Bitter is the Eye of the Beholder

The four stages of spiritual cancer

I loved The Berenstain Bears as a kid. They had a book about every scenario that could afflict a nuclear family of bears, but I remember one book most of all: The Green-Eyed Monster. When Brother Bear got a shiny new bicycle for his birthday, Sister Bear was filled with longing. Not only did she desire what she did not have, but if she couldn’t have it, neither should Brother Bear. That feeling transformed Sister Bear into a Grinch-like creature with green fur and evil eyes.

“The Green-Eyed Monster” by Stan & Jan Berenstain (1995)

The green-eyed monster scared me because I imagined it lurking in my closet or beneath my bed. But that childhood fear was misplaced. The true terror of the green-eyed monster was not some clawed creature but corruption from within.

Like a cancer, envy mutates our souls in four stages of increasing destruction.

Stage I: Desire

“O, beware, my lord, of jealousy;
It is the green-eyed monster which doth mock
The meat it feeds on.”

- William Shakespeare, Othello

The Bard coined the term “green-eyed monster” to describe the fatal flaw of Iago, whose desire for power unraveled him. Humans cannot escape desire. We may gaze upon another’s body on TikTok and want their abs, hair, or lips. We see an impressive house on Instagram and want it for our own. These desires are not limited to the material. We yearn for the quick wit of a podcast host or the quiet confidence of an actor. We crave intellect—an author’s attention to detail or a YouTuber’s creative energy. It’s not wrong to desire, as wanting can fuel our ambition.

Like the sun, desire is a source of energy. However, as too much sun can burn our skin, too much exposure to desire can burn our souls. Social media is built upon the idea of influence—of exposing users to alluring products or ideas to fabricate desire. When ensnared in desire, users will pay to satiate it—whether with direct dollars or attention to ads.

Bertrand Russell, a British philosopher, argued that human envy was the fundamental fuel for an economic engine like the U.S. To “keep up with the Joneses,” society must want what each other has, while a political system like democracy ensures nobody can achieve more than anyone else. “Benign envy,” claims Russell, may trick a person to work harder to achieve more status.

A society founded on desire is nothing novel. When Romans built their impressive monuments, they often engraved pro invidia on the cornerstones, meaning “to be envied.” Rome believed that creating something worthy of envy is commendable. Pro invidia is such a powerful force that the semiconductor company powering the growth of AI not only sports a green-eyed logo but calls itself Nvidia.

Nvidia Corporation logo since 2006

Eyes are the windows to the soul, and a green eye is the symptom of a deeper problem.

Stage II: Resentment

“Envy is sorrow for another’s good.” - Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica

An influencer may peddle a “limited edition,” so we save money and work hard to attain it. Once achieved, we feel a sense of accomplishment and happiness, but that joy fades as soon as our eye wanders to the next shiny object. We seek to fill the hole in our lives, but the more we pour into it, the deeper the abyss becomes.

When we’re consistently advertised new things without appreciating what we have, desire can mutate. A scarcity mindset takes hold, and our paleolithic brains believe that if someone else has a good thing, we cannot have it. Siblings become rivals for parental affection, and colleagues become competitors for limited promotions. When desire advances to resentment, we do not celebrate the success of loved ones but hate them for threatening us. Our gaze grows green.

The Latin invidia is the root of envy—video is “to see or look,” so when prefixed with in- (“not”), invidia means “to look upon with disdain.” A person afflicted by stage two invidia looks upon others with “biting eyes,” a stare with fangs intent to curse the objects of their gaze. Greco-Romans believed in humorism, the idea that the body was controlled by “humors,” bodily fluids that shaped one’s demeanor. A person with excessive choleric bile could develop a greenish tint indicative of a bitter disposition. Green eyes distort our perception—instead of seeing others’ success as good or neutral, the envious misinterpret another’s fortune as a personal loss.

A society plagued by rampant consumerism allows resentment to fester. When directed at individuals, this resentment can escalate into hate toward groups, poisoning our politics and distorting our collective perspective.

Stage III: Schadenfreude

“The envious drink the poison they intend for the envied.”

When we succumb to hate, we start to justify it. We despise the person driving the car of our dreams and assume they are a liar, a cheat, or some entitled jerk. When resentment becomes justified, our minds spawn more evil thoughts. We may imagine the envied losing, experiencing pain, or suffering. But this imagined misfortune is not just a passing thought; it becomes a source of pleasure.

The Germans, of course, have a word for this: schadenfreude—joy at another’s sorrow. Schadenfreude warps our passions. We hear about the coastal elite losing everything in a fire and are tickled with righteousness. We learn about a smug, attractive person getting their face mauled by a leopard and experience utter joy. It’s a spiritual sickness, yet a commonplace feeling.

This flavor of schadenfreude is a new phenomenon. We used to covet our physical neighbors, seeing them daily and comparing ourselves. But now, anyone creating content on the Internet becomes our neighbor, so the surface area for envy expands exponentially. We do not just experience friendly neighborhood envy but schadenfreude on a global scale.

Invidia by Maarten de Vos et al. (1625)

The goddess Invidia was often depicted with a serpent coiled around her breast and biting her heart to signify her self-devouring bitterness. It’s the perfect illustration of stage three invidia. We’re like the goddess, wrapping serpents around our flesh to drip venom into our veins. Like cancer, envy mutates the goodness within us, leaving us incapable of genuine happiness.

At a societal scale, schadenfreude manifests in cancel culture and movements based on harming one’s enemies versus furthering one’s own agenda. When the Right votes to “own the libs” or the Left enacts policies intent on riling up conservatives, schadenfreude is at play. A society that is not interested in building becomes one intent on destroying its enemies, leaving everyone worse off.

Stage IV: Malice

"But by the envy of the devil, death entered the world, and they who are allied with him experience it." - Wisdom 2:24, New American Bible Revised Edition

Lucifer became so envious of God’s supremacy that he sought to dismantle creation by bringing sin and death into the world. The fallen angel desired divine rule and became resentful of God when he could not attain it. That resentment led him to find joy in humankind's suffering, and that warped passion led him to grow claws of malice to inflict more suffering.

Fallen Angel by Alexandre Cabanel (1847)

In his Summa Theologica, Thomas Aquinas defines two flavors of sin: venial and mortal. Venial exists in the mind—evil in thought but not in action. Desire, resentment, and schadenfreude are sins of the soul but remain venial, for they do not directly harm others. A mortal sin is when someone deliberately incites the suffering of others. When we succumb to malice, we sabotage those we envy. We commit slander against a colleague to undermine their efforts and spread rumors about friends to tarnish their reputations. Acts of malice are dangerous because they are one-way doors. Once committed, irreparable harm may occur or drive us to act outside the law.

A malicious society acts accordingly. Politicians pit racial groups against each other, create gender wars and class conflicts, and place the blame for societal collapse on older generations to drive children apart from their parents. Narratives like “Eat the Rich,” which speak to the growing wealth gap between the owning class and the rest of society, are based on envy. These narratives may be valid critiques of a broken financial system, but they are steeped in malice that can beget violence.

Envy paints a dismal situation for the individual and society—a world of monsters with green-eyed glares and malice-soaked claws. How might we fight this cancer?

A Cure

“My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet, what is an ocean but a multitude of drops?” – David Mitchell, Cloud Atlas

The Western virtue of charity, or caritas, is the canonical antidote to envy. However, the first three stages of invidia are an internal problem, and charity implies external action. We can commit acts of charity, but if our hearts still carry envy, a downstream cure will not resolve the root cause. Buddhism offers a more internal solution to this venial sin in the “Four Brahmavihārās,” a set of principles for healing spiritual maladies. One of these is muditā, joy in another’s joy. If we can develop muditā, we might drive envy into remission.

While elegant, developing muditā is easier said than done, especially in a society centered around envy. The path to a cure is somewhat circuitous. We might begin by freeing ourselves from the systems that exacerbate desire with digital minimalism. Quitting social media, installing ad blockers, and reducing online consumption can limit the surface area of influence. Once we minimize desire, we can reverse our resentments by challenging ourselves. In seeking to create something of our own, we may feel less compelled to tear down someone else.

A few years ago, I decided to run a marathon. Before this, I held some ill feelings toward runners—believing (falsely) that they considered themselves superior and looked upon non-runners with snobbery. But after six months of grueling training, I began to admire the people I once admonished. When race day came, and I joined the hundreds of people who elected to torture themselves, I learned what muditā can feel like. For every step of that 26.2 miles, strangers encouraged me. Dozens offered me Gatorade and Gu, cheered me on, and celebrated as I crossed the finish line. The joy I felt was amplified by the joy strangers felt in supporting me.

Envy may afflict our society, divide us, and incite hate for those in a different group. But society is comprised of individuals—we are each a drop in the endless ocean. We cannot change the world overnight, but we might expel the envy from our souls.