Golly, thanks for all the high praise for today’s column — a very nice change for yours truly. My apologies for the “Mailbox is full” messages a little while ago. I cleared it out. Anyway, a few interesting e-mails:

Jonah, I’m not sure if you don’t already know this about “Futterneid” ABER, like many of German’s best words, it’s a compound word. It literally means “food jealousy” But, there is a subtlety to the word that makes it especially good. The word “Futter” is not a word usually used for humans – Futter is animal food – we’d call it “feed.” So “Futterneid” connotes a vary base emotion – one that it might be logical for animals or perhaps children to feel, but certainly not for rational, thinking adults… Not sure if you knew the subtleties. Thought I’d share…

Me: I did know that it’s mostly a phenomenon for animals, but I didn’t know all this detail.

But I didn’t know this about crabs:

Jonah,
I first heard this in the Bahamas, where it’s called “Black Crab
Syndrome”. They sell crabs there by the road, in cages with no lid. As
long as there are at least two crabs in the cage, none will escape. As
soon as one makes it part-way up, the others will pull it down.

And then there’s this from my productivity guy:

Jonah
Today’s column was AWESOME! For years I have thought that one of the biggest failures in our culture has been ignoring the importance of envy. We all know how common it is in everyday life, but how often has envy been central to character motivation in books, films or plays in the last 30 or so years?
I’m also dubious about whether envy can ever play a positive role in society. Envy necessarily involves a comparison of the self to others that leads to a feeling of absence in your own life – but rather than acting on that feeling in any positive way (i.e. by changing your behavior in ways to fill what’s missing) the impulse is to tear others down. This is pure poison, and the opposite of genuine empathy (which is recognizing that you are more fortunate than many others and trying to help them up). I also think the pure destructiveness of envy distinguishes it from the other seven deadly sins, which if properly modulated and channeled can lead to benefits either for the self or others e.g. greed leading to prosperity, pride to dignity and refinement, anger that becomes righteous, gluttony to competitive eating prowess (OK, maybe not – but the sins of gluttony and sloth are mostly about self-mastery and don’t really involve others).
And of course, it goes without saying that envy is the favored sin of the Left and has caused millions to be murdered in pursuit of utopian schemes. IMO, greed which leads to the exploitation of others is the temptation of the Right. In both cases, the real sin is that others are intentionally being harmed to benefit yourself.
Again, awesome job, I hope others pick up on this theme.

Me: First, thanks. Actually, I’m a teeny bit keen on some day writing a book on sin. Or at least on some of ‘em. Oxford University Press recently put out a series on the seven deadly sins, I haven’t read ‘em yet, but I think I will. Meanwhile, readers interested in envy really should pick up Helmut Schoeck’s Envy: A Theory of Social Behavior. Also, Joseph Epstein wrote the Envy edition of the OUP’s seven deadly sins series, and he’s always worth reading. As for the skepticism that envy can ever be good, Gonzalo Fernandez de la Mora agrees that it’s always bad in Egalitarian Envy. I think it kind of depends how narrowly or precisely you define your terms.