From the author: In this article I used excerpts from the book “Everything about Life” by Mikhail Weller. Of all the metaphorical definitions of envy (of which, of course, there are many), Scriabin’s can be singled out; “Envy is an admission of defeat.” Perhaps the most blatant example of envy in world history is the course of the 2nd Punic War. The Barca family was the richest and most influential in Carthage, and its most famous representative Hannibal, after the Cannes victory, became the idol of the people. But his army in Italy melted away, and the Romans recruited and fielded more and more legions against him. Hannibal bombarded the Carthaginian Senate with requests for reinforcements that would finally decide the fate of the war - he moved from reasoned demands to plaintive pleas, he appealed and convinced. And the senators, who were fiercely jealous of his fame, wealth and influence, finally delivered a verdict that went down in the annals. “You’re already winning, why do you need more reinforcements?” Several decades passed - and the Romans swept Carthage off the face of the earth, the population was slaughtered or sold into slavery, and the plow drew a symbolic furrow through the wasteland on the site of the great city not long ago: from now on and forever there will be nothing here. Envy prevailed over the good of the state and one’s own. They themselves died, but the damned lucky Hannibal eventually poisoned himself while on the run. This is very close to the famous joke about how God invited a man to fulfill any desire and give anything, but his neighbor would be given the same thing twice as much. A house is two houses, a herd of horses is two herds, a jar of gold is two jars. The man stared for a long time and gnashed his teeth in puzzlement, until in an epiphany he asked: “Take away one of my eyes!” And this anecdote can be balanced by the statement: “The purest and most selfless joy is watching your neighbor’s house burn.” Of course, it’s nice to stew, and they’ll feed you, but it’s still nice. Another example is that Pompey was jealous of the military successes of the brilliant Lucullus and thoughtfully and consistently took away from him the fruits of Asian victories, actually appropriating someone else’s triumph. After which, offended to the deepest depths of his soul, Lucullus spat on the good of the state and fell into that fabulous luxury of private life, which became legendary. The world history of envy would be a most interesting and instructive encyclopedia. There is no need to talk about the envy of creative people. Everyone wants to be the best, everyone can’t stand someone else’s success if it surpasses yours and even threatens it. So there is an expression: “poets have such a custom - when they gather in a circle, they spit on each other” - and this line has long become a textbook. To praise another writer for a writer means to insult him, and God forbid that a writer, favored by a publisher, should overhear the same publisher singing the same praises to another. But okay, if the writer works at home and practically does not see his colleagues, what should an actor do? Here is the great and brilliant actress Sarah Bernhardt “she crushed her competitors with one click of her jaws, through tears visible to the world and blood invisible to doctors.” Or there was a young talented beauty Tatyana Ivanova in Leningrad, and the great BDT took her, Tovstonogov right away to the first cast, and gave her the title role in the new play, and there was success and applause, but her predecessors said: “Click!” - and the great actress Ivanova passed away. Envy is also beautiful in science. So, for example, academicians of the Prussian Royal Academy of Sciences in the first half of the 19th century did not accept the philosopher Hegel into their “team,” no matter how hard he tried. For, as old man Skotinin said, “Who, father, loves the one who is smarter than him, and among my pigs, I myself am the smartest.” But the famous literary critic Roman Yakobson was himself an undeniably smart man, and for many years he headed the department of Russian literature at the prestigious Harvard University. And so the brilliant and even in some ways great writer Nabokov applied for the department - he also wanted to work there: he had original and quite valuable literary ideas, but, on the other hand, there was no money, soA professor's salary wouldn't hurt. But Nabokov's fame was higher than Jacobson's, and his style was better. And when other employees persuaded Yakobson that Nabokov was a great writer, a stylist, an erudite, the sarcastic Yakobson objected: “The whale, you know, is also a large waterfowl, but on this basis we do not invite him to work at the department of ichthyology!” And how he decorated on the bookshelf an elegant volume about female envy. As a free supplement, a volume of anecdotes would fit well with it, and even a couple of volumes describing marvelous incidents from the lives of celebrities. For example: “Honey, how this man looks at me! “This is probably a jeweler,” his friend hisses, looking angrily at her luxurious necklace.” Here's another example: a movie star, by hook or by crook, finds out what dress another movie star will wear to her reception, spends a lot of money on five rolls of the same, and extremely expensive, fabric, and urgently upholsters half an apartment with it, so that the unfortunate woman who grabbed it yesterday a prize at a festival, looks like a piece of home furnishings in this house. But they also say: “He has something that I don’t have, it causes me suffering, I want it too, I will strive until I achieve it” - this is the concept “ white envy." And here is the incentive to compete and achieve something. Positive, expedient and understandable. And of course, the basis of everything is the notorious instinct of life. A person always strives to realize his capabilities as much as possible and weighs his achievements against the achievements of other people; your capabilities - relative to the capabilities of other people. But it's never enough for him. He creates for himself an ideal of a person, where he strives to be more significant than all other people, saying: “I am almost a god, all in white and on a horse, and the rest are at the bottom, in the swamp and insignificant, but I am significant.” These are the two sides of aspiration. The first half is positive - the desire to make oneself above everyone else; the other negative is to make everyone inferior to you. This negative half is called envy. So, envy is the negative aspect of the desire for self-realization, which is expressed in the desire for one’s maximum significance through minimizing the significance of others. And we do not strive to show our envy just because it means admitting that the level of our opportunities below the level of ambition. And recognizing means publicly admitting your insignificance, weakness, and recognizing another as better than yourself. A person can come to terms with everything: with his poverty, frailty, ugliness, unluckiness, but everyone has some kind of point by which he respects himself and values ​​himself highly, and it is in this that, in the future, they seek recognition. So who is the biggest envious person? Most likely, this is a person whose level of ambition is as high as possible, and whose level of capabilities is as low as possible. Humorist Kostya Melikhan put it brilliantly on this matter: “A person can do everything as long as he does nothing.” And each of us understands that in order to succeed, we need to do something. You need energy, a thirst for action - you need a creative beginning. The “professional” envious person is deprived of this. He is talkative and lazy, even if he is fussy in appearance. It is easier for him to prove to himself and everyone that others, who are considered superior, are actually inferior to him - it is simpler, it gives more satisfaction. And here a person follows the line of least resistance in achieving his maximum significance. He realizes himself through negativity: evaluatively lowering everyone below himself. A negatively directed thought, as a source of feeling of importance, replaces the action of the envious person. It is like an empty flower - it blooms beautifully, but there is no need to give fruit. You can get rid of envy only by getting rid of desires in general. The brilliant comedian Moliere was the best comic actor of his era. But he was terribly worried that he was not a tragedian, and passionately dreamed of being one. Playing with the troupe in front of the King of France, when the entire future fate depended on the monarch’s reaction, he achieved wild success and received a standing ovation. And immediately after this, contrary to all plans, he drove the tragedy - pitiful and.