The 50th Law (with 50 Cent)

particularly prone to feeling envy (see the next section for more on
this) before you become too enmeshed in their drama. It is hard to
measure what you will gain by avoiding an envy attack, but think of it
this way: the pain inflicted by one envier friend can resonate and
poison you for years.

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Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.
—Gore Vidal
Keys to Human Nature
Of all the human emotions, none is trickier or more elusive than envy.
It is very difficult to actually discern the envy that motivates people’s
actions or to even know that we have suffered an envy attack from
another. This is what makes it so frustrating to deal with and so
dangerous.
The reason for this elusiveness is simple: we almost never directly
express the envy we are feeling. If we feel anger toward people because
of something they said or did, we may try to disguise our anger for
various reasons, but we are aware that we are feeling hostile.
Eventually the anger will leak out in some nonverbal behavior. And if
we act upon our anger, the target will feel it for what it is and more
often than not know what caused the anger in that moment. But envy
is very different.
All of us feel envy, the sensation that others have more of what we
want—possessions, attention, respect. We deserve to have as much as
they do yet feel somewhat helpless to get such things. But as discussed
above, envy entails the admission to ourselves that we are inferior to
another person in something we value. Not only is it painful to admit
this inferiority, but it is even worse for others to see that we are feeling
this.
And so almost as soon as we feel the initial pangs of envy, we are
motivated to disguise it to ourselves—it is not envy we feel but
unfairness at the distribution of goods or attention, resentment at this
unfairness, even anger. Furthermore, the other person is not really
superior but simply lucky, overly ambitious, or unscrupulous. That’s
how they got to where they are. Having convinced ourselves that envy
is not motivating us but something else, we also make it very difficult
for others to detect the underlying envy. They see only our anger,
indignation, hostile criticisms, poisonous praise, and so on.
In ancient times, those who felt intense envy might have acted upon
it through violence, forcefully taking what the other had or even
resorting to murder. In the Old Testament, Cain murdered Abel out of
envy; the brothers of Joseph threw him in a ditch in the desert to die
because their father seemed to favor him; on several occasions King

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Saul tried to kill the younger David, so handsome and naturally gifted,
finally going mad with envy.
Today, however, people are much more political and indirect, able
to control any overt aggressive impulses and disguise what they’re
feeling. Instead of violence, enviers are likely to sabotage our work,
ruin a relationship, sully our reputation, torment us with criticisms
that are aimed at our most basic insecurities. This allows them to
maintain their social position while causing harm, their targets not
even suspecting envy as the motivation. They can justify these actions
to themselves as righting the perceived imbalance or unfairness.
If someone is angry with us and acts on it, we can analyze the anger
this person is feeling and figure out a way to defuse it or defend
ourselves. But if we cannot see the underlying envy, we are inevitably
confused by the hostile action of the envier, and this confusion doubles
the pain we experience. “Why are people suddenly being so cold to
me?” “Why did that project fail so unexpectedly?” “Why have I been
fired?” “Why is this person against me?”
Your task as a student of human nature is to transform yourself into
a master decoder of envy. You are ruthless in your analysis and your
determination to get to the root of what motivates people. The signs
that people emit of envy are harder to discern, but they exist, and you
can master the language with some effort and subtle discernment.
Think of it as an intellectual challenge. By being able to decode it, you
will not feel so confused. You will understand in hindsight that you
suffered an envy attack, which will help you get over it. You might be
able to see in advance the warning signs of such an attack and either
defuse or deflect it. And knowing the hidden pain that comes from one
well-aimed envy attack, you will spare yourself the emotional damage
that can last for years. This will not make you paranoid but only better
able to weed out the false and fatal friends (or colleagues) from the real
ones, the ones you can truly trust.
Before immersing yourself in the subtleties of the emotion, it is
important to distinguish between passive and active envy. All of us in
the course of a day will inevitably feel some pangs of envy, as we
unconsciously monitor the people around us and sense that they might
have more. It is a fact of social life that there are always people who are
superior to us in wealth, intelligence, likability, and other qualities. If
these pangs rise to the level of consciousness and are a bit acute, we

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might say something hurtful or mean-spirited as a way to vent the
emotion. But generally as we experience this passive form of envy, we
do not do anything that would in any meaningful way harm the
relationship with a friend or colleague. In detecting signs of passive
envy in others (for instance, little put-downs and offhand comments),
you should simply tolerate this as a fact of being a social animal.
Sometimes, however, this passive envy turns active. The underlying
sense of inferiority is too strong, leading to hostility that cannot be
vented by a comment or put-down. Sitting with one’s envy over a long
period of time can be painful and frustrating. Feeling righteous
indignation against the envied person, however, can be invigorating.
Acting on envy, doing something to harm the other person, brings
satisfaction, as it did to Jane, although the satisfaction is short-lived
because enviers always find something new to envy.
Your goal is to detect the signs of this more acute form of envy
before it turns dangerous. You can do this in three ways: by learning
the signs of envy that manage to leak through, by being aware of the
types of people who are more prone to acting on envy, and by
understanding the circumstances and actions that might trigger active
envy in people. You can never see all of the actions motivated by envy;
people are simply too good at disguising it. But using all three
decoding devices will increase your chances of detection.