According to the oriental philosophy and especially the Buddhism philosophy as it is expressed by his holiness Tentin Gyatso, the XIVth dalai lama, the individual is conducted by a positive energy and five negative energy.
The positive energy is called enlightenment in Buddhism, the awaken of Kundalini in Hinduism and the "holy spirit" spirit in Christianity. Buddhism describe this energy as one extreme ecstatic state that we can make arise in the practice of meditation. This energy will make discover us how to achieve happiness by the practice of generosity and stimulate our creativity.
The actions of human being are also motivated by the five negative energy. The different between the positive energy and the negative ones is that the following of negative energies is the source of suffering and the positive energy is the source of happiness.
These negative energies are:
The dalai lama teaches that the right understanding and mastering of these negative energies, will help us to reduce their negative effect and is the path to enlightenment. An enlighten individual is not subjected to the action of the negative energies but only to the positive one.
On my concern, I have noticed that the success of a social system is based on the successful management of the negative energies in order that the individual action become beneficial to the community. A successful community have also a place for the positive energy.
It is the original negative energy. The society progress parallel to an increase a knowledge. As knowledge is infinite, the society is successful if it is organized such as decision are taken by knowledgeable individuals. The social answer to ignorance is professionalism. A professional has the full knowledge in his domain or know how to acquire the knowledge but a professional know very little out of his domain. The reflexes of individuals to call professionals to decide for them is a motivation for social organization.
Fear is the energy that tyrants love. In the antic world, the social organization was based on fear. The individual victims of fear were submitted to slavery. The individual who defend "fear of punishment" as beneficial to the social organization are fascists. Fear is brought when the society is organized under a hierarchy which is based on a military power.
Cupidity is an extension of fear. At the beginning, Cupidity were the fear of the absence of material good. It is also manifested by the desire of the concentration of power and mean. However, according to Buddhism, cupidity is far less dangerous than fear or ignorance but Cupidity also undermine the capacity to enlighten.
The western "capitalism" society is a progress in the sense that he replace fear. Capitalism has created a hierarchy based on cupidity and not fear. Rich individuals control poorer individuals in paying them. Their interest for money of the poor guarantee the social order. If they become like Jesus Christ and stop to mind about their future, they will stop to work for money and the capitalism society will fall apart. On the other part, the rich concentrate their asset and don't distribute them generously. If the rich start to distribute their belonging generously, nobody will need to work. And, the society will also fall apart.
Cupidity is however less negative than fear and so a cupid individual have a better chance to develop the positive energy and to have some glimpse of enlighten than a frightened individual. This glimpse of enlighten will be the source of creativity. And so, a society organized under "cupidity" will be more dynamic and creative than a society based on fear. This is the reason of the superior achievement of capitalism compared to the fear oriented society.
Pride is used to motivate students to pass exam and acquire diploma. Pride is a support for social ambition and arrivism. In meritocratic society, it could be an efficient counter energy to reduce the effect of ignorance. Confucius had been an advocate to create an administration which is stimulated by "pride". He created exams opened to all Chinese whatever their social origin. This exam opens the door of the Chinese administration to poor origin Chinese.
Pride is considered in Buddhism to be the worst negative energy after ignorance. Pride motivates false guru and is an obstacle to spirituality.
Jealousy came from pride. It is the most dangerous of all energies. Jealousy is used by revolutionary leaders to organize revolution. Revolutionary leaders exploit social difference to increase the jealousy feelings of the mass.
Democracy has been an achievement to reduce the negative impacted of jealousy. The political and religious leader find jealousy extremely useful to gather the masses around their social reform project.
However, contrary to pride, fear and cupidity, it is extremely difficult to find a historical successful achievement due to jealousy. Jealousy is a bomb and even peaceful change of majority in Democracy which are the result of jealousy, happened to be economically unsuccessful. It seems that jealousy acts as a balance to cupidity and pride of others and it is useful in its capacity to reduce it.