The Ethics of Schadenfreude

[Tiassa]

This and That

I dare you to tell a woman who is in active labor that she should just suck it up because she has 'natural pain relief' in the form of her G-spot. I dare you.

What I find striking about this discussion is that certain aspects are unfortunately predictable. While the underlying question is the propriety of finding some sense of gratification in another person's suffering, some people's first response is to go after women.

• • •​

Next up: Women Undergo Simulated 15 year coal mining experience for Dutch TV.

Yes, let's give them blacklung for television ratings.

Or we could ask a woman who works in the mines:

When female coal miner Tanya James rides an elevator 1,000 feet below ground surrounded by dozens of men and few, if any, women, it's not the men, not the darkness, the cold, the heat, nor the exhaustion that gets to her.

Instead, it's women in her community who think that mining is just for men. For every 100 men who work in coal mines in West Virginia, there are only two women.

For 27 years, through the births of her two daughters, through accidents and illness and through the jealous glares of women in her community, Tanya James has proudly been a member of the West Virginia's two percent of female miners.

James, who works six days a week in a mine, has had to prove herself to her male co-workers and to other women in West Virginia society.

She remained at work even while pregnant with her daughters Trista, 21, and Michelle, 18.

"When I got pregnant with [Trista] I had hurt my knee and I was off work. With Michelle, my second one, I actually worked in the mine until I was five months pregnant. I was shoveling in the belt line one day and pulled a muscle in my stomach and the doctor wouldn't let me go back after that until she was born," she said.

With her first daughter, she stayed home six months. After her second child, she returned to work five weeks later.

James said women did not understand why another woman would choose to work in a coal mine. It was dangerous and dirty, the women argued ....

.... She sat cross-legged with a cast on her left foot with painted toes. A mining accident nearly two years ago required her to have surgery recently, but she spoke as if she hadn't a problem in the world. "I enjoy my job. It's a little risky," she said.

(Cole)​

____________________

Notes:

Berkes, Howard. "As Mine Protections Fail, Black Lung Cases Surge". All Things Considered. July 9, 2012. NPR.org. January 21, 2013. http://www.npr.org/2012/07/09/155978300/as-mine-protections-fail-black-lung-cases-surge

Cole, Kelli S. "A Statistical Rarity—A Female Coal Miner Shares Her Perspective On Life and Work In the Coal Mining Industry". Center for Working Class Studies at Youngstown State University. (n.d.) CWCS.YSU.edu. January 21, 2013. http://cwcs.ysu.edu/about/current-projects/journalism/articles/female-coalminer

 

[youreyes]

oh nice digging of rare species Tiassa, very nice.

 

[Tiassa]

The Obvious Points

oh nice digging of rare species Tiassa, very nice.

Not so rare as men who have undergone real labor and birthing.

Women have been in mines for centuries. Given that they are rare in a region where education is lower per capita and traditional male-supremacy values are common, it is not surprising that Mrs. James is a rarirty gets more pushback from her fellow women than her male co-workers whose primary question, when putting their health and lives in danger, is not what she has between her legs, but whether she can do the job. As she has lasted twenty-seven years in the mines, we can reasonably predict the answer to that question.

But in the end, as I noted to Asguard and Bells, in separate posts, your brand of he-man chest thumping is a mere distraction from the question of schadenfreude and propriety.

 

[Asguard]

Tiassa what did you actually want?

If it was just "HA HA, how funny" why didn't you just post it in the managirery thread. If not what did you actually WANT out of this thread?

Bells good for you, your experience obviously over rules the 1000s of others who say things like "I would rather go through 10 more labours than experience another kidney stone"

 

[Bells]

Tiassa what did you actually want?

If it was just "HA HA, how funny" why didn't you just post it in the managirery thread. If not what did you actually WANT out of this thread?

Bells good for you, your experience obviously over rules the 1000s of others who say things like "I would rather go through 10 more labours than experience another kidney stone"

I have yet to meet a single woman who has said such a thing.

And I have yet to meet a single man who has said the same.

In short, you are simply whining about women. Again. The reason you are whining is because you have a problem with women.

I mean lets look at this very thread as a prime example. Youreyes has just thumped the role of men as father's and literally said that men do not care about their own children in the most offensive manner possible. You haven't even touched it because you are too busy whining about women.

 

[Asguard]

I have yet to meet a single woman who has said such a thing.

And I have yet to meet a single man who has said the same.

In short, you are simply whining about women. Again. The reason you are whining is because you have a problem with women.

I mean lets look at this very thread as a prime example. Youreyes has just thumped the role of men as father's and literally said that men do not care about their own children in the most offensive manner possible. You haven't even touched it because you are too busy whining about women.

WOW talk about jumping to conclusions, could it be because i don't care enough to even read his posts? nah that couldn't be it because you apparently know what is inside my head better than I do.

Only reason I even read YOUR post was because I happened to notice you quoted me, apart from that I was happy just talking to tiassa but hey as long as your happy with your delusions you go for it and I will go back to what I was doing, watching castle because its far more interesting

 

[Tiassa]

Reiterating the question

Tiassa what did you actually want?

While I'm aware that many people around here don't actually read my posts, and some others just scan through them quickly, or note other people's quotes and go from there, or jump the route on the opening paragraph, or sweep the end for something to run with, well, in this case I don't think it was particularly cryptic.

Is it proper to laugh at other people's suffering? Obviously, I would say yes, but I have yet to figure out what the boundaries actually are.​

If it was just "HA HA, how funny" why didn't you just post it in the managirery thread. If not what did you actually WANT out of this thread?

True enough, but it seemed a waste of a chuckle to not explore a deeper issue:

To the one, comedy is cruelty, as playwright Neil Simon once put it. To the other, this can be problematic. We become accustomed to laughing at other people's misfortunes. It's morbid. It's cruel. And sometimes we laugh in the face of absurdity instead of at the death of another, but not always. Sometimes certain things are just funny, despite the cruelty of laughing. And that, I think, is what my friend refers to, and I acknowledge.

But these guys got themselves into it, and seem to have figured out the moral to the story. I think it's okay to laugh, especially as sometimes the cruelty of humor is often a potent communicative tool, just as many of us laughed at the comeuppance of a conservative American radio host who allowed himself to be waterboarded in order to make the point that it's not torture. He lasted only a few seconds without experiencing the full effect. And, yes, as this man was recovering from the experience, clearly shaken, we all laughed. And cruelly. But, I suppose, the schadenfreude also served a useful purpose, as one advocate of waterboarding came to understand what he had really been pushing.

Just as Storm and Zeno's suffering, or that of Dr. Rochford, transformed a person's outlook.

But the broader question remains: Does that justify our mirth? Does it justify our self-satisfaction and gratification?​

The topic post is littered with aspects of this question:

Upon seeing the abbreviated clip, naturally the first thing I did was send it to a female friend, who responded that she laughed herself silly ....

.... And, of course, my friend expressed the usual caveat, that it is not appropriate to laugh at other people's suffering.

† † †​

Under most circumstances, I agree, but in this case, the only thing I could come up with was: Well, they did this to themselves, willingly and freely, and they're comedy hosts, after all, so I think it's okay to laugh at their agony on this occasion.

† † †​

But there is also a part of me that says, "There is no way they could have known what they were getting themselves into."

† † †​

In the States, at least, there is a tremendous degree of schadenfreude that comes with watching the video; these guys are clearly experiencing severe discomfort, exponentially beyond their expectation. Their production crew is laughing; Zeno and Storm are trying to laugh.

But they're clearly in pain.

† † †​

Ordinarily, I would agree with my friend that we should not laugh at other people's suffering, but the video, which is categorized as "Nonprofits & Activism", is ostensibly intended to make certain points.

Thus, I would suggest that laughter and a limited degree of schadenfreude—after all, they did not get the full monty—is more than simply acceptable, but actually warranted.​

All of three paragraphs in the topic post lacking specific consideration of the principle. There are nineteen paragraphs in the part I wrote, that is, discounting the source excerpts. And three of those nineteen paragraphs are, in terms of the underlying question, pretty straightforward.

And, yet, the discussion since then has largely been dominated by what really does seem like a bad joke. You know, like:

So, what do I really want out of this thread? I'll go with the last paragraph of the topic post, which both asks the question and offers a version of my answer:

Is it proper to laugh at other people's suffering? Obviously, I would say yes, but I have yet to figure out what the boundaries actually are.​

In truth, I didn't think I was being subtle.

 

[Asguard]

Ok so you want to discuss the ethics of laughing at what people do to themselves?
Hey go for it, personally I laugh CONSTANTLY when the guy from Mythbusters does something really stupid and ends up hurting himself. Especially the episode where he rode his bike over the bricks and flipped the bike. My other half loved jackass (right up till the point where that guy put EVERYONE'S lives at risk by dangerous driving and got himself killed) no matter how much it hurt they chose to do it and as for this there is another dimension, at any time they could have backed out and said enough was enough, if they were to stupid to say "stop" they deserve everything they get.

Edit to add: Oh i just thought of another one, that video of the gun nuts you posted. I laughed myself silly when the shot gun came back and wacked that girl in the face, talk about Karma

 

[Tiassa]

Notes on Nuts ... er ... something like that

Oh i just thought of another one, that video of the gun nuts you posted. I laughed myself silly when the shot gun came back and wacked that girl in the face, talk about Karma

Aye, though I tend to feel it more for that dude with the rifle at about 0:38.

And the moron at the end: "Dude, my mom's gonna kill me!"

But it's like the guy who shot his own hat off. That was really close to not being funny at all.

With schadenfreude, as Rodereve noted, "it's all in terms of context". Determining the boundaries is a bit like defining art insofar as people tend to think they know a work is or isn't when they see it.

I think one of the most obvious examples that comes to mind are the blooper sequences from skate and ski videos. The nutshots are potent, especially if you're a guy, but we still laugh. After all, nobody held a gun to some dude's head and forced him to attempt to a railslide over steel and concrete.

[video=youtube;CjPtTrcgexg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjPtTrcgexg[/video]​

And injuries from spectacular crashes are often cut into various productions with the intention of earning some laughs. Wrecked knees, gashed heads, broken bones; we don't feel so bad about laughing because the people hurting themselves try to laugh it off.

Yet, at the same time, we don't tend to laugh at NFL injuries. Well, okay. Sometimes we do. More often, it's the crushing hits that earn concussions, whiplash, or bruised ribs. Theismann's comminuted compound fracture in 1985 was horrifying to watch. Mario Manningham's blown knee earlier this year was extremely difficult to watch, especially in X-mo. But, at the same time, even setting aside the slow motion, I can't explain the difference between watching a football injury and a snowboarding injury. Sure, the nutshots are one thing, in part because you can see them coming—

[video=youtube;e0FMVPwwGpg]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0FMVPwwGpg[/video]​

—and in part because they are nutshots. But there are times when we laugh until we realize there is serious injury. And there are times when we laugh despite serious injury.

There's no YouTube of it, but I did note last year an incident in which a guy, on Friday the Thirteenth, of all days, managed to shoot himself in the groin. And, yes, I laughed when I read the report. As I noted then, "Look, nobody deserves to get randomly shot, but come on."

Still, I cannot accurately outline the criteria for what's funny or not.

And it is, to me, a fascinating question. At least, when I stop to think about it.

 

[Asguard]

Guess it's a judgement as to wether you belive someone deserves it. As a society we tend to worship sports stars of "legitimate" sports but look down on skateboarders as "stupid kids, get a job" so when a hero gets hurt its "not funny", but when "karma catches up with the stupid kids" it is. Same goes for gun nuts, someone like MAD would probably say they are potentially tragic acidents where as myself I would say there is nothing tragic about karma. An example of this would be the Navy Seal who shot himself in the head to prove to a girl the gun was safe. He died but it was so stupid and done by someone who should know so much better (elite of the elite) that I find it funny.

 

[Bells]

We laugh because not only is it self inflicted and set up to be funny (as Tiassa noted, even they were trying to laugh through it at first) and thus, self inflicted for comedic purposes, but also because it (the pain) is not permanent.

We can laugh because at any moment, they could have turned it off and stopped the pain. There was no injury there.

 

[Randwolf]

We laugh because not only is it self inflicted and set up to be funny (as Tiassa noted, even they were trying to laugh through it at first) and thus, self inflicted for comedic purposes, but also because it (the pain) is not permanent.

We can laugh because at any moment, they could have turned it off and stopped the pain. There was no injury there.

On a more fundamental level, why do we laugh with Schadenfreude at all? Is it a primitive response in need of eradication or is there some underlying benefit to this form of humour? At first glance one would think that the impulse would be towards empathy when witnessing the pain of others but this is obviously not always the case.

Perhaps we experience a felling of "justice done"? For example Tiassa's "Gun nuts gone wild" video - these people get what they deserve? And let's not disregard the inherent irony. (I think it's irony, always had a little trouble with that concept) A sardonic viewpoint often seems to give rise to laughter, but why?

Schadenfreude represents fulfillment of what human needs? There must be a reason this behavior exists... What is it?

 

[youreyes]

Schadenfreude represents fulfillment of what human needs? There must be a reason this behavior exists... What is it?

Evil.