The thing about jealousy that makes it so confusing is that it throws us out of civilization and beyond the bonds of humanity and allows us to believe that crimes like suicide and murder and spying are necessary. We can’t even tell where envy—which I always define as what one feels about success and money and material objects amassed by other people—leaves off and turns into jealousy, and where jealousy forgets itself and hardens icily into obsession. Is obsession born of jealousy still jealousy, or is it a new disease, a new “mood”? Is envy a common cold, jealousy a serious illness, and
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