Mama Weer All Carers Now (Something to Reflect Upon Whilst in Self-Isolation)

On a rather schadenfreudenistic note, it has amused me to see how the coronavirus pandemic has obliged millions of people to essentially adopt the life that I've been living for almost four years; one of illness, isolation, constant handwashing, financial hardship and grave concerns about the future.

Experts are already expressing fears about the mental wellbeing of people in a lockdown situation denied normal social interaction and deprived of certain material comforts that they have previously taken for granted. And I can vouch for the fact it isn't easy ...

However, if spending 14 days shut-up indoors worrying about whether you'll run out of quilted toilet paper is your idea of hardship, then try spending 1,448 days caring for an elderly parent with Alzheimer's without any external support and just £66.15 a week to live on ...         

I'm just saying that people should learn to make do - or do without - with a certain equanimity (or, if you prefer a more philosophical term, then go google ataraxia - a crucial component of the good life for Stoics and Epicureans alike).*  


* Note: those interested in this can also click here to read a post on the topic from April 2018. 

Benevolence

Jean-Michel Zazzi: Friedrich Nietzsche (2019) 

artsper.com

To read what one commentator writes, you'd think that Nietzsche's entire project (assuming it's possible to ascribe such a notion of purity and wholeness to his work) was based on the concept of Schadenfreude and that the greatest thing about his revaluation of values was that it allowed one to revel in the misfortune of others - including malignant ex-girlfriends - in good conscience.*

That would be very much mistaken, however.

For whilst it's true that Nietzsche rejects the Christian virtue of pity [Mitleiden] and speaks of the positive role that cruelty has played in the formation of man (often using Grausamkeit as synonymous with Kultur), so too does he privilege terms such as Wohlwollen in his text - what we in English-speaking countries term benevolence.

For Nietzsche, like the rest of us, doesn't merely 'deal in damage and joy', he also deals in goodwill and affirms the idea of having a cheerful, friendly disposition. This is particularly true in his mid-period writings.

In Human, All Too Human, for example, Nietzsche writes of those little, daily acts of kindness that, although frequent, are often overlooked by those who study morals and manners; those smiling eyes and warm handshakes, etc., that display what D. H. Lawrence terms phallic tenderness, but Nietzsche simply calls politeness of the heart.**  

These things have played a far more important role in the micropolitics of everyday life and the construction of community than those more celebrated virtues such as sympathy, charity, and self-sacrifice.

Of course the power of malice also plays a key role in human relations - and Nietzsche affirms an emotional economy of the whole - but, as I have said, it's profoundly mistaken to read from this that he is some kind of sadistic psychopath.

In other words, moving beyond good and evil does not mean behaving like an unethical little shit and I would remind Dr Solomon that "the state in which we hurt others is rarely as agreeable [...] as that in which we benefit others; it is a sign that we are still lacking power".**

Criminal lunatics who carry out atrocities and seek to justify their actions by calling on Nietzsche's name are invariably bad and/or partial readers; individuals as confused in their thinking as they are unrestrained and immoderate in their actions.  

* See the remarks made by Simon Solomon following my recent post on the subject of schadenfreude: click here.

** Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1996), I. 2. 49.

** Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann, (Vintage Books, 1974), I. 13. 

Schadenfreude

Schadenfreude is a form of malicious mirth that takes cruel delight in another's misfortune, failure, or humiliation. Nietzsche describes this complex emotional response as all too human, in contrast to Schopenhauer who assigns it a diabolical origin. Either way, there's no exact English term for it; I've never heard anyone use epicaricacy.

However, this isn't to say that the English, for all their talk of fair play and siding with the underdog, don't also take pleasure in seeing others - particularly successful individuals from a humble origin - lose out or be brought back down to earth with a bump, in order to remind them of who they were and who they essentially remain.

In other words, schadenfreude has an unpleasant moral component wrapped inside its apparent immorality. We laugh and jeer and sneer at others in order to teach them a lesson; schadenfreude is a form of judgement and punishment; i.e. morally corrective justice.

And it's for that reason - rather than the cruelty as such - that I don't like it: torpedo the ark means (amongst other things) to have done with judgement. Further, one's own natural indifference to how others fare means that I never really experience schadenfreude any more than its opposite, compassion or, keeping things in German, Mitgefühl.* I might not feel your pain or suffering - but I won't laugh at it either. 

So - just to be clear on this - I don't have a moral objection to schadenfreude; rather I object to it as a form of moralism. And perhaps also as a form of faint-heartedness and bourgeois compromise. For whilst observing others suffer may well have a tonic effect on the soul of man, as Nietzsche suggests, it's making others suffer which is where the true festival of cruelty begins ...  

*It might be noted that this indifference also extends towards my own welfare or fate. Partly this is punk nihilism and partly it's informed by the ethics of Stoicism. There are also elements of Sade, Masoch, Lawrence and Larry David mixed up in there too (apathy, coldness, insouciance, and the curbing of enthusiasm). None of this says anything whatsoever about my own sense of self-esteem.           

See: Tiffany Watt Smith, Schadenfreude: the Joy of Another’s Misfortune, (Profile Books / Wellcome Collection, 2018). See also her article in The Guardian entitled 'The secret joys of schadenfreude' (14 Oct 2018): click here. 

Thanks to Simon Solomon for provoking this post.