Neurology is the cutting edge. People may prevaricate in interviews, telling psychologists what they think they want to hear. But brain scans don't lie about how we think and feel. You can't fake neural activity; either the pleasure center lights up or it doesn't.

That's why neurologists are lighting up all over the place over every new study using fMRI technology. Even if it shows nothing new; it can confirm what has been thought to be true, and that in itself is news.

Thus, Time reported recently on research findings at the University of Bonn that success is relative, that how successful we feel depends a great deal on how others are faring: "Participants were asked to estimate the number of dots on a screen, while their brains were scanned. Each time a subject answered correctly, he or she won a cash prize but the prizes were not always the same. Players could see whether their opponents had answered correctly, and how the prize money was distributed.

The researchers were especially interested in the set of outcomes where both players answered correctly. For any given prize value, the brain's reward response was bigger if the other player earned less. Players on average were more pleased with a 60 euro prize when the other player got just 30 euros, for example, than they were if both players earned 60 euros, or if the other player got more."

This merely confirms, of course, what most of us have always known about human nature. But now that the neurologists have told you, psychologists can sleep better at night.

Jewish tradition has been investigating such things for a long time. In its report on jealousy, Ethics of the Fathers found that it "takes a person out of the world." Difficult as it may be to penetrate the ancient jargon, I'll give it a try. I would say it means that someone who is jealous of what others have cannot enjoy what he has. He doesn't live in the world of reality, in which he may in fact be rich in possessions. The gnawing knowledge that somebody else has more or better removes any reasonable appreciation of what he has. He lives instead in a world of jealousy. (It should be noted that the authors of the Mishna had no way of confirming these results, since they had no access to neuroscience.)

So the Jewish Sages counsel us to be happy with our lot. That's the path to happiness. Not working ever harder to get ever more. And not constantly comparing what you have with what the Goldbergs have. Just being thankful for the lot or little that God has given you.

But jealousy is a fact of human nature, and it's not so easy to ignore what others have. Even in the higher income brackets, it's reported that people with millions feel they have accomplished nothing because they see others with more. What's 5 million, if the guy down the street has 10? Or 10, if he has 100?

As one Silicon Valley observer tells it, "the top 1 percent chases the top one-tenth of one percent, and the top one-tenth of one percent chases the top one-one-hundredth of one percent." Sunday Times (of London) columnist Rachel Johnson wrote recently: "Billionaires cannot sleep until they have a private jet or a yacht (a socio-economic group I call the haves and have-yachts). And they still can’t sleep until they get a yacht bigger, faster and with more toys than everyone else."

None of this would have been news to the Jewish sages. The Midrash long ago diagnosed it in terms of "one who possesses one hundred wants two hundred, while he who has two, desires four" (Koheles Rabba 1:34). But what to do about it?

Rabbeinu Bechaye suggested we need not try to deny our negative emotions. But we need not give in, either. We can learn to manage them. "One should always keep one's eye on those who have fewer benefits in life, and not on those who have more," he advises (Chovot HaLevavot, Avodat Elokim 7, Tafkid 8). Compared to the less fortunate, your lot in life will indeed seem like a lot.

Of course, we mustn't rush to judgment. Sagacious as the counsel of tradition may sound, until science has confirmed it, we won't know for sure. And the available neurological data is not yet conclusive. There were, after all, only 19 participants in the Bonn study, a statistically puny and insignificant sampling. It may be years before enough brains have been scanned to provide us with sufficient data on which to base conclusions.

Oh, those ethical fathers---lots of brains, but alas, no brain scans.

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