If you’re a magical thinker you might believe that gloating over other people’s misfortunes will only augur your own fall from grace. Under this theory, you would experience retribution for your bad thoughts. Schadenfreude is one of the few German compound words in the category of the average non-German person—since so many people enjoy other people’s suffering. You may not covet thy neighbor’s wife, or murder him or her, but there's no commandment against wishing them the worst. Character assassins are happier than pigs-in-shit since there’s such a high demand for their product. Of course, the person who's capable of achieving so-called happiness, whatever that is, derives little pleasure from the sight of suffering. They don’t feel guilty for their wishes, since they're too busy soaking up the sun to care about what anybody else is doing. It’s certainly not necessary to see your counterpart fail, when you're busily reaping the rewards of your own good fortune. In fact, there’s no pay-off at all in feeling superior to others and wishing them the worst, when you experience the smugly self-satisfied feeling that you've gotten what you want out of life.
Read "What is the Antonym to or Antonym for Schadenfreude" by Francis Levy, Huffington Post
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.