The Joy of Pain (24 page)

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,

Moves on: not all your Piety nor Wit

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,

Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it.
²⁷

Envy can imprison us in a paradox because we feel both a sense of injustice and a sense of shame. In Heider's words, “Envy is fraught with conflict, conflict over the fact that these feelings should not be entertained though at the same time one may have just cause for them.”
²⁸
Envy, by this logic, is a hostile feeling that seems justified and yet damnable. It comes with an aggressive urge having a subjectively righteous character, and yet, acting on this hostility in a way that reveals one's envy is a repugnant move. A private part of oneself wishes to assert one's rights, because, as I outlined in
Chapters 5
and
6
, a
desire for justice is a powerful motive. Furthermore, to a degree, a self-assertive impulse seems adaptive for succeeding in life. But cultural norms against envy create hesitation. In fact, you're damned if you do and damned if you don't.

Evolutionary psychologists Sarah Hill and David Buss give another reason to think that envy joins itself with resentment. From an evolutionary psychology perspective, envy serves an important adaptive function. It alerts us to conditions in which we rank lower than others in domains important for survival and reproductive success. The unpleasant nature of envy does not diminish its adaptive value but rather enhances it. In the competitive arenas of life, envy should lead to actions that increase resources compared to rivals and that upgrade social status and the benefits that follow from higher social status. Envy, by this logic, is both an alarm and a call to action. Hill and Buss suggest that envy may have evolved as a way of construing oneself as more deserving of scarce resources compared to rivals. They also argue that it is adaptive to find even the deserved advantages of other people as undeserved, at least to a degree; for example, by finding reasons to view the envied person as morally corrupt. The anger, hostility, and resentment created by perceiving the envied person's advantage as undeserved will make it more likely that people feeling envy will compete vigorously for the valuable resource. The process of natural selection is, as Hill and Buss phrased the point, “inherently competitive, selecting for individual phenotypes—and the genes that code for them—based on their ability to outperform existing alternate forms in domains that affect fitness.”
²⁹
The fusing of resentment with envy is an adaptive blend.

Max Scheler, guided in part by ideas originated by fellow German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, wrote about a chronic state of mind that he argued originated in envy and other, related painful states of frustration. Like Nietzsche, he borrowed the term
ressentiment
to give the phenomenon a label. One way this state can emerge, he argued, is when prolonged experiences of envy produce a sense of impotence so debilitating that one begins to suppress the emotion, despite its potency. This, in turn, produces a grudging, rancorous, embittered attitude toward life. In this psychologically poisoned state, envied things become reduced in value. This is no fun, but at least we need no longer accuse ourselves of envy. The things we once desired no longer seem worth having. However, because
ressentiment
is born of repressed envy and the
actual
valuing of these
things, it is a conflicted, unhealthy brew. And, among other toxic effects, it creates particularly ugly emotions when advantaged people suffer. In the end, aggression, even cruelty, may result—as I will explore in the next chapter.

Although these ideas inspired by Nietzsche and Scheler are hard to test empirically, a series of studies done with Dutch participants by social psychologists Colin Leach and Russell Spears provides some support. These researchers' main goal was to show that feelings of inferiority would prime people to take out their frustration and anger on successful others, which would emerge as
schadenfreude
if successful others fail. In one study, undergraduate participants were told that their own university had done poorly in their league on a quiz competition called “IQ.” Their feelings of inferiority and shame were measured immediately afterward. Then they learned about the winner of another league and reported how this success made them feel. Finally, they found out that this successful university had lost to the winner of their own league, and they again reported their feelings over this outcome. Indeed, these students were likely to find the loss of this other university pleasing. The students' pleasure was related to their prior feelings of inferiority and shame, as well as to the anger they felt over the other group's initial success. Specifically, students who felt inferior and ashamed over their own group's failure tended to be the ones who also felt angry over the other group's success. And this anger was closely linked to
schadenfreude
when this group suffered a defeat. Leach and Spears evoke Nietzsche's notion of the “vengefulness of the impotent” to capture this process.
³⁰

Another empirical contribution comes from work by Zlatan Krizan and Omesh Johar, who have examined the role of vulnerable narcissism in envy and
schadenfreude
.
³¹
Vulnerable narcissists have a complex jumble of features. Like all narcissists, they are usually self-absorbed and interpersonally tone-deaf. They are also apt to fancy themselves superior to others and to expect that the world concurs with this assessment. As a result, they typically feel entitled to special treatment and are taken aback if they don't receive it. But vulnerable narcissists, compared to “grandiose” narcissists, are less confident about their superiority and less confident in how others see them. Their narcissism may mask a core low self-esteem, and their behavior tends to reflect defensive efforts to convince themselves of their own superiority. Vulnerable narcissists should be especially susceptible to envy and
schadenfreude
because of their low self-esteem.

Studying how narcissism might combine with envy to cause
schadenfreude
is a particular challenge. Narcissists are especially unlikely to reveal their envy because, as social worker and psychotherapist Hotchkiss notes in her book,
Why Is It Always About You?: The Seven Deadly Sins of Narcissism
“to admit envy would be to acknowledge inferiority, which no good narcissist would ever do.”
³²
But Krizan and Johar employed a clever procedure that minimized the likelihood that participants would know that the study's focus was on envy and
schadenfreude
. Undergraduate participants thought they were simply giving their reactions to the format of news stories. They expected to see two related stories, one on a computer screen and the second on paper, and then give their reactions to the different formatting. They also completed a personality measure of vulnerable narcissism, but this was done in a mass screening at the beginning of the semester. There was little chance that participants would detect the researchers' interest in narcissism or envy. The first article contained an interview with another student who was either of high status and enviable
or
of low status and unlikely to be envied. Then, participants were taken to a different room and given a memory test (to distract them from the true purpose of the study). Finally, they were given the second story, which detailed how the same student from the first story had been found guilty of plagiarism and received a one-year academic probation.

As in other studies mentioned earlier, participants found the student's downfall more pleasing when it happened to the high-status person than the low-status person. And envy, reported just after the first article, was a big factor in explaining why. Moreover, vulnerable narcissists were even more likely to feel envy, and this envy resulted in more intense feelings of
schadenfreude
at the envied individual's misfortune. These results provide convincing evidence that our private self-views, when they are threatened by another person's superiority, set us up for feeling envy—and
schadenfreude
if the envied person suffers. And some of us, if we possess a shaky self-esteem joined with narcissism, are even more likely to follow this pattern.

The film
Amadeus
, as I noted earlier, contains a good example of this tension between the sense of injustice, which is often part of envy, and the social censure
also linked to the emotion.
³³
Salieri, the respected court composer, envies the young and miraculously talented Mozart. But he avoids fully admitting to envy, construing Mozart's talent as an
injustice
committed by God. Salieri views Mozart as immature, indecent, and undeserving of his musical gifts. He resents Mozart's talents and is outraged at the injustice that he, Salieri, has only the capacity to appreciate Mozart's talent, rather than to duplicate it. He is a frustrated prisoner of mediocre abilities. Can he cry out against this injustice? No, because differences in ability are not considered an injustice by the standards of his culture. Ability and talent are sources of merit. Therefore, Salieri blames God, whom he deems to be responsible for awarding ability and talent among people. He knows that he will get no sympathy from others, however, if he makes any open efforts to right this wrong. Furthermore, he would not want others to think that he is envious because this would add public shame to his frustrations.

Salieri, mediocre by his own and others' verdicts, suffers many humiliations as Mozart outperforms him at every opportunity, usually in front of others, who laugh along with Mozart. In one scene, Mozart is performing impromptu at a lavish costume party and imitates the style of well-known composers. Salieri, disguised and incognito behind a mask, is in the crowd and calls out for Mozart to do “Salieri.” Mozart proceeds to mock Salieri to the howling delight of the rest of the crowd. Salieri's mortification shows through his mask when Mozart
takes on the look of a Neanderthal and with slow deliberateness plods his way through a Salieri melody. He literally apes Salieri.

The now-vengeful Salieri vows to undermine Mozart's career and plan his death. The success of both efforts brings him intense
schadenfreude
. He decides to feign a liking for Mozart and becomes his apparent friend and supporter. His actual feelings are hostile and vengeful, fed by a sense of injustice that we, the viewers, can easily recognize as envy. He encourages Mozart to include a section of ballet in his opera,
The Marriage of Figaro
, despite his knowing that the Emperor Joseph II will object when he views its initial performance. He watches Joseph's reaction as he views a rehearsal and anticipates with pleasure Joseph's disapproval. This fails to happen because Joseph enjoys the piece, and Salieri's hopes are dashed. But later, when the full production debuts, he receives a “miracle.” Although Salieri realizes that the opera is path-breaking in quality, he also knows that Joseph's attention span is short. In the final number, Joseph yawns once, a signal that the opera will only have a few performances. This failure is a triumph for Salieri, and he smiles the smile of satisfying
schadenfreude
. Later, when Mozart's magnificent
Don Giovanni
also suffers a short run, Salieri once again silently exults.

Eventually, he pivots toward murder. “Before I leave this earth I will laugh at you,” he vows in secret, his whole being now fully poisoned by envy and a desire for revenge. Mozart is already physically weakened by overwork, made necessary by financial woes. Concealed by a mask, Salieri visits Mozart and offers him extra work composing an opera, hoping that this will direct Mozart to an early grave through physical exhaustion and illness. Mozart accepts the offer, and, as he works, Salieri watches for hopeful,
happy
signs of Mozart's weakening physical condition. He is pleased to see Mozart almost delirious as he conducts an inaugural production of
The Magic Flute.
He is elated when Mozart collapses at the keyboard. He supervises bringing Mozart home and arranges a way to keep Mozart working by offering to record the notes as Mozart composes. He is gratified to see Mozart's strength fade while he works to meet the deadline for the commission. Mozart does indeed die of exhaustion and illness—again, much to Salieri's pleasure.

The experience of Salieri may be unusual in certain respects. He is actually more aware of his envy than others who might reach a vengeful state propelled
by fully repressed envy.
³⁴
Also, his anger is egged on by intentional humiliation from Mozart. Such deliberate humiliations enacted by the envied person may be rare in everyday experiences of envy; nonetheless, the film dramatizes the point that envy can lead to an extreme endpoint created by powerful tensions stirred up within the envying person. Invidious comparisons register in our emotional solar plexus. Usually, altering the pecking order is unrealistic—a reason why the emotion is so painful. The disadvantage remains a stubborn fixture, creating a persistent need to cope with inferiority, repugnant feelings of hostility—and frustrating resentment over being unfairly treated. This is mainly why the emotion can transmute itself into a private grievance no longer having the label of envy.
³⁵
Once transmuted, events can more easily trend toward a justified pleasure if the envied person suffers and even justify vengeful actions that bring about the suffering, also resulting in pleasure.