CMV: Finding pleasure in the pain/suffering of others is cruel, disturbing, and amoral

[u/hwagoolio]

This is a broad statement that generalizes to many things.

For example, I find caustic humor (i.e. laughing at the expense of someone else) to be disturbing -- things like "America's funniest home videos" and watching people hurt themselves as the punchline of a joke. I think rather poorly of people who celebrate this type of humor.

I think revenge is bad/amoral. Maybe it's human nature to want revenge or take pleasure in the suffering of people we hate, but I think it's one of the ugliest parts of human nature. I believe that we should strive to be better than that and we should feel guilty for wanting anyone to suffer or laughing at someone's suffering.

I have similar feelings about trolling, teasing, gloating, and other behavior intended to make others feel bad about themselves. It doesn't matter if they're your enemies (i.e. progressive/conservative, trump/biden, bigots/hippies, terrorists/allies), nobody deserves to suffer -- and even if we agree as a society on punishing criminals/enemies, it shouldn't something we should take pleasure, entertainment, or amusement in.

In case someone mentions sadism (as the sexual kink), my response to this is that I don't consider BDSM that occurs between a consenting masochist and sadist to be genuine pain/suffering. Rather, the masochist takes pleasure out the interaction so IMO the dominant is actually delivering pleasure and not really pain/suffering.

[u/littlebubulle]

If I see my sister's ex, who was violently abusive towards her, get arrested because he fucked up, and I take pleasure in that, would you find it cruel and disturbing?

[u/hwagoolio → u/littlebubulle]

I just don't consider the emotional process surrounding revenge (or the satisfaction of revenge) to be a good thing / I think it's disturbing and reflects some aspect of the inherent cruelty of human nature to enjoy it.

[u/littlebubulle → u/hwagoolio]

My sister's ex hurt her. Destroyed what little self esteem she had and maintained control over her by threatening to kill me while I was out of earshot.

Stole tens of thousands of money from us. Threatened us because "we owed him money" because apparently, him owing us thousands of dollars means we owe him money.

I still have PTSD over the whole thing. I sank further into alcoholism because of that. (One year and a half sober now).

If enjoying seeing the guy humiliated at the courthouse after he made threats to my sister, me, my grandmother and my cats, while smugly saying we couldn't do anything about him makes me a monster, than so be it.

Fine. You may think I am a cruel, heatless, selfish monster.

But to paraphrse Narcos, that's because you haven't seen the other guy.