Envy and hatred are not moral defects, they are automatic systemic signals. Somebody else’s gain is very often your loss not just psychologically, but materially, in noise, crowding, price rises, or opportunities taken.
For millennia, our organism was trained to detect this: in small communities, food, shelter, and mates were scarce, so another’s advantage meant less for you. That wiring never left us. It is not that we “envy” but rather envy happens to us, like pain. It strikes, because our body knows that every gain carries a hidden cost for others.
This is why pretending envy is “irrational” is hypocrisy. It is rational in a zero-sum frame. The empowerment does not lie in denying the strike, but in using it: as a signal to look again, to measure what price the other already paid, or will pay, and to decide where you want to place your own energy.
