On Nov 8, 2008, at 4:31 AM, John D wrote:
> >> schadenfreude > schadenfreude |ˈ sh ädənˌfroidə| (also Schadenfreude) > noun > pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune. > ORIGIN German, from Schaden ‘harm’ + Freude ‘joy.’ Not really. Schadenfreude is more like what I'm feeling for the Republican Party right now. It is a (usually self consciously guilty) pleasure derived from someone else's misfortune that you did not bring about directly. Bullies getting pleasure from harming people is called 'sadism'. sadism |ˈsāˌdizəm|noun the tendency to derive pleasure, esp. sexual gratification, from inflicting pain, suffering, or humiliation on others.• (in general use) deliberate cruelty. ORIGIN late 19th cent.: from French sadisme, from the name of the Marquis de Sade . Anyone who's ever been bullied knows the difference. What a bully does is sadism, what I may feel when a bully gets their comeuppance is schadenfreude. There's been some rather dumb pop psychology in recent years that would have us believe that bullies are just insecure people with low self esteem. This is often a theory put forth by people who never did dread going to school because that sadistic bastard Tommy was going to be there to make their life miserable, because he's twice your size and knows you can't do anything about it. They have very high self-esteem, and are very secure in their ability to terrorize others. (Schadenfreude was when Tommy picked the wrong person to bully and got the living shit beaten out of him.) Now that we're finally able to watch what happens in people's brains, real-time, I think many, many of these pop psychology theories are going to go by the wayside. -- Bruce Johnson "No matter where you go, there you are", B. Banzai --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "StrataList-OT" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/StrataList-OT?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
