Shadenfreude: not as much fun as I'd hoped.
It's a rich treat; too much is bad for the heart.
Schadenfreude; German: (literal translation "harm-joy") is the experience of pleasure, joy, or self-satisfaction that comes from learning of or witnessing the troubles, failures, pain, suffering, or humiliation of another. Wikipedia
I’ve always appreciated those compound German words that say it all, or at least more of it than most words manage…zeitgeist, doppelgänger, even kindergarten. I like the word, but I haven’t experienced much shadenfreude. Wanting to revel in someone’s misfortune or suffering is low on my agenda.
However… at the present time there are people on the main stage whose actions are so damaging, so cruel, so without conscience or compassion, that any setback they encounter pleases me.
Last week, in watching two wannabe masters of the universe come to social media blows, after their mutually beneficial transactional relationship hit an iceberg called, I don’t know, inevitability… I felt a frisson of shadenfreude.
For a little while I felt, Ha! They had it coming! How gratifying to see two awful men who desire power and control over others more than anything else lose their cool in such an embarrassing and ultimately self-defeating way! Très bien! Wunderbar!
(And now, apparently, one of them has regrets, though I suspect that those regrets are based more on self-interest than self-reflection.)
My thrill was short-lived. To paraphrase Rick, it doesn’t take much to see that the relationship problems of two megalomaniac twits don’t amount to a hill of beans in a crazy world where, whether they are friend or foe, both are causing misery in their quests for power.
Soon after my little dance of gleeful gloating, sadness returned—a nauseous sadness, almost grief, at the tragedy we are witnessing in this country, and in other places too—power being used without responsibility, vision, intelligence or compassion, causing great suffering, great harm. My grief is more than empathy for people being traumatized, and worse, though it is that too. I grieve that we, we humans, are still so misguided, so foolish, so fear-based, so full of baloney instead of spirit.
The fact that these people even exist… that they get up in the morning, have a cup of coffee, take a shower, and go about their day doing wrong, without pity, is a great sadness. I’m not just talking about the stars of the freak show; I’m talking about all the men and women who do bad things every day in the service of the freak show.
I’m talking about people who stuff their conscience into a closet, duct-taped and handcuffed. People who handcuff and kidnap other people, in sadistic ways, because they can, and because they’re afraid not to be on what they hope is the winning team. People who feel shadenfreude whenever they can harm anyone they consider an enemy—which is everyone not signed on as a member of their cult.
That’s why for me, shadenfreude has to be a rare treat, not everyday fare. I will feel it again, probably more than once, when the best laid plans of people whom I consider to be evildoers go astray. But I don’t want to be like them. I don’t want to relish the pain of others, even others who are doing great wrong.
I want the man who thinks he is calling all the shots to be stopped by whatever mysterious forces can stop him. No matter what the proximate cause will be, what I hope for is that he will be stopped by more than what he is—by greater intelligence, awareness, responsibility, caring.
Art for art’s sake?
In the clip above, Nina Simone first defends the idea that it is an artist’s duty to reflect the times they live in, and then does a 180° at the end by saying, “How can you be an artist and not reflect the times? That to me is the definition of an artist.”
So, is reflecting the times a duty, or is it inevitable, a natural occurrence, because here we are in this time? I ponder this as a question, even though I know the answer.
Am I supposed to be creating effective marketing propaganda in service to what I think matters, or can I just let any old creative impulse guide me, and will that be enough? Will that suffice to fulfill the responsibility of art?
As usual, I am defining art in a way that is broad, deep, and very specific. The responsibility of art is to be art for art’s sake. Which means that the end result arises from the means itself, from the process, animated by desire, spirit, emotion and intuition, not from prior calculations.
This is why AI will never make art. (That’s for another post.)
When you are living in a time that call for resistance, just go ahead and make art. Making art in the face of what doesn’t want you to make art is courage, protest. Anytime you are acting from your heart and gut, without fear or hate, in service to your vision, you are functioning as an artist. Trust yourself. We need you.
Great post, as always! That Schadenfreude frisson was sure there this past weekend, looking at Trump's face and Marco Rudio's big yawn as the Pathetic Birthday Parade lumbered by. . .