Deadly Sin or Biological Drive?
How we misconstrue our feelings.
Posted February 11, 2025 | Reviewed by Abigail Fagan
“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him” —Lin-chi I-hsüan
Envy — an emotion of want or a desire for something that someone else has — a gnawing, painful craving. Your gain is my pain.
Jealousy — a complex emotion that mixes envy with a perceived or real loss to someone else — a swirling of anger , anxiety , sadness, and despair. My loss and your gain is my pain.
Schadenfreude — a pleasure experienced because of someone else’s misfortune or undoing, usually someone of relative wealth, prestige, and power. Your pain is my gain.
Bullying — a pleasure experienced by exerting power over, intimidating or harming someone else, usually someone of inferior assets, less status, and feebleness. Your inflicting of pain is your gain.
All of these feelings have a sense of threat at their root.
Bullies are generally insecure and miserable people who have difficulty being content let alone happy. Bullies are not competitors but instead predators who surround themselves with weaker sycophants who support their actions, antics, and insults. They stack the deck in favor of their personal winning in all interpersonal interactions.
Bullies find relief from their chronic threat physiology by humiliating and defeating others. The win brings with it a dopamine hit and pleasure, that is short lived, until they can get another win, and another, and another... A draw to the despicable that gives them temporary relief from their misery.
Bullies are committed to creating their wins through other’s losses. They are the creators of inequity to their advantage. Whereas envy, jealousy, and schadenfreude are feelings that arise not from creating an advantaged inequity but from perceiving a disadvantaged inequity.
Schadenfreude is a pleasure experienced when the threat of inequity and unfairness is mitigated or eliminated — a relief experienced from another’s misfortune, a joy from the leveling of the playing field.
The Kansas City Chiefs are an exemplary organization with a charming and brilliant head coach, an unusually talented quarterback, and a gregarious and skilled tight end who happens to be dating a national treasure and superstar — nothing not to like here. Yet, unless you are a Chiefs fan you were probably rooting for them to lose to the Eagles in the Superbowl. Why? Because they have won a lot and enough. We like others to win. We like underdogs. We like equity. And therefore, we got pleasure from the Chiefs losing. My gain from your pain.
Unlike schadenfreude, envy and jealousy are not pleasurable but painful emotions that arise from a sense of threat. This threat can be perceived, real, or just relative. When there isn’t a just and proper balance to our world, when something feels amiss, we feel this as a pain. This is to be human.
Humans, and other animals, are wired, genetically coded, for equity. Envy, jealousy, and schadenfreude arise from threat physiology and help to hold a balance within relationships, communities, and societies. These are not sins; they are just the biology of threat.
Whereas empathy, compassion, and kindness arise from safety physiology and they too help to hold a balance within relationships, communities, and societies. The ability to understand someone else's pain, feeling pain from someone else’s pain, arises under safety physiology. These are not virtues; they are just the biology of safety.
Unfortunately, humans, with a neocortex 300-fold larger than our nearest primate relatives, can create maladaptive constructs, narratives, and beliefs that pit our imagination and intellect against our instincts and drives by reframing these feelings as a weakness or strength, bad or good, sin or virtue, or even evil or divine, when it is just the biology of threat versus safety, and no more.
Instead of denying these feelings or creating these narratives and beliefs around these feelings, we need to attend to what these feelings are signaling to us…inequity is not good for us.
Inequity activates our anterior cingulate cortex and limbic system — our pain pathways. How do people treat this pain of inequity? Sometimes the pain serves to motivate us to struggle and strive to get what we don’t have, but too often we turn to distraction, dissociation, substance use, addiction , and suicide to soothe the pain.
A reduction in inequity activates our striatum — our pleasure pathway. How do disenfranchised people find this kind of pleasure in an inequitable world? Too often this involves antisocial behaviors — rumors, cancellation, attacking the “ tall poppy ”, violence, homicide, terrorism, mass killings, and even war.
Inequity and chronic threat physiology are the sources of much of the chronic disease, disability, dysfunction, pain, and suffering that we see in the world today. Individual and societal degeneration, destruction, and death arise from inequity. Inequity kills.
Let’s take the time to understand what these pains, and these pleasures, are telling us. It isn’t that the world needs to be made completely equal, but the world needs to be made completely fair. Equal opportunities, equal rights, equal treatment, equal accountability, and equal justice under the law are essential to fairness.
This doesn’t mean everyone will have the same income, the same assets, the same wealth, nor the same looks, the same intellect, and the same aptitudes, but it does mean there will be more fairness. Where there is more equity, there is more safety, health, happiness , and peace.
So, it’s ok to feel envy, jealousy, and schadenfreude. There is a biological purpose for these emotions. It is ok to trim a “tall poppy”, and it is certainly ok to cut down a bully. There is a biological purpose to these behaviors. It is also ok to get some pleasure in both seeing the Eagles win and seeing the Chiefs lose. All of this is just part of being human and experiencing our biological drive towards equity.
Stay Safe and Stay Tuned,
In consultation with Stephen Bezruchka, Sue Carter, Doug Garland, Garrett Cook, and Dave Hanscom.
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David Roger Clawson, M.D., is a Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation physician with an interest in natural prevention and healing strategies for health and wellness. Foundational to this practice is the understanding of threat and defensive physiology versus safety and restorative physiology.
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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.