Last week a story broke in this town about a controversial local figure. He stands accused in the media of doing something violent and hypocritical. Whether those accusations are true, false or somewhere in between is not something I’d be prepared to answer–even if I could. I have my thoughts on the matter but they remain nothing more than speculation fueled by my very tangential acquaintance with the accused.
Stories like this happen all the time. I’ve been alive for almost 40 years now, all of that time spent among people who are very conservative in their religion and/or their politics. As I’ve said here before, it’s become a truism to me that the louder or more fervently someone preaches against something the more likely it is that they are guilty of that very thing themselves. The first person I ever heard give a lecture about the importance of commitment and the dangers of adultery ended up shocking his church by running off with a choir member. Men who preached about drugs ended up being arrested for selling cocaine. Countless men who reviled homosexuality turned out to have boy toys in apartments across town. Women preachers who talk about being faithful end up divorced and married again to their business manager/lovers. That’s just the way it goes.
Yeah, I’m bothered by all of this because I don’t like the hurt it signifies. Wherever there is a fallen public figure there are generally spouses and children in the background who have to put the pieces of their lives back together. Not to mention the internal conflict and pain for the public figure. Pain hurts everybody.
What is bothering me most about all of this lately, though, and especially this current verse of the same old story is the over-the-top glee others are taking at this glimpse of warts. I am so utterly sick of Schadenfreude. Because as appropriately understandable a feeling as it is, it has become carried too far. The basic “happiness at the suffering of others” has turned into an endless stream of hateful invective that causes pain which to me is little different from that pain caused by the initial transgression. It seems like there are an awful lot of self-satisfied people sitting around and gleefully saying “serves that blankety-blank right!”
And I know it’s true. It’s oddly comforting to see someone who has made fun of you for being fat put on 100 pounds themselves. (One of my favourite things about the combination of Facebook and pregnancy and menopause.) It’s satisfying to see someone who has called your non-traditional family an aberration turn out to have a messed up family of their own.
But honestly. Schadenfreude should be an initial reaction. Not a driving force of your life.
Just Another Pretty Farce 
Well … if the preaching or name-calling had stopped there, I’m pretty sure the schadenfreude would be less. It seems to me that what prompts it is largely the way that people have been using their negative ideas in ways that actually damage other people’s lives.
Damned fall of man.
I know it’s not a very Christian philosophy, but I so desperately want to believe in the basic goodness of people. At the very least, I want to believe that there is *A* goodness within each of us that we will always turn to when trouble comes along, for ourselves or others.
Time and again, people will expose that hope as a lie. We are rotten to the core, and our goodness is but rags.
That being said, I think your hypocrisy truism might be one of those things that “everybody knows is true”, and there is ample anecdotal evidence to back it up, yet, in the end, it just isn’t true. Kind of like “going outside with your hair wet causes you to get a cold”. Although “everyone” knows this is true, the science tells us that colds are caused by exposure to viruses, and that alone. Wetness of hair has nothing to do with it at all, anecdotal evidence or not.
Such it is with the truism that proclaiming a moral truth most likely means you are guilty of violating that moral truth.
Every person who has pointed out others’ sins is guilty if sin himself. Every person who hasn’t pointed out others’ sins is guilty of sin himself. Neither is really a true indicator, IMHO.
I just fear that your argument would lead one to conclude that moral truths themselves are the lie, instead of the voice inside each of us that says our will alone can overcome those truths.
Wetness of hair has nothing to do with it at all, anecdotal evidence or not.
But it does. Wet hair lowers the body temperature as it is drying, and lowered body temperature weakens the immune system. And exposure to a cold virus is more likely to result in the exposed person actually getting a cold if that person’s immune system isn’t working effectively. Therefore, one is more likely to catch a cold on being exposed to a cold virus with wet hair than one is on being exposed to a cold virus with dry hair. Exposure to the virus is still necessary, but wet hair does make a difference.
Such it is with the truism that proclaiming a moral truth most likely means you are guilty of violating that moral truth
But that’s not what Kat is suggesting. Kat is suggesting that the more fervently (and I’d add “frequently”) a person proclaims “a moral truth” the more likely it is that they are violating that “truth.”
That truism makes logical sense, and is backed with both anecdotal data and (in limited scale) scientific correlation. The more obsessed with something someone is (whether it be a “moral truth” or not), the more likely that it’s a major part of their own life (in one way or another).
I had been thinking of writing a post along these same lines. You did it better than I could have. Thanks.
I just fear that your argument would lead one to conclude that moral truths themselves are the lie, instead of the voice inside each of us that says our will alone can overcome those truths.
Anyone who misuses my argument to bolster that point within themselves is casting about for any further excuse to justify his or her misdeeds.
I’ve known people who were desperate to cheat on their spouses, for instance. They will grasp at any straw to justify that. They will twist anything to suit their own mislogic.
Dolphin pretty much said what I would say which is that there is plenty of anecdata AND actual data to back up my theory at this point in time.
You’re the parent of teenagers. You’d do well to tune into this little bit because the more your kids will talk about a person at school or an issue the more they are likely to have a crush on the person or have serious issues about the issue they’re bringing up. It’s part of how communication works. I find it more excusable in teenagers, who are just developing their interaction skills. But it does carry over into adults.
People other than me seem to be very afraid of putting things directly, as though they are sparing someone or something by couching their thoughts or attempting to reframe them. I find it incredibly unhealthy…but then again we all agree that I’m different and at times come off as very rude.
Since you’re a Christian, I would like to believe that when your close friends are practicing schadenfreude,( from what I know at least one blogger I know you consider a good friend) I would hope you would respond as you say you are:
“Rejoice not when thine enemy falleth, and let not thine heart be glad when he stumbleth: Lest the LORD see it, and it displease him, and he turn away his wrath from him.” (Proverbs 24:17-18)
One can’t serve two masters.