“...the indulgence of envy actually destroys the gratitude that is central to human happiness.
One of the reasons all studies demonstrate that [some] are so much happier and fulfilled than [others] is because they are less envious.
As Augustine teaches, “Whether he will or no, a man is necessarily a slave to the things by means of which he seeks to be happy.” As such, our love is the vector of our lives: “My weight is my love. Wherever I am carried, my love is carrying me.” Thus, Augustine’s pithy definition of virtue, which he called “rightly ordered love.” In short, everyone loves, but the question is, what do they love? For if you love wrongly or unwisely, your soul will be pulled right into wrongness, right along with your wrong love.
One of the reasons [some] are so unhappy is that they love wrongly. They love envy instead of gratitude, self-expression instead of self-mastery, ....
For as the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein demonstrated, envy is both innate and insatiable. Furthermore, envy is really not so much interested in having what it wants, but rather in destroying the painful tension involved in not having it. Envy is irrational, and will not go about obtaining the desired end in a sober and rational way, but will instead take the shortcut of attacking the person who has what they want. ...
Another critical discovery of Melane Klein was that envy and gratitude had an unconscious inverse dialectical relationship, which is to say, the more envy, the less gratitude, and the more gratitude, the less envy. This has many fascinating permutations that work themselves out in different ways.
For example ... “ http://tinyurl.com/afsv62
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Happiness Is a Moral Obligation
http://tinyurl.com/arb24e
Thankyou for posting. Never considered the envy to gratitude curve relative to happiness. Very insightful. Thanks again. Its always good to learn something new, especially things dealing with wisdom.