jamesq | Rum and Schadenfreude (Reply)

othelianna invited me (and some others, who opted not to join us, I'm sure for perfectly legitimate reasons) out drinking tonight, as tonight was her Friday.

We met up at the Auburn, which is the local theatre people bar and there was no one else there, owing to the fact that there aren't many shows playing this week and the ones that were playing were, you know, playing. We pretty much had the place to ourselves.

Rather then have sex on the table (be advised that I'm pretty drunk right now - it doesn't look it because I'm taking time to correct my typos, but it's true. This makes me a no-boundaries blabber mouth) we opted to drink and talk. The topic of conversation turned to "people who had wronged us". She mentioned a few friends that she had had fallings out with. I talked about Eeyore, Fleabite and Psycho Kanga. I've mentioned all of them here at times, but I went into great steaming piles of detail for them all.

It was wonderfully cathartic and also fun.

Which brings me to schadenfreude - that's a German word roughly translated as happiness in someone else's misery. Now the three people in question have not had a miserable time of life (I'm sorry to say), but I do get a sort of joy from seeing that they're not coasting along easily either. Is that schadenfreude? Not exactly, but it's roots are in the same place. I'm familiar with them, so despite my dislike of them, I like to hear about what's happening to them. In the gossiping, there's always a tiny shred of hope that schadenfreude will ensue.

The root of a true schadenfreude lie in familiarity and justice - we might feel that justice is done when pompous celebrities are taken down a peg, but I submit that that's not schadenfreude. I don't feel it when I hear about bad things happening to, say, Paris Hilton. If some particularly douchey celebrity fucks up, I'll take some small enjoyment in karma being a bitch, but it's not schadenfreude - it's simply not immediate or personal enough. I hear it, have my brief flicker of feeling, and forget it just as fast. It's emotional popcorn - tasty, but not filling.

When the people we have reason to hate have bad things happen to them, and you enjoy it - not just take satisfaction in it, but roll it around in your mind and let it's warmth spread - that's schadenfreude. Also, there needs to be an element of hubris in it - they can't have bad things happen to them because you caused bad things to happen to them, it should be through their own machinations. This adds a healthy dollop of "I told you so" into the mix.

Of course, embracing your inner demons like that isn't always healthy. It's cathartic to vent your spleen now and then, but you don't make a habit of it because it's an easy habit to form. Schadenfreude is like a cloyingly sweet and bitter pie. Nice to have in small doses every now and then, but a diet rich in it will make you sick to your stomach and rot you from the inside (which is why I don't bake this very often). I try to take the moral high-ground when I can, so I don't indulge in this feeling very often, but I'm not a saint. Sometimes you just like seeing your enemies fail.

Thus concludes my first Brain Plungers assigned topic (just needed to really get into it). And I did it drunk, without the normal drunk post characteristics of bad spelling or stream-of-consciousness. All it takes is a little extra time.