Envy: when looking at another turns into murder

Source: The fatal glance: from the Garden of Eden to the deadly field

"In the course of time, Cain brought an offering to the Lord from the fruit of the ground... and Abel, too, brought from the firstborn of his flock and from their fat... And the Lord paid heed to Abel and to his offering. But to Cain and to his offering He paid no heed... and Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him." (Genesis 4:3-8)

"The serpent peered at him and saw his glory [that of Adam], and became jealous of him." (Sanhedrin 59b)

(Image: Cain burying Abel, from a 16th-century Persian manuscript)

Explanation: Anatomy of a gaze: how envy is born

The first murder in history did not happen because of a scarcity of resources. Cain and Abel, like the serpent in the Garden of Eden, reveal the fundamental structure of envy: it always stems from "peering"—a glance into the world of the other that creates a break in symmetry in our consciousness. Envy is directed at whoever is like us ("his brother") and springs from the feeling that the "supreme authority" favored the other, granting them what you lack.

Perspective: Cain's bitter discovery: when I'm not the best

Cain was the first natural human being. He was no longer the first man, Adam, and he discovered the hard way that he wasn't the most important or valued being in the world. And in a world run by ego, "not the best" is a death sentence. We like to think envy is wishing I had what someone else has, but envy—unlike competition—is often the wish that the other won't have what you lack. Rather than trying to find a way to be accepted before God, Cain prefers that his brother can't be either, and kills him.

Going Deeper: Mimetic desire: we want what the other wants

As we have already learned, the anthropologist René Girard developed the theory of "mimetic desire". He argued that human beings do not know what they want; we want something because someone else wants it. The other person is our "model," and the moment they desire something, its value rises. Envy is an inevitable byproduct of human imitation: we want to be the other, and therefore we must eliminate them as a rival.

Culture: Salieri versus Mozart: when Heaven flips a coin

Antonio Salieri (1750–1825) was an Italian composer and conductor, one of the most important and celebrated musicians of his era, and the imperial court composer in Vienna. Around that time, an astonishing new talent emerged, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, but this newcomer struggled to land prestigious posts or gain fame, and he envied Salieri. The revenge came after both had died, when Mozart's admirers flipped the script—culminating in the film "Amadeus" (1984), where the director (inspired by the great Pushkin) portrays Salieri's "Cain-like envy" toward Mozart. In the movie, Salieri is a devout, hardworking man who cannot bear the fact that God chose to bestow boundless genius on a vulgar, skirt-chasing "brat." His envy is religious: Why does life work out precisely for those who make no effort?

By the end of the film, Salieri realizes that talent might just be handed out from Heaven on a coin toss, and all we can do is try to draw close to the gifted and learn from them, even if we will never be like them. In the end, the victors write history.