最近空闲时间刷推，刷到芒格的一段访谈，在谈话中，他分享了一些很有意义的观点，芒格说：
With all this enormous increase in living standards, freedom, diminishment of racial inequities, and all the huge progress that has come, people are less happy about the state of affairs than they were when things were way tougher.
That has a very simple explanation. The world is not driven by greed; it’s driven by envy. So the fact that everybody’s five times better off than they used to be, they take that for granted. All they think about is somebody else having more now and it’s not fair that he should have it and they don’t. That’s the reason that God came down and told Moses that he couldn’t envy his neighbor’s wife or even his donkey. I mean, even the old Jews were having trouble with envy.
So it’s built into the nature of things. It’s weird for somebody at my age because I was in the middle of the Great Depression and the hardship was unbelievable. I was safer walking around Omaha in the evening than I am in my own neighborhood in Los Angeles after all this great wealth and so forth. So and I have no way of doing anything about it. I can’t change the fact that a lot of people are very unhappy and feel very abused after everything’s improved by about 600% because there’s still somebody else who has more. I have conquered envy in my own life. I don’t envy anybody. I don’t give a damn what somebody else has. But other people are going crazy by it. And other people play to the envy in order to advance their own political careers.
We have whole networks now that want to pour gasoline on the flames of envy. I like the religion of the old Jews. I like the people who were against envy, not the people who were trying to profit from it.
Think of the pretentious expenditures of the rich. Who in the hell needs a Rolex watch so you can get mugged for it? Yet, everybody wants to have a pretentious expenditure. That helps drive demand in our modern capitalist society. My advice to the young people is: don’t go there. To hell with the pretentious expenditure. I don’t think there’s much happiness in it. But it does drive the civilization we actually have. And it drives the dissatisfaction.
Steven Pinker of Harvard is a smart academic. He constantly points out that everything’s gotten way, way better, but the general feeling about how fair it is has gotten way more hostile. As it gets better and better, people are less and less satisfied. That is weird but that’s what’s happened.
以下是芒格引用的原文关于圣经旧约中上帝对摩西的十诫中的第十条。
Exodus 20:17
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
出埃及记 20:17
不可贪恋人的房屋，也不可贪恋人的妻子，仆婢，牛驴，并他一切所有的。
在芒格的这段访谈中，你可以看到芒格对《旧约》及其中对人性中的嫉妒(envy)有很深的理解，芒格其实得到过不少人(通常为中年年龄段，有一定社会阅历)的仰慕评价，只不过巴菲特过于耀眼，又勤于传道，掩盖了不少芒格的光芒。访谈中他认为嫉妒不会带来幸福，芒格觉得困惑的是，尽管当今社会与过去相比有了很大的改善，财富也增加了，但许多人仍然不快乐，他们被人性中的嫉妒所驱使，不断关注别人比自己拥有的更多，比如奢侈消费，因为容貌焦虑整容等，现在的互联网更是给嫉妒之火加了一把油。芒格居住的社区中感到的安全感也远不如大萧条时期，他钦佩古老犹太教的教义，这种教义鼓励反对嫉妒的人，而不是从中获利的人。他也承认，虽然他个人已经克服了嫉妒，不再关心别人拥有什么，但许多人仍被嫉妒所吞噬，自己也无能为力。
芒格的观点和认知绝对是能引起了许多人的共鸣。说来惭愧，在人生的不同阶段，我也有过不同种类的嫉妒情绪，哪怕如今工作后许久，因为从事码农技术行业，许多技术男互相看不起等问题也是常见的，我记得我的某位前老板(行业翘楚，为人很好)，也会像小孩子的一样去鄙夷他人的工作内容，可能他或他的工作内容存在前老板嫉妒的某一点？有点荒唐对不对，这样的事情甚至也可以发生在一个成年且有了小孩的社会精英上。
信仰塑造的价值观和认知会带来了许多改变，逐渐意识到嫉妒的问题是小男人心态(little man issue)，而如果没有合适的价值观塑造(信仰，家庭)，嫉妒就会破坏我们的关系，造成不可逆的损害。一些人认识到自己的嫉妒情绪，并学会了如何应对，就像芒格一样。然而，无论你是否拥有信仰，你是否能意识到自己的嫉妒情绪？你知道如何克服它们吗？嫉妒就好像这个为上帝所造的世界硬编码(hard code)在人类基因里的程序，是人类固有的一面，正如经上(约翰一书 2:16 )记着说：
john 1 2:16
For everything in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—comes not from the Father but from the world.
约翰一书 2:16
因为，凡世界上的事，就像肉体的情欲、眼目的情欲，并今生的骄傲，都不是从父来的，乃是从世界来的。