Finessing our supposed friends and enemies.
You know, there really is a sliding scale for reacting to bad things.
If a stranger does something bad to you, you feel bad.
If your friend does something bad to you, you feel worse.
If your child does something bad to you, even worse.
And at the top of the scale, your spouse or your parent or your best friend.
A large part of it is the breach of trust. And another large part of it is a loss of feeling safe in your own space, not exactly the same thing as a breach of trust.
Which explains why people get madder at the US when our employees and agents do bad things than they do at, say, Al Qaeda. Nobody feels a breach of trust when Al Qaeda does bad things.
Another factor is the feeling you get when you catch the preacher in bed with the choir boy or girl, that he held himself out as being better than you but actually he's as bad or worse. (Levelling.)
And then there's the indiscribable feeling you get when you see something unpleasant happen to the bald guy with the bosomy blond half his age in the brand new Porsche. Kind of like the feeling people got in the Victorian era to see the kid with the snowball knock the top hat off the head of Lord Haw-Haw. (Levelling, again.)
All perfectly human feelings, even though some are less than admirable, and, I would suggest, no point in complaining, because you won't get any sympathy anyway. |
