When did envy become OK?
I’m constantly hearing or seeing not-very-guilty admissions of being jealous of a friend for, say, something seen on Instagram. Whether it’s eye-rolling at a friend’s exotic trip, snarking on someone’s great seats at the ballgame or commenting about an acquaintance’s restaurant-every-night life, jealousy is in.
Have we become a culture of green-eyed monsters who (in the parlance of hip-hop) “hate on” our friends and acquaintances for all they have and we don’t?
Maybe it’s social media. Study after study shows that our jealousy spikes with our use of social sharing sites.
People you know take more luxurious vacations than you do, their relationships are closer and more loving, their children better behaved and cuter — and the evidence is right there on the Web. A University of Michigan study released in August found that, the more people use Facebook, the worse they feel about their own lives. And a study last December out of Oxford deemed Instagram to be even more envy-inducing.
But is it just social media that makes us so envious? Or some deeper change that social media facilitate? I’m thinking of Karen Paperno, the owner of Park Slope baby boutique Boing Boing, who raged in Huffington Post piece about the growing affluence of her neighborhood and her difficulty in keeping up with the Joneses. In this example of off-line jealousy, The New York Times picked up the story and detailed the difficult life of a middle-class woman in a rich neighborhood.
It’s easy to feel sympathetic to Paperno, who works hard at a neighborhood business and whose husband’s illness forced her to close a second business location. At least, it is until she admits to stealing “spices, honey, coconut oil, granola; expensive things that I wanted” from a store near her home, even as she derides the materialism of others.
The Times called the market “one of the many emblems of the new, consumerist Park Slope” but it’s most likely a small business just like Paperno’s. Should its owners be allowed to steal from her shop, too?
And isn’t the woman who can’t live without coconut oil the real “consumerist” here? She’s a successful business owner, living in one of the hottest neighborhoods in New York. She could move 20 minutes deeper into Brooklyn and have the cash to live much higher on the hog.
On a bigger scale, she’s among the luckiest people in human history — living freely in a place not ravaged by real poverty and disease.
Where is her perspective?
Never before have so many had so much while still wanting more.
There’s nothing new about jealousy and envy, of course.
What’s new is our cultural acceptance of it. In a world where we talk about “inequality” as the greatest problem we face, of course we support each other’s need to have as much stuff as our friends and neighbors.
You shouldn’t have to think about starving children in Africa to feel grateful for the vast wealth we all have. We live in a time and place where most people have everything they could possibly need to lead a happy existence. Yet somehow admitting you’re jealous over our friend’s vacation isn’t met with a “grow up!” but instead with an “I understand.”
Our reactions are wrong. The proper response to irrational jealousy isn’t to coddle it, but to condemn it.