–artwork by Michael DiMilo–
It is not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
–Gore Vidal:
I had a next-door neighbor a few years back who had to move out of his place unexpectedly. He broke no laws, he did nothing wrong, but still had to be physically removed from the building. He was a very nice guy, personable, friendly, always ready to help out when he could, but the truth was that he couldn’t do that very often because he had physical problems.
Mac—we’ll call him that—was morbidly obese. He told me he had always had a weight problem and found it almost impossible to control; it had gotten so bad he could barely get up and down the stairs to his second-floor room. He was younger, about thirty or so and probably tipped the scales and 400 pounds or so. In the summer, the season when we actually get to see our neighbors in Wisconsin, he’d come home from work about five or so when I’d be out working in the garden. I’d lean on the fence while he rested on the stoop and we’d spent some time chatting. He was an avid Packers and Brewers fan; he also knew quite a bit about the environment. We had conversations about praying mantises, the vanishing bee population, and other environmental concerns. He was smart and he was funny. I liked him.
One hot summer afternoon as I was driving home, I saw flashing red lights in the distance down my street. I realized with a sinking feeling that they were on my block but heaved a sigh of relief when I realized it was the neighbor’s house—Mac’s—instead of mine. I steered around the fire truck and the ambulance and slowly made my to my driveway through the growing crowd on the sidewalk. I got out and happened to see another one of my neighbors.
“What is it?” I asked him.
“It’s that guy who lives next door to you—that really fat guy. I think he had a heart attack or something.”
I nodded and thanked him, and made my way over to the EMTs and firefighters, moving in close enough to eavesdrop.
“His signs are stable,” said one of the EMTs, wiping the sweat out of his eyes, “but I don’t know how we’re going to get him out of there. He won’t fit on the stretcher.”
All three of them looked up at the picture window on the second floor. The captain nodded.
It only took about an hour for the firefighters to take out the window, frame and all. It took about another hour to bring in a crane, put Mac in the sling suspended from it, and have it pull him out of there.
When they realized what was going on, it only took about two minutes for a serious crowd to form. They moved in fast, like locusts. The cameras were out and clicking as soon as the crane started moving. It took less than a second to snap a photo, to immortalize a man’s humiliation forever. It was just like the carnival; people were sucking popsicles, joking around, and having a great old time. The only thing missing was the cotton candy. Kids were running around. A couple of them were chanting, “Fat, fat, the water rat”, at the sling and running away.
When the crane slowly brought the sling down, some of our neighbors applauded, others joked, and a few jeered. I couldn’t see Mac; I only hoped he was unconscious.
After the ambulance drove away, people drifted home. I stared up at the hole in the house next door, feeling depressed and a little disgusted. I hoped Mac was all right. I heard a few months later that he was doing well, that he had lost a lot of weight and was going to be getting married. I never saw him again.
There is a word in German, Schadenfreude, which is defined as the pleasurable emotion felt at someone else’s misfortune. At first, it made me wonder if the Germans really have a word for every shade of emotion, but then I had to question why this type of cruelty is so natural to us, so natural that we’ve devised a specific name for it.
Why do we delight in others’ misfortunes? People laugh when someone falls or slides on the ice or slips on a banana peel. It’s classic comedy. But why? Is it the need to feel superior? Is it that strong in our genetic makeup? Is it relief, the same relief a herd animal feels when she sees the lion pull down a weaker member behind her?
Maybe it’s an odd sense of justice, that feeling that the person had it coming. In this case, people may have felt that Mac brought the whole situation upon himself and deserved everything he got: the pain, the humiliation, and the shame. But it’s one thing to feel happy about someone’s ill fortune, but another to sit and watch it—to me the size of the crowd seemed to unnecessarily prolong Mac’s agony. Turning away wouldn’t have diminished our pleasure—or would it?
I guess this sort of begs the question if this type of emotional satisfaction is a form of bullying. It is certainly related to the same type of meanness found on school playgrounds since the beginning of time. The mean kids are mean because it’s fun to watch their victims squirm.
So Mac, who had probably been the butt of jokes his entire life at school, on the playground, and at work, had to suffer the ultimate embarrassment of being hauled out of his home like a piece of cargo.
One of my other neighbors who had been snapping pictures of the event like a madman turned to me and said, “This is just unbelievable, man, just unbelievable.”
I looked around at the crowd, at him, and at Mac on his agonizingly slow trip down, and simply nodded. This asshole didn’t get it; he never would. Neither would most of the people in that crowd. It didn’t make them bad or good human beings, it just emphasized that human weakness we all have, that emotional oddity of liking others’ misery.
I’m no better than any of them. I slow down to look at traffic accidents, too.