La envidia permitió superar el igualitarismo feroz de las sociedades primitivas ayudándonos a conciliar el egoísmo con la sociabilidad

SAPIENS.- Selfish traits such as envy have a bad reputation. They are, after all, “deadly sins,” “impurities of the heart,” and, according to the Summa Theologica (circa 1265–1273) of Thomas Aquinas, their “object is contrary to charity, whence the soul derives its spiritual life.” And it is not just Catholicism that has it in for them. All major religions decree that a special kind of damnation awaits those in thrall to the green-eyed monster.

Yet, as socially corrosive as it might appear, there is an awful lot of envy about. Social media is saturated in it. So much so that it has spawned a flourishing new line of business for therapists, as well as a range of new diagnostic terms such as “Facebook envy.”

Reflecting its amplification in social media, envy has now moved from the shadows of the corridors of power to center stage. But beyond headline-grabbing squabbles about inauguration turnouts and sniping on social media, envy plays a far more profound role in shaping our choices and actions than most of us would care to admit. This is not just because it often masquerades as ambition. Nor is it because so many of us now conflate self-worth with impossible expectations.

Rather, it is because envy served an important, if surprising, evolutionary purpose—one that helps us to reconcile this most selfish of traits with the sociability that was so critical to the extraordinary success of our species. If the behavior of 20th-century hunter-gather societies is anything to go by, over and above its obvious selective benefits for individuals, envy formed part of the cocktail of traits that ultimately assisted Homo sapiens to form and maintain strong social groups.

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