...that devil, envy did all the mischief, which the bad bear unto the good, only because they are good.

Name	Aurelius Augustinus
Life	354 - 430
Country	Algeria
Category	Idealism
Wikipedia	>>

Once upon a time, God up in heaven noticed a peasant who did a very good deed. God was so impressed that he climbed down Jacob's ladder, went up to the peasant and said: "That, my good man, was a very good deed. It was so good that I, your Lord, have decided to fulfill one wish of yours, anything you may want. There is only one small condition: of whatever you wish, your closest neighbor will get double as much." The peasant thought for a while. Then he looked, somewhat mean-spirited, at God and said: "Lord, I want you to tear out one of my eyes." Having grown up in a nation where "that devil, envy" was God, I have come to ask myself if the world, since Cain and Abel, Romulus and Remus or even Seth and Osiris, has not been ruled by an Aristotelian cyclical wave between the arrogance, or "hubris", that Euripides concentrated upon, and Augustine's devil "envy," which for him explained Cain's murder of Abel. When the rich and powerful get too successful, they also tend to become too arrogant. Then they are warned by the blind seer, Theiresias. When they don't listen, they are punished by God, Destiny or by popular revolt. When envy has driven the murderous revenge of events, like in the French or Russian revolutions,

too far, arrogant power holders again rise to the top and want, for instance, to conquer all of Europe, as Napoleon and Stalin tried to do. A German author has written a book showing that envy is not only a deep human trait throughout history, but also, more specifically, the deepest element in Marxism, socialism and communism. Which duly went too far and was replaced by the "market forces". That is, by highly successful capitalists who, in their recklessly fast globalization are, again, becoming dangerously arrogant. Is this historical pattern - the long rolling waves between arrogance and envy - predetermined ? And, if so, is it predetermined by God, Destiny, Fate or by our biologically unchanged human nature? Augustine had a big quarrel with a man named Pelagius about this question. Pelagius thought that man, using his "free will", could improve his behavior, even so much that by good deeds he could increase his chances of entering heaven in his next life. "NO, NO!", said Augustine. We are created with arrogance and envy as part of our "original sin". Only by the grace of God may we enter heaven. This discussion took place down in Carthage at the beginning of the fifth century A.D. Looked upon with some 1,600 years of added human experience, one is tempted to say that Augustine was right. By free will we have certainly increased our material wealth. But doesn't our spiritual human nature seem as affected by "original sin" now as then? Are we inevitably doomed to be ruled either by the exaggerated arrogance of the successful, or by the revengeful envy of the less so?