I am not much into the 'seven deadlies' anymore. Those are passe, for the purposes of modernity., inasmuch as almost no one believes in everlasting life or any other such nonsense. There was something in The Atlantic, which fired a neuron though. It had to do with AUTHENTICITY. I fired off a response, which I copied to your partner, Conner, which , hopefully, he might share with all of you. There are always at least three ways of looking at anything---usually more...

CURRENT EVENTS AND HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES, (just for grins...):
Allegedly, the following quote was attributed to W.C. Fields-" I went to Philadelphia once; it was closed."

今天早上我在美国醒来，得知她又开始营业了。据说。

There are more than enough sins to go around and this has always been so. How anyone might entertain the notion of envy as a virtue is beyond the breadth of my mind's wrapping paper. Having said that, I can, 'sorta', recognize that, for my experience and the current state of this world, I live at a disadvantage. Nothing much I can do about this, other than getting along as best possible; treating those I know and respect with tolerance and courtesy; and remembering for my own edification something called the serenity prayer. Some reading this will know that little incantation. Others might Google it. Everyone else will go about their business, none the wiser... I bid them peace.

我想我以前从未听过这一连串的词:嫉妒，罪恶还是美德?别管我在2019年说了什么。我们是怎么想到这个不可能的问题的?一定是有人在何时何地把它裱起来的。看，如果我们听说过取消文化，和/或我们相当确定存在的历史修正主义，那么肯定有联系。考虑到这一点，这个问题真的是关于旧的文化规范还是新的、时髦的出现?
Many of us were taught, roughly, that envy is never virtuous. Nothing good comes of it and people have suffered because of it: even when they bring that suffering upon themselves. I'm not preaching to the choir or anyone else,merely stating how 'things probably are, not how they might possibly be'
所以，如果修改正在进行中，没有更好的理由，因为我们可以去做，或者是无聊，也许是时候检查更深层次的动机了。如果我们对这样的询问感到恐惧，那我们在哪里?当然，有人可能会说，嫉妒可以驱动野心和竞争:这对自由资本主义是好事。但是，这些“好”东西对其他东西有好处吗?恕我直言，这是个真正的问题。

August promises to be hot, envy notwithstanding. I have the potential for cucumbers and tomatoes to look forward to. What have you, other than musing over the virtue or vice of envy? Seems small to me. Years ago, a man named Graham Martin wrote a book asking whether anything mattered. Clearly, some things do. Yet, not so many as expected.. As I have noted before, Nagel and others have remarked on ' how things really are, not how they might possibly be'. And that is a salient point. Donald Davidson talked about propositional attitudes. Meaning, seems to me, is one of those. Perhaps the foundation of all. However, if meaning is universal, the rest are extensions---some legitimate, some, not so much. We construct our world, according to customs, traditions and other sociological functions.

Martin's book was anomaly. He had the temerity to write it, for which my hat is off to him. Did he have it all right? No. Of course not. But, neither did he have it all wrong...

Emotion is an excellent example of how Philosophy can go wrong. In this case, John Dewey messed it up, and all philosophers, scientists, and human beings have had to deal with his sloppy thought ever since. Envy is a crucial example as almost all scientists today think of Envy as socially constructed while people are hard-pressed even to admit feeling it.

To be fair, Darwin started it. His third major work,' The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,' reverts from his previous two pieces that frame nature as populations premised in variation. With 'Expressions', Darwin sent his fellow scientists off searching for essences of emotion using essentialism as a philosophical foundation. Many cats have been flayed to find that stimulating their brain stem is exciting, if not repeatably so. Why he reversed course with emotion is probably due to the ease with which essentialism can take hold in human brains with just a minimum of induction.

William James corrected Darwin philosophically, and John Dewey didn’t understand. William James classically said, “ ‘Fear’ of getting wet is not the same fear as fear of a bear.” Dewey took this and rethought it back to essentialist terms and named it after James and another psychologist Carl Lange to call it the James-Lange Theory of Emotion. I’m not sure William James ever had the opportunity to correct him on this.

What does this mean in terms of Envy? It means Envy comes from culture and human interaction. It’s felt “inside” and kept inside, but all the problems and evils it brings come from our interactions with others. Induction tells a baby their mother is called mama, and their father is called dada when parenting is wherever you find it. Many families aren’t so clear-cut, and neither is Envy.

As Protasi states, WEIRD societies fit her model. Still, even in those WEIRD societies, shades of construction make it hard to fit Envy into emulative, aggressive, inert, and spiteful. The German schadenfreude is one construction. Nick Riggles ‘awesome’ is another. These two stretch Protasi’s model and might even suggest other shades of Envy.

总的来说，我觉得Sara Protasi在为我们的文化塑造Envy方面考虑得非常周到。她的模型是合理的，而且在思考我们的嫉妒和我们在别人身上看到的罕见情况方面非常有效。这篇文章最伟大的礼物是理解不要把这一最构建的所有情感个人化。

Hmmm... I do not know Protasi. I do know some of James and Dewey, both giants, as far as i can stand. James' foundations were, I think, theological. As with Descartes. And, Berkeley. Dewey, it seems, was more pragmatic. When he said beliefs were shady, his pragmatism shone brightly. Mixing philosophy with theology only works, to a point. They are siblings. But, siblings differ. Herein lies much of the difference, and, underlies a reason why religion and 'philosophy' are misplaced when lumped together as equal partners. It just is not so. Which came first? Religion or philosophy? Probably philosophy.. Was Aristotle Catholic? I do not think so.. Would it have mattered? Probably a lot. Inasmuch as free thinking would have been, uh, unthinkable...

Some final remarks on envy as virtue, in several installments and wherewith, comparatives seem a relevant approach:
Faults, indiscretiona and shortcomings are not usually thought of as virtuous. Empathy, generousity and compassion may be so regarded. Jealousy and greed are aggressions. Aggression is often competitive, requiring winners and losers. Success and failure are necessary opposites.How one regards envy is a propositional matter. Insofar as no one wants to lose, envy settles upon losers, along with measures of anger and jealousy. Are sour grapes better than none? Not so much. Jealousy and envy are closely aligned. And lastly, jealousy is not virtuous.

我的推断?如果嫉妒不是美德，那么嫉妒也不是美德。有人可能会从抽象思想和宽容形而上学的方法论来论证这一点。但是，我喜欢内格尔和其他一些人，他们倾向于“事情可能是怎样的，而不是它们可能是怎样的”。我亲爱的哥哥曾断言:“哲学的问题在于哲学家。”他的玩世不恭需要多年的经验来培养。他还声称，形而上学是由“疯狂的猜测”组成的，我认为这是正确的。

Things viewed as bad for people in one way or another are classified as sinful. Those considered good are called virtuous. This an elementary way of stating matters. But such teachings are ancient. And, as a practical matter, universal. If one seeks to rewrite the rules, making once odious acts or practices appear virtuous (if only arguably so), for what philosophical purpose does this activity serve? Just for the sake of argument? That would seem trivial. To me, anyway.