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Schadenfreude
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How about anticipatory schadenfreude ??
One of the locals around here is an alcoholic looking for a place to happen. I've frequently imagined his head exploding (just like in Scanners) when he finds out about making amends at 12 Steppers. Yeah, I'm bad . . .  
I think we have all had a moment or two where we derived some pleasure from another person's misfortune, but most of the time there is some context. I think for most people it happens when they feel that someone else is getting their comeuppance, or some application of karma. Otherwise I can't think of any times that I felt any sort of satisfaction from someone else's suffering where there wasn't some sort of context.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould (October 7, 2014 at 7:06 pm)ShaMan Wrote:(October 7, 2014 at 6:56 pm)vorlon13 Wrote: One of the locals around here is an alcoholic looking for a place to happen.Are you in a position to help this person heal? He is nowhere near ready to stop. He has a few family members left to estrange, he still manages to earn an income and his lawyer still takes his calls. I think he drinks at home now, he is banned at every bar in the area. Sad to contemplate, but falling backwards and splitting his head open after getting punched in a fight he started might be a blessing. An acquaintance of his missed a curve on his motorcycle a few years ago and wound up dying unnoticed in a corn field one night. I figured at least a few of the surviving local wet brains might get a clue at that point, but they have all resisted. A friend of my sister's conducts 12 Step meetings at a county jail in Nebraska. Unfortunately, it is a really frustrating thing, no one wants to be there, none of them think they have a problem, and some just BS their way through the meetings. |
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