From A Schadenfreude Society to a Compassionate One
Let’s make a quantum leap.
Have you ever gone on YouTube to see the live broadcasts displaying the machinery of a courtroom? I have. There is a practice that goes on, and I don’t know why judges allow it.
Some judges leave the “live chat” feature on during courtroom proceedings. Worse, I’ve seen judges actually talk to their online audience in the live chat between docket calls.
Let’s think about that for a minute. Imagine what such a live chat would look like. Well, you don’t have to imagine it. Here’s a sample of one from a court in Michigan.
Could you really walk into an actual courtroom and say these things out loud? Of course not. You’d be escorted out in a heartbeat. But somehow, if your lips aren’t moving and you are behind a keyboard, you can be a “judge whisperer” and influence the judge as they conduct court and determine the fate of people’s lives.
A Broader Trend
This disturbing trend that I described above did not happen in a vacuum. This is part of a phenomenon that permeates the culture and has happened so slowly over the decades that we’ve become numb to it. It insidiously penetrates every aspect of society.
Think of the A&E channel, which supposedly stands for Arts and Entertainment.
When A&E began in 1984, this channel had content you would actually expect from a platform claiming to promote arts and entertainment. The focus then was on documentaries, dramas, educational programming, classical music features, and biographical portraits. By 1994, they started airing Law and Order episodes. By 2002, the channel became an unrecognizable shell of its former self with reality shows. In the last decade, the trend has been shifting towards true crime shows like The First 48, Interrogation Raw, Accused: Guilty or Innocent, Kids Behind Bars: Life or Parole, Killer Cases, and the list goes on and on. What do any of these shows have to do with Arts and Entertainment?
Everything. (What does the History Channel having a show about Ancient Aliens have anything to do with history?)
We have become a schadenfreude society that thrives on such “entertainment.” I think a lot of this began in the 1980s with tabloid television talk shows like Geraldo and Morton Downey Jr., and then into the 1990s, we went with Jerry Springer. We like to watch shows where “bad boys” get “busted,” perhaps because they were down on their luck, lacked employment, came from abusive families, and are quite possibly at the lowest moment of their lives (not to mention, it is my opinion these shows — especially Cops and Live PD, are blatantly racist). We enjoy seeing people at their lowest moments and even delight in it. It’s what fuels the platform X. It’s what has allowed for the relatively new trend (last decade and a half) of online trolling where a person like Elon Musk can turn an already shitty platform into one that boosts racism, anti-semitism, hate speech, and a cesspool of white supremacy.
Do you remember a particular television show where a certain “someone” enjoyed firing people, and those people walked out of a building humiliated? Whatever happened to that guy who did the firing? Oh yeah. Right.
This is who we have become. We’ve always been this way, but we’ve been able to suppress or even repress the drive for microscopic historical moments at a time. After each shameful episode in our history, such as the Salem Witch Trials, slavery, Jim Crow, The Red Scare, and The Lavender Scare, we somehow convince ourselves that we’ve learned our lesson and progress. But alas, a new interval passes, and it never happens. The pitchforks come out one way or another. Suppose they can’t be physical pitchforks; God Damnit! In that case, our species is brilliant enough to invent digital pitchforks, which, like a genetically modified Hunger Games animal, mutates into a more insidious but camouflaged form. And when the camouflage disappears, we’re left in the situation we find ourselves in today.
A rage-fueled society that feeds itself on outrage porn. And we find ourselves staring into the abyss.
My Grandfather
I have gone a bit dramatic.
Let me circle back around to criminal justice.
My grandfather had a big secret that he was too ashamed to mention for much of his life. The advent of newspapers.com was the only way I ever would have learned about it.
In the 1940’s, my grandfather was arrested for a crime. He spent several days in the county jail before it was revealed that he was mistaken for another individual and was let go. He never spoke of this incident. No one in my family knew about it until I discovered it — dad, uncle, cousins, etc. My grandma and grandpa obviously decided to keep this a secret because — well, I don’t know why they did. I assume it was traumatizing for both my grandparents, and I have to believe that my grandfather felt shame, even if he was not guilty. I wish I could go back in time and be his friend.
Many things were worse in the 1940s than today. We don’t have legalized lynching anymore, and there’s no official segregation. But I often think about what would have happened to my grandfather had he lived today. I do know this — he would have lost his profession and not have been hirable again in his field. No one would take a chance on him in that field. But because he didn’t live in the digital era, his right to be forgotten allowed him to flourish as a pharmacist for the next 50 years. Society was not outraged at him.
As a result, customers continued to adore him. They trusted him, knew he cared about them, and were devastated when they learned he had died. He continued to love and support his family until the end. What a waste that would have been — what a loss for the community if internet outrage and digital footprints had cost him his livelihood.
I should also mention that my family theorizes he was an undiagnosed autistic.
This is my Grandpa Alvin Dubin. And I could not be any prouder of the person he became.
Why You Should Care
When a society becomes the way ours is evolving, it always targets the most vulnerable. Always. Witches, homosexuals, disabled people — that’s who get targeted. And it does this, claiming society is changing, or getting tough (for the worse) to protect the vulnerable! It is quite paradoxical. Protect kids from homosexuals who want to have relationships with adult men, or today, from drag queens and trans individuals. Protect society from disabled individuals who will “create generations of imbeciles.” Protect white women from being raped by black men. (We should be especially ashamed of ourselves for that one.) Protect the public from witches casting spells. It’s all mind games.
Let me give you another example. I try to picture some of these people reading an article about a developmentally disabled individual who the authorities have arrested for a crime. Maybe it’s a three-paragraph article in a small-town paper; it’s pretty short, but there’s enough meat on the bone to chew on. Enough space down below to leave their footprint with a nasty comment about the disabled person. Enough time in people’s minds to link the article to Facebook. I wonder if those who are feeding on their outrage know that individuals with disabilities are 92% more likely to be exonerated later on.
Year after year, this statistic stays the same. The developmentally disabled and mentally ill are overrepresented on the national registry of exonerations. A schadenfreude society sometimes ends up crucifying its most innocent. There’s a whole religion that is based on that principle.
No society can be this way and remain civilized. We should drop the pretense that we are a civilized society right now until we can unplug from our smartphones, take in the wonders of nature, hug our pets, love our family, and stop looking for strangers we’ve never met to be angry at. Other than Medium, I will never join a social media platform for this reason.
None of this is to say that we shouldn’t fight for just causes by remaining silent. But whatever outrage we are feeling should be redirected into purposeful action. Volunteering for a political campaign, marching for a cause you believe in, striving for justice for members of your community; this can all be done in a spirit of love and compassion.
Disability advocates have long reminded me that someday, we will all be disabled. Well, we will — if we live long enough. We will all be vulnerable. All of us. For example, if you get dementia in old age, it is possible you may commit a crime and have no idea what you are doing. Do you think the justice system will care? Spoiler alert: it won’t. You may say to yourself…”This would never happen to me. I would have enough of my wits about me, so I don’t have to worry.” But one never knows. We really can’t be sure anything won’t happen to us. Most of us could be homeless overnight under the correct set of circumstances. Any of us could become disabled at any time, whether due to a heart attack, stroke, or getting into an accident. If you aren’t the most vulnerable now, if you live long enough, you will be. You, too, will be a victim of the prejudices of ageism and ableism.
Any of us can become vulnerable and open to attack in a society that feeds upon rage.
We need to turn down the temperature in more than one way. We need to remember the golden rule and apply it to moments where we feel enraged towards strangers we are reading about on a six-inch screen, but we may not even know why. We need to ask ourselves…”Do I really want to add more toxicity into the noosphere by commenting about something where my words may hurt when I lack all of the information?” We have only so much time on this earth.
Let’s refocus our priorities.
Let’s go from being a schadenfreude society to a genuinely compassionate one.
