Schadenfreude

"Schadenwhaat??" That was my response when I came across this word while reading an issue of Times Literary Supplement a few months ago.

I had worked with Bosch for a couple of years and so had heard my share of guttural sounding "wie geht es dir?'s" and "nicht schlecht's". Later, as my interests panned out to theology, philosophy and culture, I appreciated the unique potential of German words to mutate and form new words (check out Vorgriff).

But this one was a mouthful. The literal translation of Schadenfreude is 'damage-joy'. But what did that even mean? My curiosity got the better of me as I thumbed through my dictionary to pause and slowly marvel at what I was staring at.

It signifies...wait for it...(drum roll)… the morbid gloating and satisfaction one derives out of the misfortune of another. Really! There's a word for that? This is a total complex psycho phenomenon driven by rivalry (interpersonal competition), aggression (the opponents fall validates their supremacy over the other) or justice (pleasure of retribution inflicted on an evil person).

Schadenfreude is a loan word in English but there are equivalent words in many other languages. In fact, 'epicaricacy' is an English word (derived from Greek roots meaning 'upon joy evil') that captures the same sentiment.

Rivalry-driven Schadenfreude was most amusing to me because I had known people who had confessed their pleasure of seeing their friends fail. This was inexplicable to me. Why would a friend want to see the downfall of another? Because deep inside, there is a raging desire to prove oneself smarter and desirable over the other.

Schadenfreude captures the warped in-workings of the human species that is trapped in utter folly, polluting everything it touches. Unfortunately, we live in a culture that has trivialized and even commercialized it through comedy shows as innocent as Tom & Jerry and Just for Laughs.

Schadenfreude takes many forms in everyday life. The matrices of human conscience and psyche at play leaves the astute psycho-analyst befuddled as the species continually descends into abyss, mocking every attempt of medication and meditation to uncloud the mind.

Could it be that the world we live in is not as emptied of religious significance as the enlightenment theorists would have us believe? Could it be that this realm is animated and supercharged with the divine? Could there be a paradigm where the seen and unseen coexist and relate? Could it be that the sages from the past have accounted for this more truly and fully on such matters? Could it be that the answers to some of the complex anthropological miseries come from God?