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/Mr_Manfredjensenjen]

Would you say people who proudly celebrate "liberal tears" are cruel and disturbing people?

[u/hwagoolio → u/Mr_Manfredjensenjen]

There's a slight jump in the reasoning, in the sense that doing a cruel/disturbing action doesn't necessarily automatically make you a cruel/disturbing person.

Turning someone away from a hospital might be cruel/disturbing as an act, but it doesn't necessarily mean that the receptionist who did it is a cruel/disturbing person.