• FrankGSterleJr
    94
    [Edited text is bolded]

    As a boy, general or normal human nature—including that aspect involving one person’s pleasure derived from another’s misfortune—bewildered and scared me; as a teenager, it frustrated and tormented me. As an adult, I’m concerned and even angered by it. Enough so to enthusiastically watch, on multiple occasions, The Experimenter (about sociologist Stanley Milgram and his controversial Obedience Experiments), and to read the book The Joy of Pain: Schadenfreude and the Dark Side of Human Nature (Richard H. Smith) and typeset onto my computer the most interesting parts.

    A case about which I read in a newspaper column that will undoubtedly be deemed by most readers as one understandably deserving, relatively speaking, of their shameful pleasure is that of a man convicted of murdering an 18-year-old woman and her infant who himself was then severely beaten while in prison and felt his assailant got off easy by the justice system.

    It was last June, however, that a very disturbing form of schadenfreude was front and centre in the news: Revealed was that accusations were under investigation by our provincial government that some British Columbia emergency room doctors and nurses were playing games with their peers in which they’d guess heavily intoxicated patients’ “blood alcohol level without going over” (likely an allusion to the famous Price Is Right TV game show rule involving product prices).

    Particularly troubling was the accusation that most of those ER ‘games’ involved the racist stereotyping of Indigenous walk-in patients.

    The apparent scandal immediately brought to mind a book passage explaining how such discriminatory conduct towards patients, however inappropriate, unjust and seemingly cruel, can be the health professionals’ means of psychologically coping with the great trauma they’re frequently surrounded by and treat.

    Essentially, by subtly blaming the patients for their own suffering—e.g. making fun out of frequent ER patients by playing games guessing their blood alcohol levels—somehow it translates into their suffering somehow being deserved.

    The Joy of Pain also cited the book The Belief in a Just World: A Fundamental Delusion (Melvin J. Lerner), in which the author describes his own experiences while working with doctors and nurses caring for psychiatric patients.

    Smith wrote: “… [Lerner] saw many instances of these professionals joking about their patients behind their backs, sometimes to their faces. These reactions jarred him because, generally, these patients were unlucky souls and had little control over their psychological problems. But he did not view his colleagues as callous. Rather, he concluded that their reactions were coping responses to the unpleasant reality they confronted in the[/i]se patients. If these patients largely seemed to ‘deserve’ their troubles, one could feel comfortable joking about them … ”

    Nonetheless, considering their profession, immense training/education and the poorest of souls they treat, these to me are among the least excusable, albeit understandable, forms of shameful pleasure.
  • baker
    5.6k
    Roman Catholics, when they go to heaven, will be glad that some people are suffering in eternal hellfire.
    This is doctrinally enforced joy at seeing others suffer.
  • Possibility
    2.8k
    I can only imagine the ethical frustration of ER doctors working to patch up a belligerent drunk who crashed his car, while the ten year old passenger of the vehicle he hit is being raced into surgery...

    But I don’t think this is about schadenfreude - it’s about their struggle to reconcile the positive value they attribute to a human in order to treat him, with the negative value they attribute to his drunken appearance and behaviour. The ER doctor likely isolates the drunkenness to enable him to treat the patient, but he/she still needs to ‘deal with’ this relation to drunkenness at some point - to trivialise it in order to express it without harm. It hardly seems surprising that the negative relation of racial prejudice gets caught up in this ‘cathartic’ process, too.

    I’m not advocating this behaviour, only attempting to explain it. If the doctor had refused to treat the patient because he was drunk and therefore ‘deserved’ to be in pain, then it’s not only inexcusable, but in breach of the Hippocratic oath.

    So what does a doctor do with these negative feelings towards drunkenness that they’re not allowed to attribute to the patient they’re treating? Well, they restructure their experience so that this relation to drunkenness becomes a ‘disembodied’ mathematical value, applied to a trivial game.

    Doctors, nurses, police, teachers, etc need to find avenues to express their disdain for the harmful behaviour that informs their everyday experiences, in ways which are not harmful themselves.
  • Leghorn
    577
    @Possibility. I tend to agree with you Mrs. Possible, and I think your psychological analysis is on-spot.

    Extremely drunk patients file regularly into the ER; because they are so drunk, they hardly even make a human impression on their care takers because of unconsciousness, and when they do, it is often a belligerent one, so they become anonymous ppl, difficult to deal with, that they have to, nevertheless, deal with...but they are also ppl that may easily be judged for their lack of moderation; then, unfortunately, it so happens that they are disproportionately of a certain minority race whose difficulties in adapting to the majority have never been cleared up by society...which was the cause of their drunkenness in the first place!

    So, it is not surprising to me that, when another Inuit or Aborigine or Cherokee, etc, comes in drunk to the ER, that one nurse turns to another and says, “Here’s another one!...how many is that this week?”

    “I don’t know, but I bet his blood-level is at least .15”

    “Oh, yeah! At least that...by the looks of him I’d say .2”

    “No, no,... not that high. Look: his eyes are still open and following things...I bet you...”, etc.
  • FrankGSterleJr
    94
    There are different forms of schadenfreude, some more self-servingly shameful than others.

    As for the health professionals’ shameful pleasure being reasonable, I’d ask them to imagine that the ER patient about whom they’re joking is someone they greatly care about and love.

    It's hard to picture them playing their little version of The Price Is Right with their alcohol-overdosing sister, son or father.
  • tim wood
    9.2k
    Don't confuse schadenfreude with gallows' humor.
    As a boy, general or normal human nature—including that aspect involving one person’s pleasure derived from another’s misfortune—bewildered and scared me; as a teenager, it frustrated and tormented me. As an adult, I’m concerned and even angered by it.FrankGSterleJr
    Given this, what makes you think you know what human nature is? Asking on the assumption you're able to consider the question.
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    Expressions of Schadenfreude are only appropriate when not displayed to the victim, or sufferer.

    For instance, I play cards on the Internet. There are emoticons and there are statements one can flash on the screen, as their contribution of emotionality or opinion.

    There is a laughing face. There are some players who regularly display a laughing face when they set somebody's contract. (1) I can't stand this.

    Then there are others who display emoticons that show empathy and warmth (a wink, a smile, a thumb up) and then if they (2) show a laughing face when they win a hand, it is reflecting more in the vein that they are happy with their win, instead of happy with someone else's misfortune -- although in real time the two must happen simultaneously.

    It has gotten to the point that if someone at the table shows two smiles as a display of Schadenfreude, I quit that table. No matter whether it's directed at me or at someone else at the table.
  • ssu
    8.5k
    Expressions of Schadenfreude are only appropriate when not displayed to the victim, or sufferer.god must be atheist
    But when a perpetrator gets his or her punishment? (Hope you don't mean that when it's expressed behind the victims/sufferers back)

    I don't think we even call that shadenfreude, because we don't see it as the perpetrators misfortune, but as something that the perpetrator deserves. I think the example that gave can be viewed similarly.
  • TheMadFool
    13.8k
    This may come across as black humor and even downright evil but from a Buddhist perspective with its notion of so-called Bodhisattvas (beings who opt for samsaric existence instead of nirvana) should, given the hard facts of life - there's more suffering than joy in our part of the universe - make a conscious decision to provide, through faer person, schadenfreude to as many beings as possible for it's more likely that fae will be born into suffering than happiness, right? After all, isn't the point of being good to make people happy? I'd like @Wayfarer to weigh in on this as the most knowledgeable Buddhist scholar in our forum and elsewhere too I bet.
  • OneTwoMany
    26
    Schadenfreude seems to be a projection of one's pain onto others, as in a way of normalizing one's own traumatic experiences. Impressions are powerful. Perhaps something only certain meditation practices can neutralize.
  • Benj96
    2.3k


    If someone laughs at themselves when they mess up or an unfortunate event happens to them (Self-deprecation/ making light of a bad situation) and also laughs in the same manner/ for the same reasons when the very same thing happens to others whats the problem?

    Most offence is taken by others people when they don’t know the character if the person laughing. If they perhaps knew that this person is also equally capable of laughing at themselves then at least the individuals behaviour is consistent and non- hypocritical.

    If a person laughs at someone else when X instance occurs but gets frustrated angry or antisocial should the same X instance happen to them this shows that they have double standards and have different expectations of others than of themselves and in this case i thing it’s not as acceptable
  • Outlander
    2.1k
    Roman Catholics, when they go to heaven, will be glad that some people are suffering in eternal hellfire.
    This is doctrinally enforced joy at seeing others suffer.
    baker

    This is incorrect. In Heaven, Earth and its resulting consequences are of no consequence.

    If, as a homeowner, someone breaks into your house while your family is home, and kills someone, then gets caught, would you not be glad the man who murdered a member of your family is in jail? What about as a neighbor or just someone reading about it in the paper. Should they too not be glad a dangerous person can no longer bring harm and misery to others?
  • OneTwoMany
    26
    the point being made is it is a sadistic life to imagine everyone that's different from you will burn eternally while your group floats amongst angels. There is no evidence either will happen but it is sadistic to subscribe to such a thought.
  • frank
    15.7k
    Essentially, by subtly blaming the patients for their own suffering—e.g. making fun out of frequent ER patients by playing games guessing their blood alcohol levels—somehow it translates into their suffering somehow being deserved.FrankGSterleJr

    ER staff are immersed in other people's suffering. It's part of the environment. Up to a point, joking is unavoidable, but it can be a sign of burnout.

    People who truly enjoy the pain of others shouldn't be in healthcare because there's an automatic power imbalance and patients are very vulnerable. Fortunately it's a profession that attracts people with a strong drive to be protective.
  • baker
    5.6k
    If, as a homeowner, someone breaks into your house while your family is home, and kills someone, then gets caught, would you not be glad the man who murdered a member of your family is in jail? What about as a neighbor or just someone reading about it in the paper. Should they too not be glad a dangerous person can no longer bring harm and misery to others?Outlander
    By all means, non-Christians are dangerous persons who deserve to burn in hell for all eternity!! So that they can no longer bring harm and misery to the righteous Christians who have the most powerful being in the universe on their side!!
  • baker
    5.6k
    I don't think we even call that shadenfreude, because we don't see it as the perpetrators misfortune, but as something that the perpetrator deserves. I think the example that ↪baker gave can be viewed similarly.ssu
    So how about the perpetrator? What about his feelings? They don't matter? The other person -- oh, the perpetrator -- is, thinks, intends, and feels whatever those accusing him of a wrongdoing claim that he is, thinks, intends, and feels?



    the point being made is it is a sadistic life to imagine everyone that's different from you will burn eternally while your group floats amongst angels. There is no evidence either will happen but it is sadistic to subscribe to such a thought.OneTwoMany
    It's religiously justified narcissism to the extreme.
  • baker
    5.6k
    That would be specifically a Mahayana/Vajrayana perspective, but not generally a Buddhist one.
  • Wayfarer
    22.3k
    Buddhism practices the opposite of schadenfreude, namely, mudita, sympathetic joy at the fortune or well-being of others.
  • jgill
    3.8k
    But I don’t think this is about schadenfreudePossibility

    Agreed. Schadenfreude arises out of some aspect of envy. My daughter, a New Yorker, recently related to me a true case of SF: Some families who bought twenty million dollar entire floors in Manhattan high rises are complaining that their elevator doors are sluggish and there are dripping faucets that management is slow to fix. :cry:
  • god must be atheist
    5.1k
    But when a perpetrator gets his or her punishment?ssu

    The perpetrator is not immune to envy. The basis for Schadenfreude is envy.
  • Outlander
    2.1k
    the point being made is it is a sadistic life to imagine everyone that's different from you will burn eternally while your group floats amongst angels. There is no evidence either will happen but it is sadistic to subscribe to such a thought.OneTwoMany

    You're completely right- about both statements. What does that have to do w/ Christianity though? Hate the sin not the sinner the doctrine says. I mean, sure if by different you mean "a violent criminal" vs. "a law abider" than yes the law dictates the exact same thing. Literally even, if you want to be metaphorical.

    I think your confusing Christianity with people who SAY they're Christian yet live in opposition to what it commands. Or to be blunt, those who just don't know what to say and/or don't want to fill out/answer "Atheist/Non-religious" or "Muslim" if/when asked.

    First rule of life, trust sparingly and by actions not words. Anything that can be corrupted will be. Of course, anything that can be made wrong can also be made right. Some instances of which I described are simply harder than others.
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