Posted on 10 Aug, 2010 -
Why being mean is good for you
Ever got a certain pleasure from another person’s misfortunes?
Don’t worry, it’s natural. As long as you’re good at heart and only THINK things that are a bit evil…
... it may actually be good for you to be a bit mean at the edges…
As you read this email, I will be enjoying a much-awaited break in France, somewhere near La Rochelle.
Not much of a break, of course, because the kids will be with us. But the sun will hopefully be shining, I’ll be admiring a beautiful beach or church and it will all be pleasantly foreign and different.
While I’m away for the next two weeks, I’ve prepared ahead for you a few emails in my absence. This first email today is one that I sent out a couple of years ago that offers a bit of light reflection on the darker side of the human mind.
It starts with a quotation from one of my favourite authors, Dorothy Parker, and is about the human love of gossip:
“If you have nothing good to say about anyone, come sit next to me.”
Now, while I would never admit to being quite as mean as that, it certainly makes a good introduction to this week’s guilty topic of ‘schadenfreude’.
Why DO we take pleasure in other people’s misfortunes?
You see, for many years now, I have felt somewhat perturbed by the fact that I am sometimes prey to the feeling of schadenfreude.
A word borrowed from the Germans, it means taking pleasure from others misfortunes.
Schadenfreude is the pleasure you might get from seeing a photo of a beautiful model looking ugly… finding out that Richard Branson has lost all his money… or that the the awful bloke from the accounts department has just broken two ribs.
It’s also a pleasure (a very guilty one normally mixed with feelings of deep sympathy and sadness) that we can even get glimmers of when even our friends suffer misfortunes.
But why do we do it?
As the 17th century moralist, La Rochefoucauld, said in his Maximes, “in the misfortunes of even our greatest friends we take a certain pleasure.”
But rather than just try to sweep the issue under the carpet, I decided this time to dig around a bit in the subject and see if I couldn’t get to the dirty bottom of it.
On one level it’s just a survival mechanism
First of all, I have discovered that competitive feelings towards those around are normal. On one level it goes back to times (not so long ago and always a threat on the horizon) when resources were scarce and you had to compete to get more of them.
It is interesting to note on this point that we are more likely to feel schadenfreude towards rich, famous or beautiful people - and towards friends who have more than their fair share of one or more of these.
On a competitive (or even survival) level, if the successful person has a weakness then at least it leaves a little space for us. If they’re not so perfect then that makes me feel better.
And is it really so bad?
But should we feel bad about that glimmer of joy we get from others’ misfortunes? Well, that perhaps depends on how deeply you feel it - and whether it actually makes you ACT in ways that are unkind or malicious. If it’s a minor glimmer of a thought crime alone then perhaps we should see it as just a little comic relief.
Because life, after all, isn’t easy for any of us. We try hard to make money. We try hard to be good, successful and attractive. No wonder that a study has shown recently that a certain amount of Schadenfreude can be helpful in relieving such stress. Laughing at another’s misfortunes can make us feel better about our own.
In fact, as Nietzsche said, “Humour is just Schadenfreude with a clear conscience.”
How could we feel good about ourselves if we thought everybody else’s lives were perfect?
And perhaps it goes a little deeper than that still. After all, we can only have an idea of ‘self’ by having an idea of others. And if we walked around thinking that other people’s lives were better than ours then that would surely make us feel miserable. The fact that misfortunes befall others makes us feel more positive about our own lives.
So how about this? Rather than feeling shame whenever we are momentarily possessed by the somewhat mean sentiment of schadenfreude, perhaps we could use it to find out a little about our own feelings of want and lacking.
What can your own bouts of schadenfreude tell you about YOURSELF?
Who are the people whose misfortunes tend to tickle you? Do you feel a funny smirk cheer you up inside when a beautiful, thin woman trips on a paving stone? Do you feel a certain sense of justice when a really wealthy person has another area of their life that is lacking? Or do you find yourself feeling relieved that at least most successful people aren’t happy?
Emotional evolution is just around the corner
Perhaps it is a case of feeling better about ourselves. Perhaps it is a case of needing a sense of justice in the world. It is even worth asking whether you actually feel that these people are bad in some way - or that they have not done enough to earn what they have achieved.
Are we bitter and twisted? Are we riddled with jealousy and revenge?
Of course we are - we’re human!
But what we can also do as humans is forgive ourselves our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us. We can be lead not into temptation but laugh at our own foibles and make damn sure that we don’t actually ACT in any way that is nasty or vengeful.
Hope in your heart that the skinny woman is happy and an amazing mother to her kids. Pray that the rich and successful man has a wonderful relationship with his wife. And one day the world will be a better place for all of us.
