ing Solomon made the quite intriguing claim that jealousy is as cruel as the grave (Song of Solomon 8:6).  This is an extraordinarily striking thing to say, because one’s initial thought surely is that nothing could be as bad as death itself.  Certainly not jealousy.  La Rochefoucauld had this to say: “Jealousy is the greatest of all evils, and the least pitied by those who cause it”. 

What is it about jealousy that gives rise to such strong claims?  The answer, I am afraid, is quite simple: Jealousy starts with the living and will not rest until the living has been rendered dead—if not literally, at least figuratively.  And in this regard, jealousy has no shame.  A jealous spouse, for instance, will attribute motives to her or his beloved that are plainly ludicrous.  The jealous, for example, will not allow for the possibility of an innocent smile.  The beloved who smiles was flirting, even if the smile was just in shaking hands with the clergy person while leaving service. 

No one is more masterful at contributing ill motives to another than a jealous person.

It is characteristic of the jealous person to be so concerned with the success of others that the individual cannot fully appreciate her or his own successes.  And in this regard, the jealous person is vicious.  The jealous person blames others for his lack of success vis à vis others, no matter how true it is that if he had acted differently he would have been just as successful, or nearly so. 

The best way to bring out the character of jealousy is by contrasting it with greed. 

The greedy person is in many ways too busy trying to accumulate things to be concerned with blaming others.  Thus, although the greedy person wants increasingly more of this or that, he is not primarily concerned with demonizing those who have more than he has.  Rather, his primary concern is with changing that state of affairs so that he, in the end, has more than the others.  In a very straightforward sense, the greedy person can be too busy accumulating to be malicious, precisely because maliciousness often gets in the way of taking advantage of opportunities that unexpectedly present themselves. 

To be sure, greedy people can be quite indifferent to the weal and woe of others.  And this is obviously wrong.  But this is not the same thing as having a stake in maligning others, which is a characteristic feature of the jealous person.  It is not just that the jealous people wants what others have, but he seems to have an invested interest in sullying the character of those who have what he does not have, even if he could get what they have without doing so. 

While maliciousness may serve the cause of the greedy, they do not have an independent stake in being malicious.  Just the opposite holds for the jealous.  And therein lies the feature that makes it so evil: A characteristic feature of jealousy is insatiable maliciousness until there is no life left.  By contrast, maliciousness on the part of a greedy person can indeed be satiated.

Here is a very vivid way of putting the difference: While the greedy person may very well step on others to get what he wants, the jealous person will step on others even if he can get what he wants without doing so.  Worse, he will do even when the other is already down.  Not surprisingly, it is characteristic of jealous people that they have little or no remorse for the harm that they do to others.  Worse, they cannot see that they are doing harm, since they see their behavior as justified vis à vis the other. 

I believe that jealousy is driven by self-hatred.  One does not see oneself as deserving of anything; accordingly, one will not allow that others might be deserving of anything.  Or to put the point another way: jealousy is a projection of one’s emptiness upon others and the determination to bring it about that the other’s life is as empty as one’s own. 

I also think that jealousy can be occasioned or enflamed.  For people can be made more aware of their emptiness.  That is, they can be made to feel it more acutely.  There is a very fine line between fighting for equality and fueling a sense of jealousy. 

I see much of what is going on in the Middle East as little more than jealousy masquerading as justice.  The same claim holds for the likes of Dieudonné in France and Farrakhan (of the 90s) in the United States. 

Jealousy can also be attributed to neo-Nazi and other white extremist groups.  Hitler was absolutely a jealous person. 

Notice the parallel.  A jealous spouse can see a gesture of infidelity where what we have in truth is no more than a feeble smile of politeness.  Dieudonné and Farrakhan have made claims about whites in general and Jews in particular that are not just false but fly in the fact of basic facts.  White extremist do the same thing with regard to blacks.  The jealous believes and maintains the absurd.  Racial extremist believe and maintain the absurd. 

On the other hand, the jealous person deems his behavior to be appropriate with respect to his beloved—a justification for protecting himself from inappropriate behavior on the part of his beloved and others with regard to her.  Similarly, Dieudonné and Farrakhan see no fault with anything that they do.  Likewise, white extremist see no fault with anything that they do. 

Evil has to obtain a foothold in our lives.  And I now think that nothing constitutes more fertile grounds for doing so than jealousy.  This is precisely because (i) jealousy is anchored in all but immutable self-hatred and (ii) jealousy is insatiable.  This way of looking at things explains some of the power of many people.  Self-hating people either succumb to their self-hatred and so visibly reveal themselves to be self-hating or they engage in an all out war to hide from their self-hatred.  The latter is the jealous person. 

This might all seem to be so much nonsense.  But let me end with a consideration that is most revealing.  One of the things that I find most striking about people like Dieudonné and Farrakhan and Arafat is the extent to which they enhance their material well-being even as there is suffering all around them on the part of the very individuals whom these individual claim to be fighting for in the name of justice.  What you never seem to hear is that these individuals made great economic sacrifices on behalf of their people, though precisely what they claim is that nothing is more important to them is the advancement of their people.  That is rather like claiming that nothing is more important to one than attending religious services each week, but always ending up at the theatre (or wherever) during the hour that these services take place. 

Where is the Farrakhan school for talented black folks in the United States?  Where is the Dieudonné school for talented black and Arabic French folks?  Where is Arafat’s school for gifted Palestinians? 

Jealousy is masterfully about itself whilst often masquerading as being concerned about others, as the point of the preceding paragraph makes clear.  Thus, La Rochefoucauld got it just right: Jealousy is the greatest of all evil.  Why?  Because it is the only evil that can masterfully present itself as doing good. 

As a man has no greater friend, then he who would lay down his life for him, it is also true that he hath no greater enemy than he who would destroy him under the pretext of doing good for him.  To the latter death itself is not obviously a worse alternative. 

Alas, the jealous man makes the greedy man look virtuous.