Greed, Envy, Jealousy

While traveling through Sacramento and staying in a hotel, I wasn't sleeping well, so in the wee hours of the morning I tuned in BBC 4 radio. The program "More or Less" was exploring the concepts of the greed, envy and jealousy. The program focused on a social experiment conducted with some African tribe, in which the participants were paid to do some task. One of the wrinkles in their experiment was that some people were paid more for their work than others.

The most interesting aspect of the study was that when the workers were offered the deal to be paid less in exchange for the having the other workers paid even less, 10% of the workers accepted that deal. In other words, 10% of the workers derived satisfaction in simply knowing that they earned more than the next guy even though it was less than they were paid previously. Lest you think that the tribes people held an unsophisticated concept of money and remuneration, a similar experiment was conducted at Oxford, and there 15% of the participants agreed to earn less as long as their fellow workers earned even less.

Deep down there is something in the human psyche that makes us believe when another person loses - we somehow win. Where that comes from - I don't know, but I've seen many examples throughout my life.

Indy! Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Deep down there is something in the human psyche
> that makes us believe when another person loses -
> we somehow win. Where that comes from - I don't
> know, but I've seen many examples throughout my
> life.

Very true. Even people who call themselves our friends and family sometimes react this way.

Maddie

This is why Income Inequality is good!

The 7 deadly sins (pride, envy, greed, gluttony, lust, anger, & violence) are just an extreme want for all our
necessary things in life. We need food, companionship, and money in our societies. Procreation is needed
for the species.

All people are going to have desire for things be they natural or invented. So this explain the root or envy.
Even the Dali Lama said you have to have some desire (I'll put that in a later life lesson post).

Anger & other emotion are needed to guide & protect us. Thus violence is the only true sin above.
They can be overcome with virtues.