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Jewish World Review June 8, 2005 / 1 Sivan, 5765 The age of schadenfreude By Tony Blankley
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Consider the words guru, detente, glasnost, pundit, gravitas and
schadenfreude. Each of them, in their time, was an obscure foreign-derived
word that, suddenly, gained such currency that even the modestly educated
came to bandy them about with regularity and confidence.
The English language is blessed with a vast vocabulary that can
combine to describe almost any human thought. So, when a foreign word rises
to such quick prominence, its useful succinctness may often be catching a
spirit of its time. (Dare I say a zeitgeist?)
"Guru" became popular in the 1960s as young people were seeking
guidance for finding the meaning of life, etc. "Detente" and "glasnost" each
became the emblems of international relations in their times.
The Hindu derived "pundit" seems to have flourished recently
with the rise of cable television — which employs so many pundits
(allegedly wise men) that it quickly debased the meaning and became almost
an epithet.
"Gravitas" arose as a term of comparative contempt for the
perceived lightness of contemporary politicians. (There were giants once. Or
at least we think there were.)
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?
In domestic politics, also, there is entirely too much
schadenfreude. A large percentage of activist Democrats and the Left gain
pleasure from the continued embarrassing or tragic incidents surrounding
President Bush's Iraq effort. "The Daily Show" would have to come up with
almost completely different material if it didn't have Iraqi setbacks to
guffaw over. Can you imagine Bob Hope's audiences getting a good laugh over
reports of insufficient armor in the Sherman tank or Gen. MacArthur being
forced to escape from Bataan? There really should be nothing pleasurable
about seeing your country struggle during a war.
Neither was it uplifting to see the Bush White House have such
fun beating up Newsweek when they mistakenly reported on the Koran. Nor was
it heartening to see the recent Senate filibuster debacle, where the measure
of success was which side seemed more forlorn. Only after it was clear
conservatives were more upset, did liberals start to feel good about the
event.
But perhaps the worst thing about this schadenfreude moment is
not the pleasure part, but who we consider to be "others." How have we
allowed ourselves to come to the point where our closest allies, our
president, our fellow Americans during a war qualify as "others" — in whose
suffering we delight. I suppose schadenfreude is the most available, if
brutish, pleasure in an increasingly Hobbesian political world where few
succeed in an endless battle of each against the other.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Tony Blankley is editorial page editor of The Washington Times. Comment by clicking here.
© 2005, Creators Syndicate |
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