Why do people pretend or show off? Why do people pretend or show off? For example:

Show off their new girl friend

Show off their new job, on Facebook and their friends circle

Show off a new dress

Show off a new iPhone
&quot;show off&quot; -- i.e. &quot;boastfully display one's abilities or accomplishments


&quot;Envy feeling&quot; --
is this ego?
Puthujjanas love 2 things


sensuality
being told that they are good people, precisely for craving sensuality. If nobody tells them they are virtuous for craving sensuality, they build a little story in their head where they are good people for craving sensuality.


puthujjanas who crave sensuality will tell other puthujjanas who have good items and fame that they are good people.  Everybody wins, according to those people.

It gets even worse. The western humanists even say that envy of wealth will make people compete, for jobs for instance, and by making people compete, they will produce and buy good quality goods and services but for cheap, as long as the people who run their republic will break monopolies. Those people call this progress.

When those people want to feel compassionate, they will mix their cravings for sensuality with some social fight they found. For instance, they love to organize concerts where they will listen to songs for several hours, exactly like when they want to be purely entertained, but in order to feel righteous (and not selfish like when they feel when they get entertained), they say that they organize this entertainment not be  entertained but to ''make society aware of'', or ''in the name of'', or ''denounce'' some situation that they call ''unfair'' like some misery of some people living far away from them (like in third world countries).
This is the best life for puthujjanas: they get all the entertainment they crave and they feel like good people making a change in society, when all they do is listening to music then going back home...

Puthujjanas who break the 5 precepts do exactly the same thing.