Human are ambitious or in other words, we're greedy and jealous. It's normal we always strive for what we want but physical pursuit can't never satisfy us, that's why we need to associate our lives with spiritual pursuit. The most important thing is we don't cherish what we've already had. It's only when we lose it, we feel regret.
it's a form of violence...
violence before the law system invenction... (malinowski - antropology)
it's something scared people...
because is chaos... pure chaos...
(this is why societies have myths descrbe creation of order from the primordial chaos... and have sexual rites or festival rites where is symbolized the chaos for a night... the destruction that can regenerate the eternal born of creation and order... )...
the interruption of the circle of violence is an essential point of a society...
(you can do it with human sacrifice - animal sacrifice - totem - cerimony - distniction between pure and unpure... and the sostitution of personal violence and revenge with and external artificial revenge like the law... )...
and here....
you have your answer...
in modern time...
remotion of violence...
intellettualzation of violence...
narrative of violence...
it's another way to interrupt violence...
but really is not something have never stop to working in us...
countries were protestant they have this idea you describe...
a lor of thinker have work on the question...
connection is in the past...
is too long to explain and no hope there is possibile to have an agreement...
(we have lost in some point of the history the possibility to understand each others... at least we think... we imagine that we are able do understand each other...)
i explain you how is modern concept of everything...
i take liberty...
for my example how is demential everything we can think...
and you have ten people...
they can't have all of then 100 of liberty...
but its' exatly what the system thell them...
you liberty is without limits...
expecially after the 1968 revolutions...
but nevertheless...
real things is you have 100 in the dish...
and you can have...
100 for one and zero for nine...
you can have ten for everybody...
you can have other compositions...
but not... we spread in the new orwellian generations.. that everybody can have 100 of liberty...
now real question is why people really want something...
that usually they don't need...
the asnwer is in imitation...
concept you see in antropology...
Renè Girard for example...
people want what they see another person have...
it's a sort of primordial envyy...
that is part of our primoridal capacity to imitate what we see....
so... really you feel better not because you have something...
itself things don't have valours...
you feel better because you have something another person don't have or don't have anymore...