Most of us commenting here live in competitive, capitalistic societies and a lot of our sense of self worth and self esteem comes from comparison (mostly comparing to our friends, colleagues and siblings) - and the metrics as we all know are stuff like career/money and other social status metrics. Feelings of envy are completely involuntary btw so there is no need to pretend like feeling them or not feeling is some kind of moral virtue - you don't control what you feel or don't feel. It sounds reasonable to me to speculate that these feelings have an evolutionary basis - e.g when you were envious of your neighbor's cave you felt crappy and worked harder on your own cave, thus increasing your own survival rate and the prevalence of envious genes. We are a biological creature designed for survival and envy seems very important to me in achieving it.

Does that mean we have to be slaves to our genes? I hope not. People like Sam Harris and others offer all kinds of methods to detach and "win" over our biology.

While feelings may be involuntary, this does not mean we are beholden to them. Maybe envy is what happens when a consciousness is discontent and allows these feelings to overpower.

envy: "a feeling of discontented or resentful longing aroused by someone else's possessions, qualities, or luck"

So it's just a feeling. What you do with it (actions) is up to you, most people don't act upon those feelings in any noticeable way.

But if we are being honest with ourselves constant feelings of envy often do lead to a deteriorating relationship (usually in the form of the person feeling envious choosing to distance himself from whomever he's feeling envious of), simply for the fact that feeling envious feels like crap - and when you are feeling envious of a person you actually care about it feels double crap (you feel envious and guilty at the same time).

This is a profound insight. What do you do if you know someone is distancing themselves from you out of envy? (And what do you do if you're the one with the envy?)

Is the answer generally just "it is what it is?" That's so dark.

Some people deal with these feelings better than others. Also - if for example you are much richer than average you can still live a humble life. You dont have to drive a Porsche. That's all I have...

Basically mindfulness and humility... thank you.

I sincerely do not believe that this behavior is genetic. As you've said, many of us live in competitive capitalist societies, we are conditioned into a socipathic mindset by advertising, and educated to reduce the people in our lives to numbers on a spreadsheet. This is not how humans are meant to function, we have been conditioned and trained to think this way.

It is exacerbated by our current system for sure but I think the core of it is still there, genetically. I say that because I remember my old dog would act up if I petted the cat sometimes. Also very young toddlers show envious behaviour when a sibling is born.