How useful vanity and envy are!

How little humans would do without them.

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Are they learned or are they “innate”?

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Modeled by authority figures. Rewarded and reinforced by short-term exclusion of “intolerable” emotions, usually insecurity and fear of being insufficient. (Took six years and $135,000.00 to learn that.)

Vanity and envy motivate more people than kindness and charity would. Maybe the world has always been this way but it seems really out of control right now.

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Well we all had parents, and some of us had siblings. We often learn insecurity and insufficiency from our relations with them. And then we’re all immersed in our culture which teaches us emotions and attitudes and judgments and shame and envy and desire.

Is there no vanity/envy in apes?

Vanity I’d say is not unhealthy , if its within normal limits. Envy though is destructive unless you can use that emotion to take positive action. Envy; inwardly pointed or internalized is destroying IMHO

My guess is there is. But Sapolsky says zebras don’t have stress… 'cause they don’t have language and the “tyranny of words.”