Schadenfreude is the term used to describe the gaining of pleasure from another person’s misfortune. It’s not something I think people should boast about, yet there are times when an event gives rise to a shadenfreude moment and I want to cheer anyway, despite the fact that I know my jubilation came at the expense of someone else’s pain.
Take the Olympics, for example. When an American Olympian is on the cusp of winning a medal, and there is only one other athlete who can displace that American, it’s hard not to cheer when that last contender fails and my fellow American’s medal spot is secure. I know that last contender is feeling the agony of defeat, and yet it’s hard to suppress the happiness I feel about our own Olympian’s victory.
A similar feeling arose yesterday as I was reading accounts of the twenty-one Iraqi militant recruits who died when a bomb accidentally exploded at a bomb-making class they were attending. The recruits were part of an Iraqi al-Qaeda splinter group that’s been carrying out suicide bombing all across Iraq in an effort to destabilize that nation’s government. It’s hard not to celebrate the fact that hundreds of Iraqi citizens will live longer lives because those twenty-one dead recruits won’t be causing any more murder and mayhem, but those recruits also had families, and I have to think those families are suffering grief at the news of their loved one’s demise. It would appear that schadenfreude moments are frequently more complex than we realize.
No comments:
Post a Comment