Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot Com. Yeah, hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas.
Speaker 1: And in this podcast, we are continuing our journey through
Speaker 1: the Seven Deadly Sins. Uh Yes. To what extent are
Speaker 1: they sins? What extent are they detrimental to our lives?
Speaker 1: To what extent are they evolutionary necessities. We're going to
Speaker 1: continue to discuss all of this. So last time we
Speaker 1: talked about pride. This time we're talking about envy, which
Speaker 1: lines up nicely because in Dante's Purgatory, Dante has to
Speaker 1: ascend this mountain of purgatory that connects Earth to the sky,
Speaker 1: Earth to the heavens. At the top of this mountain
Speaker 1: is the earthly paradise, and individuals that are going through
Speaker 1: purgatory they have to work off each layer of sin
Speaker 1: before they're to enter into the higher realms. So the
Speaker 1: first level you end up going through a terrace on
Speaker 1: this mountain. The first terrace deals with pride, and the
Speaker 1: second Terrorists deals with invY. And it's interesting when one
Speaker 1: travels to this imagined room, you find the envious shades
Speaker 1: to these individuals who were who were very envious in life,
Speaker 1: and they're gonna have to work this junk off before
Speaker 1: they can they can rise higher. They're all leaning against
Speaker 1: each other again and against boulders. They're all sort of
Speaker 1: huddled around like beggars. As Dante comes closer, he finds
Speaker 1: that their eyelids are sown shut with wire. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: that seems reasonable because in the especially you know, are
Speaker 1: under our are sort of figurative understanding of it. It's
Speaker 1: all about the eyes, you know, green eyed envy. It's
Speaker 1: about it's about looking at other things and covening. Um.
Speaker 1: And so these individuals coveted in their lives, they looked
Speaker 1: with with these envious eyes. And now all these envious
Speaker 1: eyes are shut. See. I think that is the sort
Speaker 1: of attention that envy should get, because it is it's
Speaker 1: actually pretty important. And we I was, we were researching this.
Speaker 1: I thought, this is really very interesting stuff. Um, and
Speaker 1: you think it's exactly the kind of attention and we
Speaker 1: should get. Well no, no, no, I don't actually have
Speaker 1: their eyelids shown the sun shut. No, especially not with
Speaker 1: wire thread. That's just that's just cruel. Well I was
Speaker 1: really interesting enough side. Uh no, but apparently they would
Speaker 1: take hawks and they would part of the training of
Speaker 1: a hawk would be too so it's eyes shut with
Speaker 1: with laces of gut like you know, tennis string or something,
Speaker 1: and that was just part of training the hawk to
Speaker 1: accept food from a human master. In all this so
Speaker 1: right that it is not like the hawk was coveting
Speaker 1: other hawks, right right. But it's interesting that that's where
Speaker 1: that came from. It wasn't just Dante being morbid. And
Speaker 1: I mean he's being a little more bid. He's Dante,
Speaker 1: but but he he got the idea from the way
Speaker 1: people trained at hawks. Well. But again, I think that
Speaker 1: this is the sort of import that MV has. New
Speaker 1: York Times writer John Turney actually was talking about it
Speaker 1: being one of the seven sins and being kind of boring.
Speaker 1: He said, at first, you know, for him, it was
Speaker 1: the most useless of the deadly sins, excruciating to experience,
Speaker 1: shameful to admit, bereft of immediate pleasure or long term benefits.
Speaker 1: To an evolutionary psychologist, there's a certain logic to seducing
Speaker 1: thy neighbor's wife or stealing his goods. But what's the
Speaker 1: point of merely covering them. Yeah. Yeah, it was an
Speaker 1: interesting point you made, because it is. It is not
Speaker 1: a fun sin when you hear people talk about it.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go out and say, you know, we're like
Speaker 1: a carnival type deal where it's like I've got to
Speaker 1: start being good tomorrow, but tonight I'm just gonna covet
Speaker 1: my face off. Like nobody says that, you know, it's
Speaker 1: all about the other vices. No one's like, Oh, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna so the envious of bread pet tonight, it's gonna
Speaker 1: be great right in front of you and I'm going
Speaker 1: to cover you all up. Uh, but let's talk about
Speaker 1: a belt's started to get into meat up in the
Speaker 1: meat of it because some people think of it as jealousy,
Speaker 1: but it actually is not jealousy. Um. Envy is more
Speaker 1: of a longing for what you don't have, whereas jealousy
Speaker 1: is more provoked by losing something that might have had
Speaker 1: to someone else, Like like two people are competing for
Speaker 1: a job and one gets it over the other, and
Speaker 1: then the person who didn't get the job to be jealous.
Speaker 1: And actually, envy comes from the Latin word in the invidiary,
Speaker 1: which means to look at with malice or cast an
Speaker 1: evil eye, which is sort of interesting when you were
Speaker 1: talking about the sewing shuts of the eye. Again, it's
Speaker 1: all relating back to that consumption. Um. And is there
Speaker 1: an upside to this? It's kind of funny all the
Speaker 1: other since there's a bit of an upside, but this one,
Speaker 1: I have to say, this is a bit of a
Speaker 1: dark side. And yes, there's an upside in the sense
Speaker 1: that you can use envy along um. Let's say, if
Speaker 1: you use the prism of admiration alongside with it, um,
Speaker 1: you could be more likely to closely note how someone
Speaker 1: behaves or has attained his or her success and then
Speaker 1: try to emulate that and create these conditions for yourself. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you end up with the with these two different versions
Speaker 1: of envy. You have a benign envying, you have a
Speaker 1: malicious on the benign and v I just for consistency sake,
Speaker 1: I looked up in the Ascetaic Bible to see what
Speaker 1: Anton LaVey had to say about Of course, yeah, he's
Speaker 1: you know, it was very much making kind of a
Speaker 1: new age argument for for these various sins and against
Speaker 1: organized religion and and uh. He said that envy needs
Speaker 1: to look with favor upon the positions of others, and
Speaker 1: to be desirous of desirous of obtaining similar things for oneself.
Speaker 1: And if he and greed are the motivating forces of ambition,
Speaker 1: and without ambition, very little of any importance would be accomplished.
Speaker 1: And that's a valid goat hats aside, that's a that's
Speaker 1: a valid argument, you know, because because you think of
Speaker 1: the people in life that you look at our heroes
Speaker 1: and uh, and there's a certain amount of envy there.
Speaker 1: You're like, man that you know that dude is an
Speaker 1: awesome writer. I wish I had had skills like that.
Speaker 1: But but in many cases it takes on that that
Speaker 1: form of I'm gonna really look at what this guy's doing.
Speaker 1: I'm going to try and emulate how he approaches his art,
Speaker 1: and then I'm going to be better for it, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And that's what I think. It's interesting about envyous So
Speaker 1: much of it is predicated on your ability to him
Speaker 1: imagine your life, a future life for yourself. And again
Speaker 1: that's where the benign comes in. If you could look
Speaker 1: at someone and say, I feel motivated by this person. Uh,
Speaker 1: there are things that this person has that I want
Speaker 1: that that fit along with what makes sense in my
Speaker 1: life or what's really important to me. Obviously, the malicious
Speaker 1: part comes uh into play when you pay attention to
Speaker 1: people who you feel like are superior to you too,
Speaker 1: to the point where, uh you wish that things would
Speaker 1: happen to these people, Um that you began to resent people.
Speaker 1: You spend way too much mental energy on obsessing about something,
Speaker 1: and that obsession is really at the core of this. Yes,
Speaker 1: a malicious envy becomes. It's it's not as much a
Speaker 1: I really admire that person I want to be like them.
Speaker 1: It's more like I really admire that person or not
Speaker 1: as much I admire them, and like that person has
Speaker 1: things I wish I had. I can't have them, but
Speaker 1: stabbing them would still would still feel pretty good. If
Speaker 1: I can't, If I can't achieve that level aim, I
Speaker 1: could at least take that level of fame from them,
Speaker 1: which on the surface sounds just insane, but as well,
Speaker 1: as we'll discuss if if you kind of break it
Speaker 1: down you can you can find some potential evolutionary advantages
Speaker 1: in that as well. Right well, I mean, what you're
Speaker 1: trying to do is find their weakness so that you
Speaker 1: can bring them back down to your your level, right,
Speaker 1: so in essential leveling the playing field. Right, It's kind
Speaker 1: of like, all that person is an awesome runner. My
Speaker 1: benign envy says I can train up and become as
Speaker 1: good a runner as they are and maybe, you know,
Speaker 1: get a little faster and beat them. The other one
Speaker 1: is like, I will never be as good a runner
Speaker 1: as they are, but I bet if I cut their
Speaker 1: tendons with a knife then I could easily outrun them.
Speaker 1: Either way, each scenario ends with me winning the race.
Speaker 1: It's kind of the Tanya Harding effect, right, like, Wow,
Speaker 1: you're such a great skater, I'm just gonna hit you
Speaker 1: in the in the knees and break your knees. Um. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: there's malicious, there's benign. And it turns out that in
Speaker 1: memories to auties, this sort of envy really plays into
Speaker 1: our ability to remember details about people. Um. There have
Speaker 1: been experiments with envy a students at Texas Christian University
Speaker 1: and Fort Worth and the University of Texas at Austin, Texas,
Speaker 1: and researchers bore out the conclusion that students who read
Speaker 1: stories about envy inducing characters had far better recall than
Speaker 1: non envy inducing characters. Again, here's your mind really dwelling
Speaker 1: on this person and what they have or what they
Speaker 1: don't have, what you don't have. And it also turns
Speaker 1: out that, um, there's a bit of ego depletion involved
Speaker 1: in this. So it ends up actually wearing down your
Speaker 1: mental faculties. Yeah, and we talked about this, We talked
Speaker 1: about ego depletion. Is is um, one of the things
Speaker 1: that happens when decision fatigue. You have to make up
Speaker 1: all these decisions about what goes on my sandwich, whatever
Speaker 1: music I'm gonna listen to, you know how, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get to work, and by the end of the day,
Speaker 1: I'm not able to really tackle difficult cognitive problems exactly
Speaker 1: because you you're suffering from ego depletion. So another study
Speaker 1: this is this the same group of researchers. They had
Speaker 1: students contemplating a wealthy, attractive peer, and then students were
Speaker 1: asked to work on puzzles and compared with the control group,
Speaker 1: they gave up much sooner, which is the same thing
Speaker 1: that we saw with the decision fatigue and the people
Speaker 1: that had to make up all those decisions or make
Speaker 1: all those decisions, and then we're later given a self
Speaker 1: control test and those people I remember this is something
Speaker 1: like they had to put their hands in ice water,
Speaker 1: and those people had were able to put their hands
Speaker 1: in ice water for half the time than the control groups.
Speaker 1: So again you're seeing parallels here with the eroding of
Speaker 1: of um, your mental faculties, of which honestly, we only
Speaker 1: have a finite amount of mental energy per day, right,
Speaker 1: so it's how are you going to spend it? Are
Speaker 1: you're gonna waste it sort of dreamily staring at this
Speaker 1: other person's life or worth stabbing them in your imagination?
Speaker 1: And and the thing is they whole, They're just all
Speaker 1: you have to do is go through the checkoutline at
Speaker 1: the grocery store, and and whole industries thrive on on
Speaker 1: injy um. I mean, all these tabloids about what's the
Speaker 1: celebrity doing, what's this celebrity buying, what's the celebrity's of
Speaker 1: personal life consists of? And mean you walk by it
Speaker 1: and you're just like, what how do people fill their
Speaker 1: days with this? You just just gaze into this, Uh,
Speaker 1: the celebrity of this. There's one magazine that the I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's us or something. But I remember
Speaker 1: flipping through it once and they have a section called
Speaker 1: celebrities they're just like us, And it just completely cracked
Speaker 1: me up because it was like, this person wears a
Speaker 1: sweatshirt when they're going to the store, too, and so
Speaker 1: it reminded me of this this idea that's not quite
Speaker 1: schaden freud. Yeah, but it's sort of like, well, they
Speaker 1: look kind of schleppy sometimes too. That makes me feel
Speaker 1: a lot better. Yeah, well, yeah, it's not quite personally, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but no, I understand what you're saying. It's not they're
Speaker 1: not it's not quite I hate this person. I want
Speaker 1: to see him stabbed. It's like I'm taking comfort in
Speaker 1: the fact that this person is mortal as well, and
Speaker 1: uh and and is open to the same flaws and
Speaker 1: normalities that I am. Well, and it turns out that
Speaker 1: envy and chitten freud are actually linked, researchers think, and
Speaker 1: we'll talk about that in one minute when we come back.
Speaker 1: All right, we're back, um, which is an interesting concept
Speaker 1: and one that you actually find some theologians discussing Thomas
Speaker 1: aquinas Um in uh Suma Theologica said, wherefore, in order
Speaker 1: that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful
Speaker 1: to them, and they may render more copious thanks to
Speaker 1: God for it. Uh, they are allowed to see perfectly
Speaker 1: the sufferings of the damned. So we're talking about saints
Speaker 1: being able to see people's torments in hell. And then
Speaker 1: there was I ran across another example where Jonathan Edwards,
Speaker 1: the author of Center in the Hands of an angry God,
Speaker 1: he was making pretty much the same argument. The view
Speaker 1: of the misery of the dam will double the ardor
Speaker 1: of the love and gratitude of the saints in heaven. Forth,
Speaker 1: the sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of
Speaker 1: the saints forever. It will not only make them more
Speaker 1: sensible of the greatness and the freeness of the grace
Speaker 1: of God and their happiness, but it will really make
Speaker 1: their happiness the greater, as it will make them more
Speaker 1: sensible of their own happiness, which sounds kind of nuts, yeah,
Speaker 1: kind yeah, yeah, but yeah, I mean there's this idea
Speaker 1: of Schipenfreud of um sort of lowering the veil of perfection, right,
Speaker 1: And uh, if if it's someone you emvvery they seem
Speaker 1: like they're just bulletproof. And then all of a sudden
Speaker 1: you see that they've got a chink in their armor,
Speaker 1: and it's it's the tabloid thing again. It's like, let
Speaker 1: me see my heroes in unflattering swimsuits, let me see
Speaker 1: them making mistakes, let me see them growing older. And
Speaker 1: I always find a morbid fascination in the phrasing of that,
Speaker 1: because it's, uh, if if it's somebody that the reader
Speaker 1: of the tabloid is meant to like, it is, it's
Speaker 1: always like so and so's brave last days, Like like
Speaker 1: I think Elizabeth Taylor was having brave last Days for
Speaker 1: like half a decade. But then other people, it's just
Speaker 1: the language is always far worse, like oh, they're just
Speaker 1: they're just on the verge of death, you know. And
Speaker 1: and and people eat it up because it's they're getting
Speaker 1: to see their their heroes fall there, their gods are
Speaker 1: are brought down to their level. And then, well, isn't
Speaker 1: it the whole problem? I guess you could say the
Speaker 1: problem of our existence is at our our consciousness and
Speaker 1: the sense that we know we're all going to die
Speaker 1: some days. So yeah, at a very basic level, it's like, hey,
Speaker 1: this is happening. I know, what's gonna happen for me
Speaker 1: is gonna it's happened to this person, but birthday candles
Speaker 1: to bring it back to that, what's going to happen
Speaker 1: when we reached the point where the first celebrity that
Speaker 1: everyone hates is like, and guess what, guys, I'm living forever?
Speaker 1: And then I mean I think rise up among the
Speaker 1: tabloid readers will just be immense. I think our example
Speaker 1: for that episode was Charlie Sheen. Yeah, I don't think
Speaker 1: my just changed since we recorded that. Um if there's
Speaker 1: anybody else that could replace them. But I want to
Speaker 1: tell you about a study about envy and schaden freud
Speaker 1: and um it has a great title. Actually, it's called
Speaker 1: when your gain is my pain and your pain is
Speaker 1: my gain Neural correlates correlates of envy and schaden freud.
Speaker 1: And this is a study by Haidahiko Takahishi, which we
Speaker 1: talked about him in the Pride episode. UM So he
Speaker 1: and some other researchers set out to to research this
Speaker 1: and this was there um part of their in their
Speaker 1: abstract that said, we often evaluate the self and others
Speaker 1: from social comparisons. We feel emvy when the target person
Speaker 1: has superior and self relevant characteristics. Schanden Freud occurs when
Speaker 1: envied persons fall from grace and they go on a
Speaker 1: bit and then they say, are finding document mechanisms of
Speaker 1: painful emotion and the rewarding reaction shaden Freud. It's really
Speaker 1: fascinating what they did here, And if you guys can
Speaker 1: just kind of bear with me as I talk a
Speaker 1: bit about the details. UM, because they did two different
Speaker 1: studies that relate together. They had nineteen subjects that were
Speaker 1: asked to visualize being a protagonist in scenarios that college
Speaker 1: students might faceball undergoing UM an m R I. So
Speaker 1: they have these scenarios that they're they're inserting themselves into
Speaker 1: as the protagonist and UH. For example, UM, the following scenario,
Speaker 1: a male subject was asked to imagine himself as a protagonist.
Speaker 1: Student A, this is the person that they're invying, did
Speaker 1: well in his final examinations, but the protagonist did not.
Speaker 1: Student A is talented in baseball, but the protagonist is not.
Speaker 1: Student A is popular among girls and has a beautiful
Speaker 1: and intelligent girlfriend, but protagonist is not popular and does
Speaker 1: not have a steady girlfriend. So they go on to
Speaker 1: say student A successful in a job interview and getting
Speaker 1: along really well the company he wants to join. The
Speaker 1: protagonist is not. The salary is great for Student A.
Speaker 1: He has a luxury condominium downtown. Okay, it just gets
Speaker 1: worse and worse for for protagonist. Takahashi had the subject
Speaker 1: imagine as schaden Freud evoking scenario then in which the
Speaker 1: protagonist is then doing much better than Student A, and
Speaker 1: the scenarios are were varied to include the gender of
Speaker 1: the subject UM and other students might be assigned the
Speaker 1: same gender as the subject to help them relate right um.
Speaker 1: And also details were changed so that there would be
Speaker 1: a degree of similarity between the imagined student A and
Speaker 1: the protagonist. So analysis of the resulting brain scans compared
Speaker 1: the activation in different brain regions under envy invoking and
Speaker 1: then Schadenfreud evoking and then neutral scenarios, so they could
Speaker 1: test this out and controlled type situation. UM, and then
Speaker 1: the subjects were asked to rate their relative feelings of envy.
Speaker 1: And they're gloating in the scenario, so this is okay,
Speaker 1: this is all okay, Yeah, yeah, I get it. They're
Speaker 1: they're really trying to set this up. Um, This is
Speaker 1: where it gets interesting. The envy producing scenario showed activation
Speaker 1: in the anterior singulate cortex, and that's the place in
Speaker 1: the brain that's associated with error detection or conflict, which
Speaker 1: was also activated by pain. Said. The conclusion here is
Speaker 1: that people experiencing envy, which is associated with shame, or
Speaker 1: feeling emotional pain or the pain of social exclusion, which
Speaker 1: I found fascinating because here's just part of your brain
Speaker 1: that that is really sis to perceive physical pain. But
Speaker 1: if you are envying someone, you're actually feeling some sort
Speaker 1: of emotional pain from your envy. And we have to
Speaker 1: think back to the purpose of pain itself as the
Speaker 1: my my body is feeling pain, therefore something is wrong
Speaker 1: and must be addressed or avoided. Like there's a stick
Speaker 1: jabbing into my thigh, I should remove said stick. My
Speaker 1: stomach is hurting. Whatever I ate is bad and I
Speaker 1: should probably not eat it again. So we have to
Speaker 1: take that and extrapolate it into the into social dynamics.
Speaker 1: You're feeling this emotional pain. I am not as good
Speaker 1: as they are. I'm not feeling that my self worth
Speaker 1: is really taken a hit here. I should become as
Speaker 1: good as them. I should I should rise above them,
Speaker 1: I should stab them in the thigh. You know, well,
Speaker 1: I mean it's the stabbing is the purest form of
Speaker 1: malicious envy, I think. Well, okay, so this is the
Speaker 1: other interesting part of this is that when they had
Speaker 1: the downfall of student A, they saw activation in the
Speaker 1: ventral striatom, which is as associated with rewarding stimuli, and
Speaker 1: so Takahashi interpret the activation with schadenfreud as a feeling
Speaker 1: of pleasure, which makes sense, right, um, So they feel
Speaker 1: like there are correlates here. You know that m vy
Speaker 1: and Schenfreud go hand in hand. The other thing that
Speaker 1: correlated with this is that if the student or the
Speaker 1: person in this um, I should say that the protagonist,
Speaker 1: the person in the study, if they did not feel
Speaker 1: any sort of kinship with this person, did not feel
Speaker 1: that they were at all on the same level and
Speaker 1: that they couldn't imagine themselves in habiting this person's world.
Speaker 1: They did not feel any envy, They did not have
Speaker 1: any activation in the interior singulate cortex or in the
Speaker 1: ventral striatom when they were when they had the shade
Speaker 1: fraud scenario. So you have to be able to put
Speaker 1: yourself in their shoes to some extent to actually take
Speaker 1: pleasure in their downfall. You have to imagine this life
Speaker 1: for yourself because even though there might be some great
Speaker 1: object that someone has in their possession, if you don't
Speaker 1: somehow connect with that person, to relate with that person,
Speaker 1: then it doesn't matter to you. So you you know what,
Speaker 1: that could be a myriad things, right, It could be um,
Speaker 1: they have socio economic background. Um, it could be the
Speaker 1: kind of music they listened to. Um. But it makes
Speaker 1: sense that in a workplace scenario, why there might be
Speaker 1: more instances of envy because in a workplace scenario, you're
Speaker 1: more likely to connect or not necessarily connect, but to um, Well,
Speaker 1: they're in your world. They're they're in your world. That's
Speaker 1: right there. They're on your playing field. So that was
Speaker 1: really fascinating about this study. But not only that, there's neuroscientists. Um.
Speaker 1: They're taking the findings of the activation of the anterior
Speaker 1: singulate cortex. Again, this is where the pain physical pain
Speaker 1: would usually light up activation of the brain, and they're
Speaker 1: saying that it's an indication of development of complex emotions,
Speaker 1: piggybacking off the primal brain system. So that's the rat
Speaker 1: like hind brain. Yes, yeah, yeah, So what they're saying
Speaker 1: is that that that this could point to um, not
Speaker 1: us developing more complex systems in order to deal with
Speaker 1: more complex feelings, but really piggybacking off these primal feelings.
Speaker 1: It's the it's the brain is an ice cream scoop again,
Speaker 1: you know the idea that that it's just one more
Speaker 1: scoop added to the brain evolves. Yeah, not not an
Speaker 1: overall rehall of the system. It's not a banana split.
Speaker 1: It's an ice cream cone. Yet, you know double degger. Well,
Speaker 1: I can't speak for most work places, but we do
Speaker 1: have relatively few stabbings here at the Work's true. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: there's no a lot of meaning going on here. Um.
Speaker 1: And I'm going to say that's I'm going to go
Speaker 1: out on a limb here and say that's probably because
Speaker 1: there are not a whole lot of people, as far
Speaker 1: as I know, that are morally disengaged. And when I
Speaker 1: say morally disengaged, I don't need to say like cool,
Speaker 1: they're you know, good or bad people. I'm talking about
Speaker 1: it more in the sense of UM. A study that
Speaker 1: was called the social context model and being social undermining,
Speaker 1: and it was in the Academy of Management journal, and
Speaker 1: they were saying that if if an employee feels morally
Speaker 1: disengaged at work, so they're feeling disconnected from other core
Speaker 1: co workers, they are far more likely to not just
Speaker 1: envy co workers with whom they feel they have similarities.
Speaker 1: Again that's really important, but they would actually act on
Speaker 1: those on those uh thoughts of envy and try to
Speaker 1: sabotage them. Interesting. So, potentially, say an office where individuals
Speaker 1: don't have much of contact with one another, they would
Speaker 1: there would be more likely to be a morally disengaged
Speaker 1: I would, Well, it kind of depends on the person. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's it may just be that they feel disinfranchised or
Speaker 1: they just don't feel connected, because I think a lot
Speaker 1: of us now work remotely, but we still have relationships, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, thanks to the magic and the power of
Speaker 1: the internet. Right. Um. But what they did is they
Speaker 1: looked at a hundred and sixty employees um from a
Speaker 1: Midwest American hospital and they tested whether the person had
Speaker 1: a lack of identification with colleagues because they knew this
Speaker 1: would increase the them acting on their envy and respondents
Speaker 1: took to surveys they were eight months apart to assess
Speaker 1: their envy, their affinity with colleagues, and their comfort with
Speaker 1: subversive acts and the research. The research basically said that
Speaker 1: envy these people with ties to coworkers were less likely
Speaker 1: to act on their envy, while lone wolves seemed to
Speaker 1: enter into a bubble of moral disengagement that allowed them
Speaker 1: to more freely undermine colleagues by, you know, withholding information
Speaker 1: or spreading gossip for instance. And so the more all
Speaker 1: of this story was, you know, hey, company, she should
Speaker 1: really make sure that all of your employees feel like
Speaker 1: they have a stake in the matter, or they feel
Speaker 1: connected to each other in one man or another, and
Speaker 1: make them feel like they're on the same team. That
Speaker 1: it's that it's a wee and not like that I'm
Speaker 1: not this embattled employee. That it's like, well, they're all
Speaker 1: out to get me anyway, so I might as well
Speaker 1: do whatever that I want. So, yeah, I mean that's
Speaker 1: so that you don't enter into this bubble where it's
Speaker 1: okay to morally distance yourself and maybe just start jamming
Speaker 1: up the copying machine on purpose. I don't know, Oh
Speaker 1: that one I was broken the other day. Well, it
Speaker 1: reminds me. I can't help but think of the film
Speaker 1: The Spanish Prisoner by David Mamma, see this I did,
Speaker 1: yeah long time had like Steve Martin plays the shadowy
Speaker 1: character and and uh, and that's largely all. I don't
Speaker 1: remember what the exact plot was, except I had to
Speaker 1: do with a classic scam called The Spanish Prisoner. There's
Speaker 1: a really nice scene where this, uh, this the protagonist
Speaker 1: in the story is really sudden, like he's working condition
Speaker 1: is suddenly taking a dive and his employers are being
Speaker 1: kind of jerks to him and he's He's like, what's
Speaker 1: this about? And this outher character explains to them, Well,
Speaker 1: it's because they're about to screw you over, so they're
Speaker 1: they're having to create this moral distance from you to
Speaker 1: do it. So so you can see that that potentially
Speaker 1: working both ways and an employee employee or situation. Well,
Speaker 1: we've seen moral distancing in so many different situations. We
Speaker 1: talked about it and lying, where people start to use
Speaker 1: third person references for themselves as opposed to first person.
Speaker 1: We've talked about it in eating animals, how you start
Speaker 1: to talk about meat in very different terms. Um so yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean you can definitely see this at work in
Speaker 1: all different levels of your relationship to your world. Anytime
Speaker 1: you hear someone talking about bureaucracy um, which granted there's
Speaker 1: there are plenty of times in any corporation, any kind
Speaker 1: of working environment where you can say like, oh, that
Speaker 1: seems a little bureaucratic, you know, in the negative sense,
Speaker 1: but it's also like an instant way to to distance
Speaker 1: yourself from the actual people and the you know, you're
Speaker 1: just like, oh, there's a bureaucracy in place, there's the
Speaker 1: soulless entity that is messing with my happiness well, and
Speaker 1: it is the ability to label like that is a
Speaker 1: sense of comfort to right because it's like, oh, this nameless,
Speaker 1: faceless thing, which is you know, impacting my life in
Speaker 1: a nameless, faithless thing. I can totally still off the
Speaker 1: supplies from that. Yeah, post it notes, Yeah, let's have
Speaker 1: my name on it. Journalist Oliver James he has a
Speaker 1: talk on the School of Life about envy specifically, and
Speaker 1: it was really interesting. He talks about envy as being
Speaker 1: affluenza as opposed to influence. The affluenza this preoccupation would
Speaker 1: becoming affluent, and he says it's largely cultural he says
Speaker 1: that if you live in Denmark and had an envy
Speaker 1: inspiring childhood, meaning things happened in your childhood and which
Speaker 1: sort of set you up to to envy others, uh,
Speaker 1: you're less likely to express it than if you live
Speaker 1: in New York or London because at a very simple level,
Speaker 1: much less energy is um expended in mainline continental societies
Speaker 1: and fostering envy. So his point there is there, you know,
Speaker 1: there has got to be culture. Well, there are some countries,
Speaker 1: there are some regions where this pursuit of things and
Speaker 1: in abstractions of happiness via wealth aren't really important. And
Speaker 1: he says that since the nineteen sixties, four times more
Speaker 1: has been spent per capita on advertising and marketing in
Speaker 1: America compared to the continental mainline Europe. And he says
Speaker 1: and throughout the rest of English speaking world, including England,
Speaker 1: twice as much as being spent. So he says, okay,
Speaker 1: let's let's look at the marketing and the advertising, because
Speaker 1: it's very much encouraging you to covet to want things
Speaker 1: that other people have. Huh. It reminds me of the
Speaker 1: in Tibetan Buddhism. The Buddhism in general, there's the idea
Speaker 1: of the predda is the realm of the preda is
Speaker 1: the hungry ghost these which is one of the lower
Speaker 1: realms that one can find themselves born into. And the
Speaker 1: predas have enormous bellies and u and tiny narrow necks
Speaker 1: and the ravenous mouths because they're just so hungry for things,
Speaker 1: for material possessions generally, you know, they're they're so hungry
Speaker 1: for the things in the world around them, and they
Speaker 1: don't have the ability to keep up with that hunger.
Speaker 1: Well see, And it's it's interesting there you have a
Speaker 1: culture and where you're actually talking about this, right. This
Speaker 1: is if you're I don't know if people are sitting
Speaker 1: around the dinner table into that for instance, and talking
Speaker 1: about this. But here is a story about envy and
Speaker 1: um and what happens when you engage in it. And
Speaker 1: this is another thing that James Oliver was talking about.
Speaker 1: There are cultures that are much more traditional that actually
Speaker 1: try to minimize evil. And what he was talking about
Speaker 1: is that they have belief structures in place to kind
Speaker 1: of downplay it. And he was saying that for instance,
Speaker 1: an evil I might be cast upon you if you
Speaker 1: were to start to brag about your success right or
Speaker 1: your successes and um, he's also saying that cultures that
Speaker 1: have less property rights. And this is not just we're
Speaker 1: not just talking about giving smyth the stink guy here,
Speaker 1: whether they just kind kind of like every actually evil
Speaker 1: eye and actual pulling out the evil eye and basically
Speaker 1: saying stand down. Yeah, like we were not really interested
Speaker 1: in you know, man, wouldn't be great to do that.
Speaker 1: Like you go to you go to a party and
Speaker 1: somebody starts off on some some some long discussion about
Speaker 1: how great the are and you can just pull out
Speaker 1: the evil eye and let him have it. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you say, hey, hey, hey you jack and EPs just
Speaker 1: just enough with that, I got my evil eye out.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe we should Maybe this is something that
Speaker 1: we can introduce in the United States, you know in
Speaker 1: market and and market and other people will covet it.
Speaker 1: Your friend talking a little bit too much about their
Speaker 1: promotion evil. I I think for something here co worker
Speaker 1: loves his nw kando a little too much evil. He
Speaker 1: didn't get it evil eye tattoo. There are all sorts
Speaker 1: of possibilities here. But I mean with his point though,
Speaker 1: is like, here are these cultures that are actually saying
Speaker 1: that this is not acceptable um in our society for
Speaker 1: you to act this way. Well, again we go back
Speaker 1: to Dante and the idea of a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: Endia's individuals sitting on the side of a mountain with
Speaker 1: their eyes soone shut. That sounds like like a pretty
Speaker 1: argument there. Maybe just nobody listens to it anymore within
Speaker 1: those cultures. I don't know. Yeah, that's a little bit
Speaker 1: harder to sort of bring up in a special situation. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, in terms of a metaphorical what do you do?
Speaker 1: Do you like a picture of some of their eyes? Yeah? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess you what you're saying. There's not an instant
Speaker 1: sort of thing. I mean, all you could do. I
Speaker 1: guess that the version of it we have that we
Speaker 1: go to most in Western cultures is simply to roll
Speaker 1: your eyes or sort of walk away from the conversation
Speaker 1: or drastically try and change the subject. Or you could
Speaker 1: put some sort of like make it look like wire
Speaker 1: um thread on the rim of your eye and then
Speaker 1: shut your eyes. Yeah, or you inject a little of
Speaker 1: the schadenfreud if you're bragging about something, you ask a
Speaker 1: Biden question that knocks the blockout from under him a
Speaker 1: little bit, like like someone's got a new car and
Speaker 1: they're like a new car is so great, and you're like,
Speaker 1: so what's the appreciation right on a new vehicle like that?
Speaker 1: What's the insurance like for that vehicle? And then yam,
Speaker 1: But you know, if that's what Oliver James says, he
Speaker 1: actually he talked about instance in his own life where
Speaker 1: there was a colleague that he started to attack on
Speaker 1: national television PS and or I guess on the BBC
Speaker 1: and uh no no, but he started. He said it
Speaker 1: was a complete rant and it didn't make any sense
Speaker 1: to him until later he realized that he envied that
Speaker 1: colleague and was trying to take him down a notch.
Speaker 1: So you see that his he must have been getting
Speaker 1: some sort of kick there, some sort of reward in
Speaker 1: his brain. Um. But you know, this is what he says.
Speaker 1: He says that that this sort of envy that's wanting
Speaker 1: this void, this filling the void, is driving a lot
Speaker 1: of mental illness. And he says that if we could
Speaker 1: just turn more inward and try to figure out the
Speaker 1: things that that make us happy, Like he was saying,
Speaker 1: if you can, if you can identify the state of
Speaker 1: flow that sometimes we engage in that state of flow
Speaker 1: in which time just evaporates, right, because you were so
Speaker 1: engaged in something and it's so pleasurable and you're living
Speaker 1: in the moment. You're not living in a path that
Speaker 1: you're concerned about or the future that you're worried over. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's saying, if we could just engage in that and
Speaker 1: quit focusing on the exterior and what we think we're lacking,
Speaker 1: then a lot of this sort of mental illness of
Speaker 1: society would would not be as bad as it is. Um,
Speaker 1: if we could quit listening basically to marketers and advertisers
Speaker 1: and I didn't really care about the halftime Super Bowl ads,
Speaker 1: you know, for instance, that this is sort of a
Speaker 1: path that would would get us away from that, and
Speaker 1: then we can depart the realm of hungry guys. I
Speaker 1: like it. All right, Well, let's um, let's call the
Speaker 1: robot over and uh see if he has an interesting listener. Mayo,
Speaker 1: maybe to cap all this off, all right, we have
Speaker 1: a couple here, both a rat related which I like.
Speaker 1: The first one is a respond to our recent and
Speaker 1: dare I say, awesome rat King episode. Devin writes in
Speaker 1: and says hello from Canada, thank you for all the
Speaker 1: amazing podcasts. Uh, with the exception of your rat king episode.
Speaker 1: I listened to all your podcasts while it would work
Speaker 1: as a postman here in Edmonton, Alberta. Alberta is thankfully
Speaker 1: a quote rat free, unquote province. This knowledge was a
Speaker 1: secure any blanket that I clung to while listening to
Speaker 1: you your podcast has me gagging and quivering up while
Speaker 1: delivering mails. His childhood, I have had a phobia of rats.
Speaker 1: I am able to control this fear down to a
Speaker 1: mildest comfort in most cases. The rat king, however, is
Speaker 1: one of the most disgusting things I could possibly imagine. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then it all descends into as gibberish from there.
Speaker 1: So that was a delightful Yeah. I'm sorry to cause
Speaker 1: such consternation, but that was a really funny email. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then we also heard from Sue B who writes
Speaker 1: in about the same gender sex pairings and animals the
Speaker 1: gay animals episode we did, and Subi says I had
Speaker 1: two pet rats that their sisters named Natalie and Eka.
Speaker 1: It has an explanation point at the end as to
Speaker 1: say that that's the kind of name that you would
Speaker 1: need an explanation point with. Eka was large and more aggressive,
Speaker 1: but not as adventurous as Natalie as to exploring their surroundings.
Speaker 1: Natalie would get into anything not sealed off. Eca was
Speaker 1: very interested in pinning latally down and licking her genet
Speaker 1: o you or mounting her as a male would. Natalie
Speaker 1: had no interest in this. At times, ECA's ardor was
Speaker 1: very aggressive and nat would have to fight her off.
Speaker 1: Eka would be would be relentless to the point that
Speaker 1: it distressed me. I wanted to tell her to stop
Speaker 1: raping her sister. So many character aspects here in incest,
Speaker 1: same gender, sexual attraction, a possibility of a sexuality, and
Speaker 1: just playing domination. I guess that's my two cents best
Speaker 1: regards to be Wow, that was the oddest configuration of
Speaker 1: words ever tumbling out of your mouth with with such
Speaker 1: intonations as well. I don't even know what to say
Speaker 1: with about that. So that's fascinating. We we asked for
Speaker 1: examples of same sex animal adventures and uh, that was
Speaker 1: an interesting account, So it wasn't expecting yet the level
Speaker 1: of detail. Yeah, so hey, if the rest of you
Speaker 1: guys would like to pipe in, if you have something
Speaker 1: you would like to add about rat kings, about same
Speaker 1: sex relationships between rat Kings, or just good old green indeed,
Speaker 1: let us know. We'd love to hear about it. I
Speaker 1: mean specifically, you know, how do you process envy in
Speaker 1: your life? I mean, to to what extent do you
Speaker 1: feel like you're aware of it? Do you ever catch
Speaker 1: yourself becoming envious? And uh? And then how do you
Speaker 1: process Did you ever know how much it wore your
Speaker 1: brain down? Yeah? Yeah? Do you feel like a little
Speaker 1: worn out after a long bout of envy? If so,
Speaker 1: let us know. Um. You can find us on Facebook
Speaker 1: as stuff to Blow the Mind, and you can find
Speaker 1: us on Twitter as Blow the Mind, and you can
Speaker 1: send us an email at Blow the Mind at Discovery
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to check out our new video podcast,
Speaker 1: Stuff from the Future. Join how Stuff Work staff as
Speaker 1: we explore the most promising and perplexing possibilities of tomorrow.