Daniel Smith

And I think that's where the pain comes in.

Not the feeling of the envy.

These emotions are universal.

We can't cure ourselves of them.

But the feeling that I should be feeling bad about feeling bad.

That's the thing that I think causes the most pain.

I'm not sure that it does no good, but just to start at the first part, let's say it didn't do you any good.

It's still there.

Every culture in the world, every culture we know about,

has some experience of envy and has ways collectively to cope with envy.

But we feel it.

So you may not say that it's not useful, but it is there.

That's just the first part.

The second part is that whether or not these things have use, whether they're all practically useful,

they do lead us to some understanding of what it means to be alive.

If you're going to live among other people, you're going to have to contend with that part of yourself that compares.

And envy is a sort of outgrowth of that very natural human impulse to compare your state to someone else's.

So what are you gonna do about that?

Yeah, it is.

I mean, it really depends on whether you're feeling the thing alone or whether you're feeling it and acting on it.