The Joy of Pain (11 page)

Gay is understandably unapologetic about his and his father's
schadenfreude
, and, as I will explore in
Chapters 5
and
6
, the deservingness of a misfortune can go a long way in disconnecting
schadenfreude
from shame. I am wholly in sync with his experience. I get goosebumps thinking about Jesse Owens defeating the German sprinters as Hitler watched from his stadium seat. Aryan superiority indeed!

Unfortunately, what we see in sports and politics can bring about another sort of chill. The emotions often produced by intergroup relations may also encourage extreme forms of conflict, such as ethnic and religious strife and wars between nations. In this sense,
schadenfreude
, as natural as it is to feel, may be a kind of gateway drug, closing the door on compassion and encouraging darker emotions and actions. Later, in
Chapter 10
, I venture into this territory.

We know how little it matters to us whether
some
man, a man taken at large and in the abstract, prove a failure or succeed in life,—he may be hanged for aught we care,—but we know the utter momentousness and terribleness of the alternative when the man is the one whose name we ourselves bear.
I
must not be a failure, is the very loudest of the voices that clamor in each of our breasts: let fail who may,
I
at least must succeed.

—
W
ILLIAM
J
AMES
¹

In all Distresses of our Friends

We first consult our private Ends,

While Nature kindly bent to ease us,

Points out some Circumstance to please us.

—
J
ONATHAN
S
WIFT
²

And afterwards I was very glad that the coolie had been killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant.

—
G
EORGE
O
RWELL
³

Suppose you are a woman secretly in love with a man, and you are competing for his love with a good friend of yours. The problem for you is that your friend has many remarkable qualities that make her appealing to this man. But you find out that she has just been fired from the newspaper where she works for plagiarizing someone
else's work. How would you feel? Almost certainly you would express public concern for your friend: “Too bad about Betty losing her job. I feel terrible for her.”

This is what you are “supposed” to feel, and expressing concern puts you in a flattering light. After all, she is a good friend, and the misfortunes of friends should cause us to feel bad. Part of you undoubtedly does feel bad for her, but you might also add, “Surprising about what Betty did. I guess it's hard to blame the newspaper. She probably needs therapy.”

These mild digs at your friend's character and mental health would be a telltale sign that another part of you feels pleased. There might be a touch of the crocodile, crying while eating its victim. Her downfall transforms her from an attractive rival into someone tarnished. Perhaps the critical detail is
exactly
that Betty is now tarnished, a decidedly promising development for you on the romantic front. You might emphasize in your mind the aspect of your feelings that registers concern for her. Perhaps you will convince yourself that compassion is what you are
only
feeling. But in a corner of your being, you may be jumping for joy. The prospect of obtaining your heart's desire may just be the stronger source of your emotions.

Clearly, feeling pleasure because of a friend's troubles leads us into disturbing psychological and moral terrain. We are loath to admit that the
primary
wellspring of our emotions can be raw and narrow self-interest, especially if a friend's well-being is involved. To feel even a momentary secret joy sullies
the way we view ourselves. Perhaps we may succeed in falsely convincing the people around us, as well as ourselves, that our motives and the emotions that rest on them are largely selfless. But, in so doing, we may be “strangers to ourselves,” as Nietzsche wrote.
⁴
In the mating game, as in many other competitive arenas of life, self-serving feelings can often go strongly with the grain and overrule our altruistic impulses. The weather vane predicting our stronger emotions in these cases points to the question, “What is in it for me?”

In an early episode of
The Simpsons
, Sideshow Bob frames Krusty the Clown for a convenience store robbery and takes over Krusty's show. Sideshow, who fancies himself as far more talented and cultured than Krusty, has been frustrated by playing the minor, sidekick role in what he thinks of as Krusty's crassly produced show. He likes that Krusty is behind bars and enjoys running the show his own way, reading aloud classic literature, making references to Susan Sontag, and singing songs by Cole Porter. After one of his shows, as he walks with a group of toadying staff members, he claims to be feeling sorry for Krusty. He bites his finger and sobs, but after he enters his dressing room and closes the door, his public sobs are transformed into a private, devilish cackle. He has what he wants, full control and the starring role of the show, and he is happy that this came through Krusty's downfall.

Schadenfreude
should at least flavor our emotions to the extent that we gain from another person's misfortune, even if empathy arises as well. But Sideshow is a caricature of someone motivated only by self-interest and narrow personal gain; his reaction is pleasure unblended with pity. More typically, our natural tendencies tug us in at least two directions: one toward narrow self-interest and
schadenfreude
, the other toward the interests of others and empathy. Neither direction fully captures human nature.

In the history of psychology, it would be hard to think of someone who had a more razor-sharp and even-handed understanding of human motivation than Harvard psychologist and philosopher William James. Although his landmark work,
The Principles of Psychology
, was published in 1890, contemporary scholars continue to return to his inspired characterizations of how the human
mind works. Here is how James captures the two competing sides of human nature:

In many respects man is the most ruthlessly ferocious of beasts. As with all gregarious animals, “two souls,” as Faust says, “dwell with-in his breast,” the one of sociability and helpfulness, the other of jealousy and antagonism to his mates. Though in a general way he cannot live without them, yet, as regards to certain individuals, it often falls out that he cannot live with them either.
⁵

As contemporary Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner argues, we are neither born to be “good” nor born to be “bad”; we are born to be “good or bad.”
⁶
It is a false dichotomy.

Again, if another person suffers a misfortune that leads to our gain, our feelings usually will be mixed, as the studies on political
schadenfreude
described in
Chapter 3
show. And our natural feelings of empathy are likely to be reinforced by cultural norms prescribing this empathy and censuring displays of pleasure over others' suffering. Any secret joys we feel when our rivals lose probably would make most of us feel a little guilty and ashamed.

In the complex interplay between self-interest and other-interest, do emotions connected to self-interest have an edge? Does self-interest have the louder voice—especially in the competitive circumstances that mark many situations in life?
⁷
Probably. Competition would not lend itself to
schadenfreude
if it did not matter
who
won—“let fail who may, I at least must succeed,” as William James put it so well.
⁸
The 18th-century Irish satirist, Jonathan Swift, made a similar point with these lines:

Who would not at a crowded Show

Stand high himself, keep others low?

I love my Friend as well as you

But would not have him stop my View.

Then let him have the higher Post:

I ask but for an Inch at most.
⁹

Most of the time, are we not keenly seeking our own victory? Who among us enters into a competition hoping that the other side wins? When we say “good luck” to an opponent, is it not a contradiction in terms? Competition
typically makes our own interests primary. Napoleon advised, “Never interrupt an enemy when he is making a mistake.”
¹⁰
We may not admit to feeling any happiness over the rival's misfortunes, and it may come blended with empathy and guilt, but at least a trace of the feeling should arise.

Perhaps President Barack Obama shared Napoleon's intuitions during a memorable exchange with Governor Mitt Romney toward the end of the second presidential debate in October 2012. Obama had just finished answering a question about the attack that had occurred the previous month on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya. This had caused the death of the U.S. ambassador and three other Americans. It was a terrible loss, and it had hit Obama and many in the State Department especially hard because of personal connections with the ambassador. But it had also revealed embarrassing security lapses in the administration's Libya policy, which Romney and other Republicans had been quick to highlight. One theme in their criticisms was that the Obama administration had failed to recognize early enough that the attack had been carried out by terrorists. Romney was expected to score points on this—which he did try to do in response to Obama's answer. Romney focused on Obama's claim, made moments earlier, that on the day after the attack he [Obama] had said that it was “an act of terror.” He looked at Obama as if to ask whether this was indeed the president's claim. Obama nodded and said, “That's what I said.”

This was a highly charged moment. Romney had thrown down the gauntlet, and Obama responded in kind. Romney appeared absolutely sure that Obama had
not
made the statement, and he said accusingly, “You said in the Rose Garden the day after the attack, it was an act of terror.”

Romney then paused, seeming to think that he had the advantage. He raised his eyebrows, gave Obama a look of confident disbelief, and reasserted his position: “It was not a spontaneous demonstration. Is that what you're saying?”

In fact, it was Obama who had the advantage, and Obama knew it. Having calmly completed a sip from a glass of water while Romney was making his assertions, he responded to Romney's allegation by saying, “Please proceed. Please proceed, Governor.”

Obama was challenging Romney to keep moving into a trap. The look in his eyes was so intense that the effect was almost physical—and I think there
was a whisper of a smile on his face. As comedian Jon Stewart later sized up the moment, when your opponent tells you to proceed, that's “your first clue” that you are in trouble. This is when the door that the Road Runner is offering Wile E. Coyote is “merely paint on a rock.”
¹¹
Romney stammered through a few sentences but now seemed to realize that Obama had the upper hand. Indeed, the debate moderator, Candy Crowley, soon confirmed Obama's Rose Garden statement. Obama put an exclamation point on the exchange by saying, “Can you say that a little louder, Candy?”

The debate audience erupted in spontaneous laughter and applause. It was a humiliating moment for Romney, and Obama, no doubt, enjoyed every second of it. Certainly, most Democrats did.
¹²
It may have been a turning point in the campaign.

The dual themes of self-interest and other-interest are reflected in any complete analysis of human nature and have been a source of lively debate among thinkers for millennia.
¹³
But our capacity to feel
schadenfreude
clearly highlights our self-interested side. And so I think that it is worth dwelling briefly here
on this theme. There are innumerable scholarly examples to choose from highlighting the role of self-interest in human actions. In Western philosophy, the British philosopher Thomas Hobbes, mentioned in
Chapter 2
, argued that a constant desire for power is the prime motivation of human beings.
¹⁴
Of course, in psychology, we can turn to Freud, who argued we are essentially self-interested and motivated by pleasure and the desire for sex.
¹⁵