Insightful newsletter of Drishtikone: Issue #126 - A Schadenfreude Fueled Society
“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.” ― Pablo Neruda
Where joy stems from comparative misfortunes, only psychopaths thrive. Those who keep measuring the degrees between their wretched existence and another’s. The barometer is a prisoner of someone’s brilliance or dumbness.
Your joy is not just outsourced. It is standing on the corpse of other’s joy.
Nothing can be more pathetic than such an existence.
Yet, that is our common way of life.
From the school to college to job, we feel good when we “beat” others in some race. The happiness does not come from what we achieved within ourselves, but how many we stepped over on our way up.
Competition is not necessary to instill ferociousness. You can be ferocious all by yourself. Just as you can be loving all on your own.
A joy that just sits there still and yet is exuberant is a joy that needs no favors. That needs no sacrifices of others’ happiness. It creates happiness.
Schadenfreude- collective social sickness?
There is an interesting German word, which has now found itself into the English parlance. It is Schadenfreude, which literally means damage-joy. It is the pleasure derived by someone from another person's misfortune or suffering.
The French get their heart fill from another’s misfortune as joiemaligne. The Dutch call it leedvermaak, Serbs and Croats term it zlùradōst, the Danish word is skadefryd, and Russian is zloradstvo. While in Mandarin the Chinese call it xìng‑zāi‑lè‑huò; the Greek would call it epichairekakia (literally epi, over, chairo, rejoice, kakia, disgrace), while the Romans had their term - malevolentia.
The idea has been the same - feel good about the misfortune or the suffering of the others.
In Papua New Guinea’s Nissan Atoll, they have made it into an art. There the Melanesians call it “Banbanam.” The Melanesians are, however, known to take this diabolical pleasure to a whole another level.
For on Nissan Atoll it is considered acceptable, if not exactly desirable, to dig up a rival’s remains after death and scatter them around the place, crowing about the fact that one is still in the land of the living.(Source)
Not quite as gory, but the modern generation practices it via the “funny videos”. The videos where someone meets with some accident, fall off, bumps into something, etc and people keep watching those videos.
That’s Schadenfreude.
As is the act that is now being perpetrated on India by so many in the name of news and journalism.
An actor died - killed? - and his manager was killed first, all because of her being at the wrong place at the wrong time. And the powerful went about on a killing spree.
Now, to save these dirty and sick psychopaths, the world of bought props have not stopped short of maligning and threatening the families of those who died.
These psychopaths who go around silencing their critics have played a very dirty game. Watch this session from Republic TV where Nitesh Rana, BJP MLA, is speaking about his conversation with the boyfriend of Disha Salian, SSR’s manager, and another one who died of so-called “suicide”. A guy who is not to be found now.
So, here was the sequence:
Disha was called to a party on June 8th by some very powerful people
She went there and something bad happened to her (molested?) at the hands of a powerful person (baby penguin?)
She ran back out and called Sushant on her way and told him about all this
Sushant discussed this with Ssandeep Singh and Rhea
Rhea called someone in the party to warn them about Disha
People were sent to Disha’s house to kill her
And, to Sushant’s house to wipe out call/other data records
Disha reached the apartment and was killed as she falls down
Her boyfriend comes down to see her lying in pool of blood after 25 minutes!
The boy-friend announces the funeral on June 9th to all the friends
The post-mortem is should be have been done on June 11th.
On June 14th, Sushant Singh was also killed
What we are seeing is a major scandal and a crime.
And, to counter this, the Rajya Sabha MP, ex-actress and wife of the top actor - Jaya Bachchan - tried to pull down those who are questioning the mess within Press and movies.
While she has the right to say whatever the heck she wants to say but to try and shoot the messenger is downright stupid! Ravi Kishan was correct in calling out the problems within the industry. To treat them with the kind of contempt that Jaya Bachchan had for him was shocking!
discrimination against non-Muslims in UPSC
There has been a huge hue and cry about the episode by Sudarshan TV, where it calls out the targeting of UPSC Civil Services exams by Muslim / Islamist bodies in a concerted way. His program was stayed by the High Court and Supreme Court because it “vilified the Muslim community.“ (Source) Something the Sudarshan TV’s lawyer contests.
So, let us look at the whole situation in purely mathematical terms. Absolute data and its analysis.
Sanjeev Newar uses the available data and analyzes the results that it throws out. What you see is absolutely startling! (Source)
Muslims score around 13 marks lower in the written exam, but 5-12 marks higher than non-Muslims in the interview regularly since 2013. The probability that this is happening by chance is 1 in 10,000! When he took the entire data set since 2013, the statistical chance of what is happening with respect to Muslims gets even more astronomically weird!
Consider this happening at least since 2013 (I couldnt get data before that). Sometimes its 4 marks more, sometimes 8, this time 12. I did a rough calculation and found that it is more likely that you get 50 consecutive heads than Muslims getting higher interview marks in #UPSC!
You can fight someone’s opinions. How do you fight just plain hard data and the insights coming from it?
What we are looking at is systemic and deliberate religious discrimination and targeting of people from every religion to boost employment opportunities for candidates of only one community. That is unacceptable in any society.
But, what completely shocked one was that one of the candidates is a madrasa trained student, who has not studied math or science beyond 3rd grade! His specialization? Dawah or Conversion.
#UPSC 751 ranker (of 759 total) is a madrasa trained specialist in Dawaah or conversion. He studied maths science beyond class 3 for first time for Upsc preparation, and took Urdu as optional as well as medium of language. Has 11 siblings all of whom are Moulvis.
Such a person will be responsible for the lives of so many people.
Please read his entire thread for a very clear perspective of the scenario.
Pakistan’s petty games
We were in 3rd grade and a friend of ours was a Bollywood fan with a penchant of making stories up. During our lunch breaks, he would start his story session. With kids gathered over their lunch boxes, he would start - “So, I was going to the jungle in a jeep and a dacoit attacked me. But I picked my gun and… , “ he would discuss animatedly. Whatever he had seen Amitabh Bachchan do, he would attribute to himself. By the end of his story, everyone would have been sitting in his jeep with a gun!!
That was 3rd grade. No one knew how to drive a jeep, had been to a jungle, least of all met a dacoit face to face. But in our own juvenile stories, we had beaten up many by the time we were ready to go to the 4th grade.
Pakistan, as a nation, is still in that 3rd grade. It has never won a single war against India, taken any land portion (actually lost half of its own!), and their establishment leaders have never even seen Junagadh or Srinagar! Yet, in their delusional, juvenile world, they carry maps that show these places as part of their nation.
By UN resolutions that they tout, they are supposed to vacate the entire Kashmir. Including the PoK and Aksai Chin and leave it all under Indian control. Before all that plebiscite crap that they keep singing about? This is what needs to happen.
But then just like we 3rd-grade kids never realized the difference between our delusion and reality, so don’t the people leading Pakistan.
What do they do?
Jump on their equivalent of our jeep. They are having an international meeting where National Security Advisors of the countries in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) are leading. Look, it’s not as if they are invited to many international fora anyway these days. But the one they are called to, they sit there with a map which showed Junagadh and Indian Kashmir as part of Pakistan.
Ajit Doval, the Indian NSA, leaves the meeting where such juvenile games are going on, sending a message that when the organization is done with the whole story session, then we can talk. There are more important things for India to do than have those “jeep”/juvenile sessions.
Btw, for those who don’t know, the Pakistani NSA is Moeed Yusuf. He has been a controversial person who had infiltrated American think-tanks to further Pakistan’s jihadi agenda. Please read - Is Moeed Yusuf a Pakistani Mole shaping American policies for the Pak-Afghan region?
nota bene
Transgender welfare: The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh has decided to set up a transgender welfare board under the state’s social welfare department. It quoted an official of the state government as saying, “The Board would work for the welfare and uplift of the transgender community. Along with the state government officers, the board would also include transgender representatives and the members of the social organizations working for the welfare of the transgenders.” (Source)
Life on Venus?: In a surprising twist, scientists at MIT, Cardiff University, and elsewhere have observed what may be signs of life in the clouds of our other, even closer planetary neighbor, Venus. While they have not found direct evidence of living organisms there, if their observation is indeed associated with life, it must be some sort of “aerial” life-form in Venus’ clouds — the only habitable portion of what is otherwise a scorched and inhospitable world. Their discovery and analysis is published today in the journal Nature Astronomy. The astronomers, led by Jane Greaves of Cardiff University, detected in Venus’ atmosphere a spectral fingerprint, or light-based signature, of phosphine. MIT scientists have previously shown that if this stinky, poisonous gas were ever detected on a rocky, terrestrial planet, it could only be produced by a living organism there. The researchers made the detection using the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT) in Hawaii, and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) observatory in Chile. (Source)
Gene-edited Farm Animals: Male pigs, goats, and mice can produce sperm containing only genetic material from donor species, a study has shown. In the study, animals that were made sterile through gene-editing techniques became fertile again after receiving stem cells from donor animals that were genetically different from them. The novel surrogacy approach could speed the spread of desirable characteristics in livestock and improve food production for a growing global population. (Source)
Temp immigrants to be sent back from the US: In a 2-1 ruling, a panel of three judges in the California-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court decision that had blocked Trump’s move to phase out the so-called Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for people from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Sudan. The ruling is also expected to affect the status of people from Honduras and Nepal, who filed a separate lawsuit that was suspended last year pending the outcome of the broader case.
walking on the path of the Yogis
When you want to connect to your innermost core, there are very few places like the Himalayas. You don’t “go” to the Himalayas. They “allow” you to come. The most satisfying and amazing pilgrimage for me was the one to Gaumukh.
The walk from Gangotri - a small town with hotels/motels - to Bhojwasa is a 14 km tough trek through the tough terrain with Bhagirathi flowing in full fury below. One misstep on of the rocks and you can fall in some areas.
When we reached Bhojwasa, some folks had still not reached the camp. So even though we were tired, we went back to “get” them. Two people were at the top of the mountain, one at the bottom near the camp and I was in the middle of the mountain. There was only the small light from the camp down below, but the rest of the valley was utterly dark. As one stood there in the middle of a huge mountain, one was struck by the amazing Grace that was bestowed by the many Rishis and Yogis who had walked that area and meditated in that place. The next day we went to Gaumukh, where Ganga starts.
One could go to Tapovan, where some Yogis meditate. Until some years back, one Yogini - Bengali Maa - also meditated there.
Here is a video by some trekkers who probably went there as “tourists” and not “pilgrims.” Watch it to see the beautify and get in touch with the place.
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