June 9, 2005
WHEN BAD THINGS HAPPEN TO BAD COUNTRIES:
The age of schadenfreude (Tony Blankley, June 8, 2005, Townhall)
Recently, I have noticed that I am increasingly hearing and reading "schadenfreude" from the lips and pens of people usually more comfortable with simpler and more wholesome words. Sure enough, when I googled the word, I got 425,000 hits in .06 seconds. It turns out there are websites dedicated to the word and various organizations, such as comedy troops named for it.Upon brief reflection it seemed to me that perhaps we are living in a period in which schadenfreude tends to characterize people's thoughts more than it ought to.
Gaining pleasure from the suffering of others is, at best, a dark pleasure. One could make a case that it reflects a neurotic or even pathological personality trait akin to sadism. It is true that most of us tend to judge our condition relative to the conditions of most other people. We are naturally pleased if we are better than average in some category.
But it is a far healthier mentality if we have gained our advantage by having uplifted ourselves, rather than to be the mere beneficiaries of some other poor soul's degradation or failure.
So, if our current politics are generating larger quantities of schadenfreude, we would expect to be seeing more failure than success. There is no better example of this phenomenon than last week's French and Dutch votes on the E.U. constitution. Particularly the French.
I admit that one would have to have either a heart of stone or the soul of a saint not to have smiled at the comeuppance of Jacques Chirac. But even if one thinks, as I do, that defeating the E.U. constitution was the right decision, there is a difference between being intellectually gratified at good policy prevailing, and chortling.
It is bad news for us when almost the entire leadership class of our closest cultural and political allies -- Europe -- have led their nations to the edge of a cliff. While we are justifiably relieved that the people did not follow them over the edge, political and economic chaos in Europe is not good for America. So why are we so cheerful?
They're the enemy? Posted by Orrin Judd at June 9, 2005 11:03 PM
After the years and months of slander and pious lectures from self-satisfied self-selected elites it is a wee bit satisfying to watch as they get their comeuppance.
So yes, I am reveling in their pain. For now.
Posted by: Mikey at June 10, 2005 2:43 PMThis sounds like yet another confirmation that "all humor is conservative".
Posted by: Just John at June 10, 2005 2:57 PMI don't think there is any people in the world that exudes the pomposity and contempt for others continental Europeans do. Xenophobic Asians, inward-looking Latins, defensive Indians, even hostile Muslims don't trot around the world patting others on the head and lecturing them on the inferiority of their societies. European smugness and anti-Americanism have become so open and mainstream in the past decade, and so part of the zeitgeist that I don't think most Europeans are even conscious of it. And still people don't hate them the way they hate. They've brought this on themselves.
Posted by: Peter B at June 11, 2005 6:41 AM