The Joy of Pain (16 page)

Lerner's core idea is far-reaching in its implications. Believing in a world with no semblance of justice may indeed lead to an unsettling existential uncertainty. Perhaps even the most world-weary and cynical individual may believe, superstitiously, in a kind of karma. On the outside chance that there is some cosmic principle that will even the balance and correct injustice, they avoid dismissing the fates entirely. A bad deed will be punished—somehow, in some way, at some time.

The possibility that people have a need to believe in a just world connects concerns over justice more strongly with
schadenfreude
for at least two reasons. For one, when there are good, “objective” reasons to blame people for their misfortunes, we will be all the more eager to do so. After all, these valid reasons will go along with the motivational grain. And so, when people appear
responsible for their misfortunes (e.g., the driver has an accident while texting or the investment banker goes broke because of risky loan practices), we will zero in on their role in the outcome all the more. We will seize on this information, even embellish it. The objective details of deservingness nicely satisfy the just world motive. The second reason is that the range of unfortunate events that can be construed as “just” increases. This is because our perceptions of causality are likely to be distorted by a need to perceive a just basis for the misfortune when none exists in the first place—which may be why victims are at risk for receiving blame.

That just world motivations might bias our judgments of deservingness raises the general problem of human biases and how they might distort judgments in ways that create
schadenfreude
. Research by social psychologist Mark Alicke demonstrates that we tend to see others as having more control over bad outcomes than they actually have. As a consequence, this perception of “culpable control” means that others will be seen as more blameworthy—which should enhance pleased reactions to their suffering. Generally, we show what Alicke labels an outcome bias. Especially when we want to evaluate someone negatively, we work backward from negative events and perceive more intentionality and foresight than is warranted by the facts.
⁹
Schadenfreude
itself may encourage this process: if we find people's suffering amusing, we may conclude that they must be blameworthy.

I noted in
Chapter 5
that many were pleased when Bernie Madoff was punished for his Ponzi scheme—but his victims were the ones who cheered the loudest. Likewise, of the many happy at news of Osama Bin Laden's death, relatives of those who died from the terrorist attack master-minded by Bin Laden were most gratified. Saundra Woolen, whose son died in the attack on the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, said, “I wish they could have gotten him alive and given him a slow death. … Either way, he's gone and I'm glad.”
¹⁰
People responsible for treating
us
poorly will seem to deserve their suffering more surely than those who have offended others. And their suffering will create especially satisfying
schadenfreude
. We will delight in it.

In the Aesop fable, the ant felt good to see the grasshopper suffer from hunger. After all, the grasshopper had danced, sung, and taunted the ant during the summer while the ant had worked and stored food for the winter.

We easily develop grievances against people and come to dislike them, sometimes hate them, because they have mistreated us. These can seem petty sentiments, and so they often remain private. But they nonetheless set us up for feeling
schadenfreude
if these people suffer. And we probably feel that even their severe suffering is deserved. I am persuaded on this point by the example of Sir Kenneth Dover, the late distinguished scholar of Greek life, literature, and language.
¹¹
Dover was a prolific scholar who wrote pioneering books on the Greek Classical Age. His writings overturned many assumptions about this period in history. Remarkably, despite his impressive scholarly record earned at Oxford and St. Andrews universities, he may be best known for a few admissions made in a memoir that he wrote at the end of his career.
¹²
The book includes frank observations about many aspects of his life.
¹³
The admissions attracting the most attention concerned his intense dislike of another colleague at Oxford, Trevor Aston. This man's exasperatingly manipulative personality,
drunken behavior, and chronic threats of suicide caused Dover, who was then the administrator charged with dealing with Aston's behavior, to contemplate ways of furthering these suicidal intentions. Dover wrote: “My problem was one which I feel compelled to define with brutal candour: How to kill him without getting into trouble.”
¹⁴
Dover had found Aston such a maddening burden that he considered that through an “act of omission” on his own part Aston might act on his suicide threats.
¹⁵
Only the legal implications seemed to cause Dover to balk at following through on such plans. When Aston did take his own life, Dover described his own reaction the following morning: “I can't say for sure that the sun was shining, but I certainly felt it was. I said to myself, slowly, ‘Day One of the Year One of the Post-Astonian Era.'”
¹⁶

Was Dover lacking in normal human compassion, or was he simply being refreshingly candid in confessing to emotions that others were privately feeling as well?
¹⁷
Some, such as James Howard-Johnston, a lecturer in Byzantine studies at Oxford, thought the former, arguing that Dover was “cold, clinical and ahuman.”
¹⁸
Others, such as Brian Harrison, a history fellow and tutor, disagreed: “I'm 100 percent behind Kenneth. It's astonishing he bore it all those years.”
¹⁹
Dover was sensitive to this question, and, in his memoir, he related that on hearing the news of Aston's death, two of his colleagues confessed to nothing but relief.
²⁰
He noted that all the proper things were said at Aston's funeral and at his memorial service, but he also believed the general sentiment was probably not far different from his own.

Should readers have been shocked by what Dover wrote about himself? I am inclined to agree with Stephen Halliwell, a professor of Greek at St. Andrews University, who wrote the
Guardian
obituary on Dover. He suggested that Dover was unfairly criticized for honestly exploring his life. Dover embraced the task of giving a frank and full accounting of his emotions and desires; that some parts of life seemed unbecoming obscured the broader story of a remarkably accomplished and admirable person.
²¹
Putting aside Dover's lethal thoughts, it seems natural to find pleasure when misfortunes happened to people we despise,
²²
especially if the reason why we despise them is because they have badly treated us. These misfortunes are likely to “feel” just—and pleasing.

A few years ago, a friend of mine told me about the firing of a manager at a big company. For a time, they had worked at the same company. My friend,
as well as many of his co-workers, felt that this man treated them poorly. He had been unkind to many of them, often humiliating and bullying them. But finally, he went too far, and the company president decided to fire him. My friend was decidedly excited about the news—as were many others. My friend said to me, “I finally get it. You know that emotion you study, what is it ‘
farfegnugen
'?
²³
Well, guess what, I'm feeling it.” He went on to describe the details with unashamed excitement and delight. He had a smile on his face as wide as the Cheshire Cat in
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
. It took really disliking (if not hating) someone for him to recognize his own capacity for
schadenfreude
.

In
Chapter 4
, I noted the memoir written by Albert Haas, the French physician who had survived the German extermination camps.
²⁴
One of the last camps suffered a typhus epidemic. Haas found consolation in the “apolitical nature of the lice that spread the disease.”
²⁵
Although many of the SS guards who caught it were healthy enough to recover, some did not. Haas and his friends were “especially pleased when one of the sharpshooters stationed in the watchtower died of the disease.”
²⁶

The life of Malcolm X also provides examples in which the experience of mistreatment from others can cause pleasure if they suffer. As a Muslim minister in the Nation of Islam, Malcolm X used his remarkable rhetorical skills and unique charisma to unsettle the status quo of the 1950s and early 1960s. Perhaps more than anything, he held whites accountable for their abominable treatment of African Americans. One way he achieved this was by suggesting that most slaves would have been happy if their masters suffered. In a speech at Michigan State University in 1962, he contrasted the “house Negro” with the “field Negro.” The house Negro, because he lived comparatively better than the field Negro (although he wore the master's secondhand clothes and ate leftovers), identified with the master. The identification was so strong that when the master got sick, he would say, “What's the matter boss, we sick?” But the “house Negro” was the minority. The “field Negroes” made up far greater numbers. How did they feel when the master got sick? Well, as Malcolm X put it: “[T]hey prayed that he'd die. If the house caught on fire, they'd pray for the wind to come along and fan the breeze.”
²⁷
The implied
schadenfreude
hit its mark and may have unsettled many listeners. Is there much doubt that misfortunes
happening to these slave masters would have seemed well deserved to those suffering slavery in the fields? The resulting
schadenfreude
must have been keen.

When justice is personal, the righting of the wrong can merge most clearly with the powerful motive of revenge and its resulting gratifications. The pleasure derived from revenge is complicated, however, by factors creating ambivalence over this pleasure, at least in the context of present-day Western culture. An example is the experience of Simon Wiesenthal, survivor of multiple Nazi concentration camps, who made it his life's work after World War II to track down and capture Nazis war criminals.
²⁸
His most celebrated case was the capture of Adolf Eichmann, now infamously remembered as one of the main planners of the Holocaust. Eichmann had been hiding in Argentina until a group of Israeli agents snared him as he was coming home from work in a Buenos Aires suburb, thanks in part to Wiesenthal's information gathering. Wiesenthal was associated with other triumphs as well, including exposing the man who had been responsible for arresting Anne Frank and her family. Even though he had exceptional just cause for hunting these men down, he was careful to avoid characterizing his motive as vengeful. Wiesenthal's motto, often repeated, was “Justice, not vengeance.”
²⁹

Wiesenthal denied being motivated by revenge. Rather, he wanted to ensure that people didn't forget the horrors of the Holocaust.
³⁰
He had good reason for this concern. Not long after the war, much of the world largely lost interest in pursuing Nazis. As the Cold War struggle took center stage and became the priority for powerful governments, it became better to use ex-Nazis for various purposes, such as scientific and espionage work, than to investigate whether they had committed war crimes.
³¹
There was also the problem of some people refusing to believe what had happened. Wiesenthal faced a postwar generation that could conclude that
The Diary of Anne Frank
was a fabrication and the death camps were propaganda. Hunting down Nazis, then, was a way for Wiesenthal to restore and permanently settle the record by bringing those responsible to justice. He may have prudently avoided letting it seem as if his motives were personal, to stay clear of seeming biased, even though he once conceded that he had wanted revenge, “perhaps … for a short time in the very beginning.”
³²

Psychologically, however, it is strange to separate justice from revenge. We feel the urge to take revenge when someone has wronged us.
³³
We want the person who has wronged us to suffer “just” as we were made to suffer. This is the main point of revenge. We feel that the harm was unfair and unjust. Although though the grievance may sometimes be subjectively derived through self-serving thinking, the experience of it is saturated with a sense of injustice even so. Also, regardless of this potential for self-serving construals, the urge to take revenge, because of its close link with justice, is made up of a mix of related emotions, including anger, hate, indignation, and outrage, all focused on the wrongdoer.