Before turning traitor, Benedict Arnold was a celebrated officer in the Revolutionary War.
In the Battle of Saratoga, Arnold was injured but fought so valiantly that many hailed him as the unsung hero of the victory.
But Arnold never felt appreciated as he was passed over for certain leadership roles. He began doubting the prospects of the American experiment so he turned heel and sold out his new country. Arnold began sharing secret information about troop movements with the British.
After being named to a leadership position at West Point, Arnold delivered plans to the enemy that made the base vulnerable to attack in exchange for money and an appointment in the British Army.
Once his plan was discovered, George Washington exclaimed, “Arnold has betrayed us! Whom can we trust now?”
Now on high alert, the American leaders were on the lookout for other spies.
Major John Andre was coordinating with Arnold. Traveling under the alias John Anderson in a disguise, Andre was caught carrying papers in his boot that he had planned to relay to the Redcoats.
Once arrested, it was up to Washington and Alexander Hamilton to decide what to do with the traitor. The rules of war at the time said Andre should be hanged from the gallows.
Hamilton developed sympathy for Andre while he was imprisoned, in part because of Andre’s charisma. Washington wanted to try the man as a spy while Hamilton requested a more noble death by gunshot.
It was one of the few times Hamilton openly disagreed with our first president. Washington got his way and Andre was hanged in 1780 as a spy.
After Andre was put to death, Hamilton wrote a letter to his future wife lamenting the fact that he was jealous of the man’s looks and accomplishments:
I am conscious of [the] advantages I possess. I know I have talents and a good heart, but why am I not handsome? Why have I not every acquirement that can embellish human nature? Why have I not fortune, that I might hereafter have more leisure than I shall have to cultivate those improvements for which I am not entirely unfit?
Ron Chernow rightly wonders why Hamilton would express such jealously for a man who was just hanged for treason:
It was a peculiar outburst: Hamilton was expressing envy for a man who had just been executed. Only in such passages do we see that Hamilton, for all his phenomenal success in the Continental Army, still felt unlucky and unlovely, still cursed by his past.
Alexander Hamilton’s downfall at the hands of Aaron Burr in a duel likely had more to do with contempt than envy.
However, Burr did have charisma and excelled at political campaigns, areas where Hamilton was lacking. Burr was likely envious of Hamilton’s intelligence and influence that cost him political roles over the years.
It’s a tale as old as time.
I went to see Oasis a couple of weeks ago at the Rose Bowl in California. It was an epic show fueled in part by 1990s nostalgia.
I owned the first album when it came out in 1995 but wouldn’t describe myself as a diehard Oasis fan. So after the concert I went down a rabbit hole that led me to the documentary that came out on the band a decade ago called Oasis: Supersonic.
The doc was a superb look into what it was like to be a rock star in terms of how fame, notoriety, and envy could bring it all crashing down.
Liam and Noel Gallagher were both rock stars but in completely different ways. One former member of the band described it like this:
Democracy never works in a band. They both thought they were Prime Minister.
Wild behavior certainly played a role in the band’s eventual break-up, but so did old-fashioned jealousy. In the doc, Noel Gallagher explained it like this:
Liam was always cooler than me. He had a better walk and clothes look better on him and he was taller and he had a better haircut and he was funnier. Liam clearly would have liked to have my talent as a songwriter. And there’s not a day go by where I don’t wish I could rock a parka like that man.
Noel wrote some of the great songs of the 1990s — Wonderwall, Don’t Look Back in Anger, Champagne Supernova, Live Forever, etc.
But Liam was born to be a lead singer. He has the charisma, the look and the it factor.
Liam doesn’t have the songwriting chops of his brother. Noel can’t rock a parka and be the frontman like his brother.
The cost of envy for Oasis was a near-20-year break-up. That break probably made the reunion tour mean that much more but they didn’t make it easy on themselves when they were on top of the world as a mega rock band in the 1990s.
Alas, no one has it all.
Everyone is jealous of someone or something or some ideal they have in their head about what a perfect life should look like.
The good news is we know no one has it all figured out because even the most successful among us have feelings of jealousy.
Charlie Munger once said, “Envy is a really stupid sin because it’s the only one you could never possibly have any fun at.”
Further Reading:
Respect the Accomplishments, Don’t Envy the Person
