Virtue?

Ken Taylor
Is envy always a vice?

Josh Landy
Or can it sometimes be a virtue?

Ken Taylor
Can envy ever be good for us?

Josh Landy
Welcome to Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Ken Taylor
…except your intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor.

Josh Landy
And I’m Josh Landy. We’re here at the studios of KALW San Francisco.

Ken Taylor
Continuing conversations that begin at Philosophers Corner on the Stanford campus, where I teach philosophy and Josh directs the philosophy and literature initiative.

Josh Landy
Today, we’re thinking about envy and asking whether it’s advice or a virtue.

Ken Taylor
That’s easy. It’s definitely a vice,. There’s no question about it.

Josh Landy
What makes you so sure, Ken?

Ken Taylor
Come on, think about it. Envy is a recipe for a miserable life. What’s that old line? Never compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter.

Josh Landy
But if you don’t compare yourself with others, you’ll never know who you are. I mean, a huge part of my identity is comparative. But let’s say you think of yourself as tall. Well, I mean, all that really means is that you’re taller than average. So that’s the whole idea of living without comparisons. I might make a good bumper sticker, but it’s not the way people actually live.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, okay, maybe we do have to compare ourselves to others. But that doesn’t mean you should end the people who are taller than you talk to us. You know, you shouldn’t envy anyone. I mean, what is envy ever done for anyone except, I don’t know, make them miserable and resentful, and especially not much fun to be around.

Josh Landy
But what about someone who writes a really great books about proofs? I mean, shouldn’t I envy that person? Wouldn’t it be a bit arrogant of me if I, if I didn’t envy people like that.

Ken Taylor
Josh, look, you’re a great Proust scholar, you don’t have to envy your Fellow Scholars, you’ll be much happier if you don’t and besides not envying them will stop you from going, you know, Tonya Harding.

Josh Landy
I’m not talking about breaking anybody’s knnecaps. All I’m saying is, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of healthy rivalry. I mean, if I envy my pro scholar, then I’m gonna have a little bit of a bad feeling, you know, and that bad feeling, it’s gonna motivate me, it’s gonna make me want to write better stuff, just like she does.

Ken Taylor
And if you succeed, you know what’s gonna happen, she’s gonna envy you, then the two of you kind of end up like enemies, when you could have easily been friends instead, Josh—lose the envy.

Josh Landy
It doesn’t follow Ken. I mean, imagine if you and I played tennis every week, we would win. Thank you. But you know, whether or not I’d win would probably develop a rivalry but but it’d be a healthy rivalry. And that rivalry would make both of us raise our game, we each get better. We both get fit, we’d stay friends, what’s not to like?

Ken Taylor
Josh, that’s an easy case. Because in your case, both people can get what they want. They want to just be better. But suppose you’re like competing for a killer job, a job that you die for. And you can’t both have it. You can’t just have you know, like in tennis, a friendly rivalry and raise your game and shake hands at the net and all that stuff. It’s all going to end in tears for at least one of you if you’re in this attitude of envy.

Josh Landy
So what you think one of the people is going to try to sabotage the other like sending anonymous letters to the hiring committee?

Ken Taylor
Well, they just might do that. They just might be driven to do that. And that’s precisely why envy is regarded as one of the seven deadly sins I think it’s the worst of the deadly sins.

Josh Landy
I just think you have a low estimation of humanity. Can I you know, what about all the healthy cases, not just tennis, but but art or moral goodness or even philosophy? I mean, these are all cases where envy can motivate us to try to be better

Ken Taylor
Or more likely to motivate you to try and tear the other person down.

Josh Landy
I know you’re better than that.

Ken Taylor
Oh, that’s what do you think.

Josh Landy
Oh, man, I gotta watch out for you.

Ken Taylor
Anyway, envy is bad for the planet. What? Okay, well, you you suppose you envy your neighbor? Like his hot new car or something? So out of envy, you get a new car do but Josh, you don’t need that car. It’s just consumerism on overdrive driven by your envy. So thanks to your envy there go the icecaps.

Josh Landy
Geez, can that escalated quickly. I don’t know about that. All I’m saying is, I still think that’s a good kind of envy. I mean, especially the kind where you envy each other’s qualities not not the cars not their possessions, but their qualities. Take me, I envy your your brilliance your wit your quick thinking on the radio.

Ken Taylor
Thanks, but I know what you do. You just tried to flatter me so that I let you win this argument. That’s all you’re doing.

Josh Landy
It isn’t working?

Ken Taylor
No. But look, let’s see what our Roving Philosophical Reporter, Holly J. McDede, has to say. We sent her to explore the upsides and the downsides of envy. She files this report.

Holly McDede
In some Christian teachings envy is concerned one of the deadly sins to overcome. If you want a beginner’s guide, grab some popcorn turn off the light and put on a History Channel documentary called “Seven Deadly Sins.”

Seven Deadly Sins
Envy spreads her poison throughout her victim’s blood, bones, and brain.

Holly McDede
As the film explains, envy is different than jealousy. Envy is wanting something you don’t have that someone else does.

Speaker 4
The gods of Olympus despise envy. And today, envy is the one deadly sin that even sinners don’t like to mention.

Holly McDede
On the other hand, if you’re in a competitive aspirational mood, there are tons of self help books and guides using envy as a tool for motivation.

Speaker 1
If you see something that you want to emulate, it is time to activate. You need to initiate and generate so that you can accelerate that what you want to accumulate.

Holly McDede
Leah Finnegan doesn’t buy it. Finnigan is the executive editor of The Outline and writes newsletters. She lives in New York City, a city known for fierce competition.

Leah Finnegan
You’re constantly comparing yourself to others and others are very loud about their successes.

Holly McDede
She says unless you’re a competitive marathon runner or a competitive Scrabble player, those are unrealistic expectations.

Speaker 5
You know, basically, when you log on to any social media site, it’s like, look at my book deal. Look at my movie deal. Look at my beautiful husband, look at my little baby. And it’s like, okay, what do I have to offer the public for them to you know, crow over me.

Holly McDede
Finnegan remembers having dinner at a fairly famous journalists house when the envy kicked into high gear. The journalist had just ended a huge book deal.

Speaker 5
Around the time she got the deal, she found out she was pregnant and she was extolling the virtues of having everything. You know, you can do it all and you can do it all at once. She was basically kind of like provoking us to be envious of all her successes.

Holly McDede
So Finnigan left that dinner feeling envious of the journalist and bad about herself. Jerry Parrott, a psychology professor at Georgetown University studies that kind of envy, benign, mundane envy, the kind that creeps into everyday life.

Jerry Parrott
It’s so common, I think people don’t notice it.

Holly McDede
Parrot says there’s harmless envy that most of us feel and then forget about. Then there’s malicious envy. That turns dangerous when the envious person imagines an extreme unfairness.

Speaker 6
They don’t want to admit that the other person has successfully out competed them or has talent that the envious person lacks or anything like that. So there’s this tendency to construe the situation as being unjust.

Holly McDede
This at its worst can lead to the sort of envy we hear about in the news or on Lifetime TV. Like say a person envies their rich husband feels like he doesn’t deserve all that wealth because he’s a moron and kills him.

Speaker 6
You can justify all kinds of nastiness on the grounds that you’re eating the cause of justice,

Holly McDede
Parrott’s, advice for the envious among us is similar to the self help videos on the subject. He says use the envy as a reason to improve, maybe even prefer the person you’re envious of. Or take a step back and remember what you have to offer—unless there truly is some kind of unfairness. Parrot says that’s probably not envy. It’s more like righteous indignation, which isn’t even a deadly sin.

LeahFinnegan, though, finds comfort in another theory. While researching envy she discovered psychoanalyst Melanie Klein. It’s kind of complicated, but basically Klein says that babies become envious of breasts because they contain so much milk they can’t have.

Speaker 5
I felt like it was kind of an abdication of feeling bad about envy because you don’t have control over your envy because it’s something that you know, maybe your mom fucked up for you.

Holly McDede
If you look at it like that, envy is something instilled in us before we even have control over it. So maybe we should just feel okay and normal about feeling it. And besides, like some philosophers say, when resentment is justified, then it’s just righteous indignation. For Philosophy Talk, I’m Holly J. McDede.

Ken Taylor
Thanks, Holly for that fascinating and humorous and enlightening tour of the upsides and the downsides of envy. I’m Ken Taylor, with me as my Stanford colleague Josh Landy and today, we’re thinking about envy: is it a vise or a virtue?

Josh Landy
We’re joined now by Sara Potasi, professor of philosophy at the University of Puget Sound, and author of “Varieties of Envy.” Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Sara.

Sara Potasi
Hi, thank you so much for inviting me.

Ken Taylor
So Sara, philosophers have written a bit about this topic, but how did you first get interested in it? Were you like wracked with envy as a kid, were you like the object of other people’s incessant envy? What got you started?

Sara Potasi
Well, of course it was the latter. See, this is why I don’t like the question about why do you study envy. No, to be honest, I think I was on both sides of the equation as most of us I think are. So when I when I was growing up, I used to dance a lot. I wanted to be a ballerina. And so I spent a lot of time at my dance school, which was a pretty serious pre professional training kind of school. And I think those kinds of schools dance academies are the perfect breeding ground envy.

Josh Landy
Flex one.

Sara Potasi
Yeah, like Black Swan—well, hopefully not not quite as brutal. I’ve had some unpleasant encounters with you know, things like pins in my pointe shoes.

Josh Landy
Someone put a pin in your pointe shoe?

Speaker 7
Yes, someone did. During rehearsal. So so? Yeah, I mean, I think in general, you see, because, you know, the competition is not only fierce and encouraged by by dance teachers, or at least he used to be, but there is not as much of a team spirit as in other physical pursuits. And you just see it, right. It’s, it’s, you know, in school, sometimes you don’t know who gets the A’s or I mean, you can suspect but you can see other people grades. But in dance, hey, who’s the you know, who’s the soloist who’s doing 32 foot is on point. You just see it, it’s kind of out there and brutal.

Josh Landy
Yeah, exactly. So I mean, that sounds like maybe you have a negative picture. But when you brings us back to the conversation, Ken and I were having a moment ago, trying to figure out whether envy is a vice or virtue. You know, he was making some claims that it’s bad for me. It’s bad for the people. It’s bad for the planet. I was trying to push back a little bit. What’s your view on this?

Speaker 7
Well, I have to say the diplomatic but also true answers that I think you’re both right. Excellent. And then we can all go home, right.

Ken Taylor
Sounds like you have different conceptions of envy working or something.

Speaker 7
Yeah. So I think there are four kinds of MB actually not just benign and malicious. Like they were parrot was was mentioning in the in the philosophical report earlier, I think there are four kinds of envy. I call them emulated envy, inert, envy, aggressives envy and spiteful envy.

Josh Landy
So some of them are good, and some are bad.

Speaker 7
Exactly. And some of them are just good for you and other some other you know, MB is only is perhaps not bad for others, but it’s pretty bad for you. And spiteful and aggressive are pretty bad.

Ken Taylor
Anything modified by spiteful or aggressive sounds. Yeah. It sounds like what? Like, I don’t know you’re envious. But you don’t do anything about it. Just sulking according and emulated envy sounds like I’m going to I’m going to emulate the person I envy. Is that the idea? Yeah, that’s exactly the idea. So tell me a little bit about this emulated envy because that’s one surprising to me.

Speaker 7
Yeah, so um, so imagine that I’m in this, you know, this ballerina looking at someone else who’s, you know, performing on stage. And she’s just, you know, she’s a bit better than me, and that’s why I envy her. But I feel I’m hopeful that I can improve my situation, right? So I look at her I look at how she’s turning. I look at what she’s doing. And my envy. It’s this painful persistence, you know, feeling of perceived inferiority. But I’m hopeful I think I can get to where she is I can become like her. And so I’m not motivated to pull her down so to speak, right to level down to bring her down to my level, but I’m motivated to push myself up to where she is. So this unpleasant feeling actually, like many negative and many unpleasant emotions, we know that they make us do things. Okay, let me meaning in a very powerful way.

Ken Taylor
Okay, I’ve got the concept. I’m not completely convinced. But we’ve got a long time and we but now we’re gonna take a break and then I’ll get you to try and convince us more. Josh is probably already convinced you’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re thinking about envy with Sara Potosi from the University of Puget Sound.

Josh Landy
Have you ever felt envious towards anybody? Did that get you to raise your game or did it just make you miserable? And did you ever manage to get over it?

Ken Taylor
Emulation, admiration, and transformation—plus your calls and emails, when Philosophy Talk continues.

Natalie Merchant
Is she the sort you’ve always thought could make you what you’re not? Ooh, jealousy.

Ken Taylor
can make you? Is it a good thing or a bad thing to want to make yourself what someone else already is? I’m Ken Taylor. This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Josh Landy
…except yourintelligence. I’m Josh Landy and we’re asking whether envy is a vice or virtue. Our guest is Sarah Potosi from the University of Puget Sound.

Ken Taylor
So Sara, you were extolling the virtues—well, you started explaining this good form of envy. I want to ask you a somewhat skeptical question, though, about that. Why isn’t that just admiration or something like that? i There are lots of people I admire and, and sometimes I try to emulate the people I admire. Why is it envy rather than…

Speaker 7
That is a great question. And the answer is actually a bit complicated, but I’ll do my best to simplify it. So one thing is that envy always involves some kind of similarity. So for instance, it would be really hard for me to be envious of you can because you are a prominent Stanford philosopher. You are, you know, you’re, you know, you’re you’re much more, you know, experts, you know, it’s true. I’m not just like flattering you like? Yes, of course, I’m also doing No, but you know, No, but seriously, like, when there is a envy does not arise when there is when there is a big distance between between ourselves. So envy and emigration tend to arise in different conditions. And we can, we don’t have a choice, we don’t have a lot of choice about what emotions we feel right to circumstances, affect what emotion arises. And so sometimes admiration might not be available to me, because the because the person that is better than me, it just a little bit, a little bit better. It’s just, it’s just not much better than me. And so the sort of appropriate response is to feel envy. And also, admiration tend to arise when it’s also in other differences, that envy tends to arise when we are lacking things that we really care about. So for instance, I can admire Martin Luther King, or I can admire Michelle Obama. But I don’t want to become like them. Right? Because that’s not what I do. I’m not a politician. I’m not an activist. I’m not a you know, a thinker who changes the world. Not yet. And so they arise in different circumstances.

Josh Landy
But what abou, I mean, I, it doesn’t make sense to say I envy rockstars oh, gosh, I wish I could be, you know, good.

Speaker 7
People can speak in more or less loosely, ways. And of course, we can proceed. It’s a matter of salience. Sometimes we feel we’re closer to people that we’re not, in fact, close at all right? We overestimate us and we think or sometimes we compare ourselves to rock stars with regard to things that you know, like quite as human beings, right. So, so that is possible, but in some cases that envy is inappropriate,

Josh Landy
I see. So you might say I envy I envy Michelle Obama, in the sense that I wish I could make a big difference in the world. But no one could become a successful politician.

Speaker 7
Right, Sometimes you say, you say I envy her, but what you mean is really like a wish X or, or sometimes we might want to actually say things like, you know, I admire her, but I mean, so the way we speak is not necessarily a good indication of what we’re actually doing something else. But yeah.

Ken Taylor
You want to finish up your thought.

Speaker 7
Well, I just wanted to say one. Another difference between an emulated vendor and admiration is that it seems that actually and this is goes goes at the heart of your question Can is that empirical evidence seems to show that emulated MB actually spurs to spurs the agent to self improve in the short term, where admiration cannot do that. So they actually seem to serve different purposes. So if I really envy the other ballerina who’s a bit better than me, I’m going to show up to class tomorrow, right? And, and you know, and shed, you know, sweat and blood and do all the things I can do. Whereas, I admiration, I would just look at her and say, Oh, she’s so good. I’ll never be as well.

Ken Taylor
Well, well, let’s try this. Let’s try it. I mean, I see your point and I and I take your point, but I’m not quite sure what it adds up to. Totally because here’s the thought I mean, there are there’s the other regarding part of lots of our attitudes I admire so until I envy I’m envious of so and so. And then there’s the self regarding part of my of their self regarding attitudes. You know, I might take my dad was a great dad. And I might think of myself I’m such a lousy dad. I admire the dad that my dad was and I think to myself I wish I could be the dad that by I regret not being the dad that my I don’t regret my dad being a great dad. I admire my dad for his being such a great dad but I regret my own. Right that’s a self regarding part. Yeah, that self regarding part. So are you just it I might hear you to be saying, well, envy is a two part what you’re calling me. relative and envy is a two part attitude. There’s other regarding part where I look up to the person that person’s virtue displays to me my lack of virtue, and then I regret. That’s the self regarding part my own lack of virtue, and I tried to do something about it. That wouldn’t be the envy per i don’t know if that would be the envy per se motivating me, or my regret of my own lack of virtue motivating me, or is that just another way of saying the same thing?

Speaker 7
Yeah, I wouldn’t. I mean, this is an interesting thought, I’ve never thought about this, this kind of situation involving any kind of regret, because especially with emulator, if I feel emulated envy, that means I perceive myself as capable of improving so there is actually not that I think they regret you’re talking about. So it’s more like when you feel inert envy, and you feel in you think like, there was something about regret that is past it, that is looking toward the past, well, but I make regret, whereas emulated envy has a lot of hope.

Ken Taylor
But if I regret that I haven’t worked as hard that I don’t have the natural talent, I might just say, let me get myself in the hands of a good coach. Let me get myself I mean regret of my, of what I’ve done till now. Right can surely orient me toward the future. I mean, there’s some kind of negative, there’s a negative, there’s a self regarding attitude. And all I’m trying to say is there’s a self regarding attitude. That’s negative in character, but Right. Maybe that’s part of envious I mean, because maybe, is, is partly other regarding partly self regard.

Speaker 7
Yeah. So So I think one thing you might be getting at is what I think so you know, in MBA there is it’s a three part relation, right? So you have the NVR, the agent, the person who’s doing better than you in some 100 in some way, or at least that’s what you think. And then the object, the thing that you lack, right, so these three elements are always there in all kinds of envy, in emulated envy, and in in ERT MB, I really care about what I don’t have. And so I don’t care about bringing the other person down. But in one case in emulated MB, I think I can get it, I’m hopeful and confident that I can get to where the person is. And so I work hard to get there. In in eart MB, it’s this kind of self defeating unproductive emotion in which I feel like, I’m feeling hopeless that I can go there. But still, it’s not a fully malicious emotion. So I think it’s only potentially bad. So it makes you feel bad, but it doesn’t harm other people, but in the other to it. So this these three parts relation is important because in spiteful and aggressive envy, what happens is that you really don’t like that the other guy has what you don’t have, right, and that really have it for him.

Josh Landy
I think that’s a really, this is a really important distinction. Because you could imagine a case where you know, someone’s a little bit of a better dancer than you. And you think to yourself, I would like to be a better dancer. And that’s the end of the story. And then that’s, that’s, that’s healthy, and you maybe you practice harder, and you become a better dancer. And that’s so if your focus is just on the object on the thing, you want to do want to become a better person, maybe everything’s okay. But if your focus is too much on that person, and what you care about is just this relation that you have, I want to I want to be seen as better than that person. Right? That’s when the disaster comes in. Does that sound right?

Speaker 7
Pins in your shoes, right? That’s it, you know, because like the paints in your in the other person’s shoes are not going to make you a better they’re just gonna make the other person trip and fall. But of course, you might get something right. So imagine that in one case, you are the understudy. So if the other person gets hurt, then you get to dance in her place. And even if you haven’t become a better dancer, you still get to show you know, show off and be you know, I’m the tall. But sometimes maybe you’re not the understudy. And so maybe you know, the show gets canceled because the other person is injured. And then this is those cases where MV spoils the good Kovetz nobody gets the good. And that’s spiteful envy.

Ken Taylor
I don’t want to get into verbal what verbal disputes and semantics I think it’s important to recognize that there is an other part, there’s an other regarding attitude that has to do with the estimation of the other person’s virtue or vice. And then there’s a self regarding attitude that has to do with your estimation of your own virtue advice in comparison to that, and what motivates and which doesn’t. I don’t think that’s very clear. I’m not sure it’s helped or the wind denied TOEFL, but I’m not sure it’s helpful to collapse them all under envy. I’m just not sure about that. But you know what, we got a lineup of callers in the let’s turn to them and see what they think. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. We’re talking about envy with Sara Pratesi from University of Puget Sound, and we’d love to have your comments or question and we have Marie-Louis from Palo Alto. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Marie-Louis.

Marie-Louis
Thank you very much. Thank you. I want to say that I just think that this to speak of envy, in places where I really think it’s admiration many times. And I think most of us have admired somebody who may be better at something than we are. But I don’t really think that that is envy. So I wanted to say that and I think that envy is really bad for the envier. I think that the dancer who wishes to become a better dancer, she or he can be that without envy for those who are better, if we call it that. performers. So I don’t think envy has to be there. I think if I look at a beautiful painting, for example, I don’t, I don’t immediately think like, oh, I envy that painter, just because they make to make such a beautiful painting. So I also think, let’s say, rich people, let’s say I, I would like to have more money, I don’t have a heck of a lot of it. So I would kind of like to have more, but I don’t any envy the billionaires and millionaires.

Ken Taylor
Okay, so, Marie-Louis, that’s a great comment. Sara has a lot to say about that. So Sara, can now I want you to try and convince Marie-Louis, that she ought to be a little more envious in the right way.

Speaker 7
Well, you know, I don’t want I don’t know what else they have. So I’m open to the fact that Maria Louis might be one of the few people who don’t feel I’m and I mean, it right, we were all different. Some people are more prone to envy than others. And maybe Mary Louis doesn’t feel any envy, and she can function really well that way that that’s possible. But for most people, I mean, we have a lot of empirical evidence on this. And one thing I wanted to say is that the empirical evidence is also on speakers of languages other than English. And I think it’s really interesting to look how these things are obviously very culturally, local. So in cultures and linguistic communities where people have two words for MB, one for positive me, and one for narrative MB, people are a lot more willing, of course to make their MB insofar as it’s positive MB. And so I think, you know, maybe Marilee thought about what she uses, you know, jealousy, or maybe she uses admiration. And again, if we were to compare how she uses admiration, and when we would find out that actually, maybe what she’s referring to is the emotion that in the literature is called, and the so there is a lot of, because there is a lot of stigma around envy, it’s also really hard to admit it to oneself. And again, I don’t want to imply that. That makes you know, but it’s just really, which is one reason why it’s also actually also hard to to study, of course, and people you know.

Josh Landy
But I take your point, Sara, I mean, you know, I often think about the friendship between the two characters in My Brilliant Friend that that novel by Elena Ferrante such a lovely, not only you have, you know, one of the characters envying her friend for being, at least apparently smarter than her she, and she works super hard. And, and that seems to be one of those good cases that you’re talking about where the the Envy acts as a motivating force, and spurs this kind of healthy rivalry and, you know, they don’t want to spoil that. I haven’t read through all of the novels, he doesn’t seem that doesn’t seem at least intrinsically to destroy the, the friendship. So So that seems to bolster your thought. But I’m intrigued by your point, your claim that it’s culturally specific different languages have different returns, is how much does it vary? I mean, are your comments universal? Are they just local to let’s say, you know, Italian speaking countries English speaking countries?

Speaker 7
That’s a great question. So I I think that my taxonomy, I feel comfortable defending my taxonomy with regard to the countries where the most psychological studies on envy are run, which is industrialized, rich, democratic society, basically Western let’s let’s just call them you know, Western America and their their rich societies.

Josh Landy
There’s a fair overlap between the study the results of the studies.

Speaker 7
Yeah, there’s a lot of overlap. And there, there have been a lot of studies done over on English, Dutch. What are the two speakers? I think you’re telling us here so So I think there is enough enough evidence to support what will my taxonomy of course, however, that doesn’t mean that speakers themselves reckon, you know, again, like the a common thing to do is for English speakers to use jealousy to refer to what actually think is some kind of I believe envy. So of course it’s tricky.

Ken Taylor
Yeah. Let’s let another caller in here. Linda from Sausalito is on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk. What’s your comment your question?

Linda
Oh, my comment is every Christmas I get a Christmas letter from old college friend, I don’t see her during the year. But I get envious because they throughout the Christmas letter they’re talking about their well to do. All the places they visited all the gifts, say given each other, all the things they spent their money on. And I always have a difficult time writing anything back to them. So I pretty much ignore it. And I don’t take envy is a virtue. And what I tried were after hours of thinking about this Christmas letters, just try to be happy person.

Ken Taylor
Thanks for that comment, Linda. So I’m gonna put a really quick question to you. So look, people who try to make us envy them are they ever trying to make us have that good envy? Each one of those evil kind of tried to make us happy.

Speaker 7
I think sometimes we brag too much and we wonder what are you know wittingly or not whether we realize it or not, we do we do trigger bad kinds of envy. And so I think that’s that’s not good. Okay. I don’t think we should ever you know, I think I think we should share our the bad aspects in our life as well.

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk we thinking about envy with Sarah Protasi from the University of Puget Sound.

Josh Landy
What can we do to make sure we’re not torn apart by desire for things we’ll never have? How can we cultivate the good kind of envy and avoid the bad kind?

Ken Taylor
Nice advice about virtue and vice—when Philosophy Talk it continues.

The Jam
I wish I could be like David Watts.

Ken Taylor
Do you wish that you were more like David Watts, or maybe someone else that you envy? I’m Ken Taylor, and this is Philosophy Talk, the program that envies no one but questions everything…

Josh Landy
…exceptyour intelligence. I’m Josh Landy. And our guest is Sara Protasi from the University of Puget Sound. Today we’re thinking about envy is a device or a virtue.

Ken Taylor
We’ve got another caller on the line. Amy from Berkeley. Welcome to Philosophy Talk. Amy, what’s your comment or question?

Amy
Okay, thank you. And I’m glad that my call is coming in after the talk about linguistics. And after my release, called a few years ago, I was working with a writing Coach Eric Cholesky, who also teaches leadership communication. And she introduced us to a word that was new for us, which was benvy, which was a combination of benevolence and envy. And I also thought, so it’s interested in Sarah’s if you’ve heard this word before, and also its relationship to emulated envy.

Ken Taylor
Oh, good question, Sara. Have you heard of benvy?

Speaker 7
No, I haven’t. But it sounds like it might be a good a good thing. Well, of course, I prefer if people use emulative envy.

Josh Landy
Trademark.

Ken Taylor
Are you still there, Amy? Amy’s gone, I was gonna ask her to define benvy for us.

Speaker 7
Yeah. Because in order to know whether it’s the same thing or not, I mean, you know, benign envy is something that is generally talked in social psychology. But but there are some technical differences.

Ken Taylor
Yes, she called it but nevertheless, right? I’m not quite sure what benevolent. Benevolent envy is it? I suppose it’s this, I’m guessing. But you know, the Bible says, Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife or anything that is he is or something like that. Right. Envy sometimes seems like a covetous kind of advice. Perhaps benevolent envy is when you is one of the kinds of things you don’t know when you envy another, but you don’t covet what that other has you don’t begrudge them.

Josh Landy
I think it’s going further than that can because what it seems to me, what we’ve talked about so far, is, you know, the best case scenario is a case where you don’t bring the other person down, and you do bring yourself up. But what if Benvie is actually going further than that? And saying, there’s a kind of envy where you actually help the other person. I don’t know what that would look like. But that’s really an interesting challenge. What would the kind of envy look like? Where you where motivates you both to improve yourself and to reach out and help the other person?

Speaker 7
Well, it’s not clear to me that that would still be envy, because it’s or at least it seems that the other is just doing just fine. Right. So I don’t know. I don’t know. So there’s some additional worlds.

Ken Taylor
I think what we’re getting from various callers and from our own conversation, is that there’s lots of stuff going on in this domain. I do think there are lots of other regarding attitudes that we have to others that are combined with a kind of reflection on that so i i noticed the virtue of the other and I resent the virtue of the other like, Look, I’m a schmuck, I’m a low level whatever, right? I don’t pay My taxes I don’t work out, I don’t do that. And all these other people who are more virtuous than I noticed they’re more virtuous than me. And they remind me of how yucky I am. And I don’t want to live up to that. I don’t want to admit that, right. So I would like to bring them down so that they’re not there was constant nagging reminders, but but they may remind me of how bad or badly off I am with respect to virtue, and they may remind me that I could do more to be like them. And let me get off my duff and do do more stuff. Or, you know, I might regret my own. So it seems like a complex complex welter of attitudes that we have.

Speaker 7
I mean, it is very complex. And and remember, can the idea that it depends on the focus of concern, right. So if I’m mostly concerned about what the other person is doing, then yes, I will be prone to the kind of more negative attitudes and and just trying to bring them down. But if I’m more focused on the good that I lack, right, the other person is just a reminder that I don’t have it, right. But it’s, that’s why it motivates me to go up. Because what I really want is to be that, you know, the best ballerina not to get away from that person. So I think that it’s one thing that I think psychologists don’t talk about, and that’s why I think they are missing a fundamental element.

Ken Taylor
So let me ask you, I don’t know if it’s a psychological motivational question or a normative question or what, but it’s a question. Okay, there’s this welter of ways to be with respect to both the other regarding estimation of somebody good and bad, and my own self? How do I cultivate a more healthy way of comparing myself to others and using it as a motivation rather than a destructive way of comparing myself to whether or not you call it good? Or bad? How do I go about doing this?

Speaker 7
So and I think both, I want to sort of give some kind of advice that goes in both ways. So also how to not make our other people envy you, right? Because the second Kohler, I think, talked about something really important. So we’re constantly both envying other people, but also being envied by others. So we have to be mindful of both directions. So one thing is that, you know, there is this talk of growth mindset, and focusing on effort. And I think that’s healthy for a variety of reasons, because it helps you actually achieve your goals. But it helps with envy, right? So one thing to do is to just don’t think that people are good, because, you know, well, maybe God did bless them. But it’s not just that, right? It’s or they were born that way. It’s a lot of times it’s a matter of effort of the things you do. So when you emulate tively envy someone, you can sort of also look at them and see how they did it. And the person who’s doing well, so the writer who send me a letter about their successes, or who’s you know, I’m gonna brag on Facebook about being in Philosophy Talk. But but at the same time, I also try to talk to share on Facebook, my, you know, failures and my insecurities and the things that don’t go well and my efforts and how my efforts sometimes failed, right?

Josh Landy
So your Christmas letter can have a bit of both, right?

Speaker 7
Yes, yes. And I think that’s actually really important. And the second thing is to reassess your values and priorities. And some something came up earlier in the philosophical report, right? Or you guys were talking about consumerism, sometimes we envy people for really bad reasons, or really not very valuable goals, or objects. And a lot of those are actually not shareable. They’re exclusive. Or they involve a lot of work, and they not make you happy. And so there was a lot of unhappy or like, you know, they, they’re environmentally bad, and all of that. So I think, you know, when I say that emulated MB can be a virtue, I don’t mean to say that you have to emulate it and be everybody on every right.

Ken Taylor
Really quick question. Yeah. I mean, sometimes envy goes with the thought that they’re, as opposed to say, admiration, that their success or their possession of the good or somehow is somehow undeserved. Right? And not not necessarily, but if I thought, well, you know, this person got this job through blah, blah, blah. i And that’s, it’s that’s not really a deserved way of getting the job that’s more likely to make me at least resentful of their success. I don’t know. Yeah, that resent is necessarily equivalent to envy, but if I think they deserve it, I think well, you know, good for them. I don’t think bad for me if they deserve it, I think good for them. If they deserve it.

Josh Landy
It’s hard for that to to morph into admiration.

Speaker 7
Yeah, no, I agree. So I think resentment and envy are two distinct emotions and it’s important to keep them apart. But that doesn’t mean that of course they don’t co occur or that one that envy mask itself as resentment. But definitely when when resentment is present or when there is an injustice involved, emulated envy cannot arise because you will focus on the person who got the thing that they got in an undeserved way and you you’ll feel, you know, it’ll be hostile toward them. So you will tend to focus more on them right and so you will be inclined to bring them down. So emulated envy. I don’t think is compatible with resentment, whereas resentment I think is compatible with, you know, spiteful.

Ken Taylor
We’ve got time for one last caller—Rachel from San Francisco is on the line. You’ll be our final caller, Rachel. So what’s your comment or question?

Rachel
Hi gang. I’m a psychotherapist and I’ve got the worst case of envy.

Josh Landy
Lie down on the couch and tell us all about it.

Rachel
Okay, okay. So and the only thing that’s helped us humor, comedians are constantly talking about envy. I also want to mention that I’m Jewish. And when I talk with my Wasp friends, I try to have as few of them as possible without almost like, I talked about pooping. Yeah, which they don’t do. Right. So So envy has been with me forever. I’m a master at it. I get it. I’m great with clients who experienced it. And I have so many wonderful clients who don’t I’m still trying to understand why would anyone not have envy? It should be wiring all of our cultural stuff in there too?

Ken Taylor
Rachel, I love the call. I wish we had like more time to talk about it. Thank you so much for that for that. So not many people would admit all that stuff that you just did, did it. But thanks, Rachel, what do you think, Sara?

Speaker 7
Well, I think some of our clients just don’t talk about it. But the evidence is pretty clear. Most people feel envy. But I think again, when when I think the humor, the humor idea is great. I mean, I think we should destigmatize envy. And I think that’s why I want to give a unitary account, even though Ken is not convinced, because I think if we talk about the, you know, what I think is emulated envy. And I believe, you know, there are theoretical reasons why it’s envy. But I think it’s also practically good, right is if we teach children that envy, like all negative emotions, like grief, right? There are emotions that are really painful, that you really don’t want to feel but they have a place in your emotional life, and they have a place in our society. And it’s important to accept it and and to do the best with it, you know, to, to sort of accept it as a as a part of life and try to feel the good kind as opposed to the bad.

Josh Landy
And in terms of terms of doing the best with it and feeling good, good kind. What about the idea of adopting a growth mindset, the idea that, you know, you’re not just Starkey, you could change you can get better. What do you think about that?

Speaker 7
Right, right. Yeah. So that’s what I was alluding to earlier, when Yeah, when I said that, once we think of ourselves as capable of achieving a lot more things than then we thought that if we put effort and work, we can achieve many things, although not everything. You don’t want to be delusional, then I think you will, you will come to feel I mean, so here, here’s my suggestion, try to think of the thing that you lack of the envied good as achievable. If that’s not possible. If that’s really not possible, then you should reassess your priorities. And it might be you know, it’s a matter of more luck, sometimes we might be stuck, we might find ourselves feeling the bad kinds of envy in the same way as sometimes we’re stuck in many other moral, you know, quandaries and dilemmas. And that’s unfortunate. So even even the you know, the best person might find herself feeling spiteful and aggressive and be sometimes what matters is that we’re capable of moving on and maybe making amends if necessary.

Ken Taylor
So Sara, on that, on that note of wisdom, I’m going to thank you for joining us. I think this has been a conversation worth envying.

Speaker 7
Thank you so much. I’m very happy I could come like me here. Thank you.

Ken Taylor
Our guest has been Sara Protasi, she’s a professor of philosophy at the University of Puget Sound. She’s author of “Varieties of Envy.” So Josh, what do you think now? You probably still believe what you started.

Josh Landy
No, I think it’s so much more complicated. And yeah, really fascinating than I thought. I guess what I’m thinking right now is, don’t envy people’s possessions. And don’t don’t envy the people and the qualities and we their moral goodness, try to become a better person. Don’t focus on your social status, focus on the state of your soul. So to become a better artist, become a better philosopher become a better human being.

Ken Taylor
I think the point is to cultivate your own virtue, right? That’s the point. I don’t know that envy, envy could be motivating, but aberration to also cultivate a path of wisdom cultivate one’s own virtue. This conversation continues at philosophers corner at our online community of thinkers, where our motto with apologies to Descartes is Cogito ergo Blogo, I think, therefore I blog. You can also you you can also become a partner in that community by visiting our website, philosophytalk.org.

Josh Landy
And if you have a question that wasn’t addressed in today’s show, we’d still love to hear from you. Send us your comment or question at philosophytalk.org and we may feature it on our blog. Now, it’s the envy of curmudgeons everywhere: Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales… There are two different kinds of envies. One where you admire somebody, and work to be like that person to echo their achievement and/or worldly possessions. The other envy is you hate somebody for what they have,so you want to destroy that person, or the stuff they have, so NOBODY can have it, and we won’t go through that pain any more. Bad envy turned us into psychos and drama queens. But that’s all fading. We no longer burn books if we don’t know how to read. We just stop funding schools. Mmm. Smells like victory. So what happened to envy? Well, look at influencers. These are people, generally fashion bloggers, or Kardashians, famous for being on social media, who get paid by designer sunglass makers, say, to take selfies of themselves in Milan or a fabulous party or whatever, wearing the sunglasses, and then posting the pics on Instagram. I mean, how do you envy somebody who does that? You can do it yourself. Just start a fashion blog, get on social media every waking hour, and sooner or later, you too will be paid to wear Italian shoes to a disco. It might help to be the spoiled offspring of a rich person, but poverty is no impediment. Only shame or crippling self doubt. On the Internet, we are all entitled. All privileged. So there’s that culture. Then there’s the right versus left. Both are against elitism, but not out of envy. Out of weird ethical outbursts. From the right against liberals with money, who is George Soros, or against school teachers, because they’re making too much money, and won’t pray or use firearms in the classroom. From the left, because they’re against neo colonial hate mongers with too much money or the perceived deplorables in the double wide and Maga cap. But none of this involves envy. We don’t want to be George Soros, or the Koch Brothers, we just want a focus for free floating disapproval. Self satisfaction is its own reward. Take Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the young progressive congressperson that conservatives love to hate, and liberals hate to love. She got a nickname right out of the gate, AOC, so we can shorthand our way to notifications of her perky antics. It’s weird! Liberals live in fear that she’ll go too far in a tweet and the next thing you know NOBODY will have health care. And conservatives fear her, but weirdly. She is of Puerto Rican ancestry, and they keep trying to accuse her of not being authentic. Her name is Alexandria, for example, but conservatives tweeted that she was called “Sandy” in college, which is what only blonde college girls call themselves, apparently, and she’s not blonde. See! Hypocrite. They found a picture of her dancing in college and everybody knows socialists don’t dance. See? Hypocrite! They tried to prove that she didn’t really have it that bad growing up, even though she never said she did, therefore…. Hypocrite? Except she keeps on being adorable, fanning the fears of conservatives that she’ll make millionaires pay more money than poor people. And the fears of liberals that she’ll go too far in her exuberance and Lindsey Graham and Mitch and Trump might cluck their tongues at Democrats for not keeping her under control, and then where we would we be? Where is envy in all that? And finally there’s Marie Kondo, the tiny font of the KonMari tidying craze. It seems to be a cult movement organized around housecleaning. There are even certified consultants that will come to your house and help you declutter. Yearbooks, Hummel figures, stuffed animals, Christmas decorations, honeymoon souvenirs. You should just get rid of it. All the stuff that once caused envy from others- your baseball cards, your vintage guitar, your books and records. Do they still bring you joy? Stuff shaming has become a thing. Keep only your phone, so you can snark at others anonymously. We can all agree that we should not have certain things, only disagree on what. Our social media outbursts are like the stares of a cat. “Why are you where I’m looking.” Worse, we are like feral cats, tweeting out nasty comments from the basement of the abandoned house next door. “Are you feeding me? No? Then go away.” I believe we are working on a new mutant in the field of toxic social emotions, it’s kind of like envy, but not. If envy, fear, disgust, and desire had a baby, and then put the baby up for adoption, and then took the adopted parents to court for child endangerment. Well, that’s pretty much America today. I gotta go.

Ken Taylor
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of KALW local public radio San Francisco and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2019.

Josh Landy
Our executive producers are David Demarest and Tina Pamintuan.

Ken Taylor
The Senior Producer is Devon Srolovitch. Laura Maguire is our Director of Research. Cindy. Prince Baum is our Director of Marketing.

Josh Landy
Thanks also to Merle Kessler, Angela Johnston and Lauren Schecter.

Ken Taylor
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from Stanford University and from the partners at our online community of thinkers.

Josh Landy
The views expressed (or mis-expressed) on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our other funders.

Ken Taylor
Not even when they’re true and reasonable.

Josh Landy
The conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org,where you too can become a partner in our community of thinkers. I’m Josh Landy.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening.

Josh Landy
And thank you for thinking.

This Is Spinal Tap
People should be envying us, you know. I envy us. Yeah, I do. Me too.