Once upon a time Romans forced gladiators to fight wild animals for the audience’s blood lust.  Then we had Nazi Germany where regular Germans turned a blind eye to persecution or considered their own part in it minimal for they were only doing what ‘others had already done’.  And we had football but it became so corporate people lost ownership of it.  Today we have celebrity bashing as the new football and those who get the boots in will often say “I wasn’t the first”, “I’m only doing what others had already done” and that he or she ‘deserved it’ by ‘making themselves a public person’.   When haters call for new recruits, I find this lust for shared hatred sociologically fascinating but also calls to my spirituality as a Taoist.  Why do people crave such imbalance?

In an interview on Buzzle.com there were some interesting answers to this:

Q. This taste for watching a person being humiliated has something to do with the attraction to catastrophes and tragedies?

A. There is always a sadistic pleasure and a morbid fascination in vicarious suffering. Being spared the pains and tribulations others go through makes the observer feel “chosen”, secure, and virtuous.

Q. Do you believe the audience put themselves in the place of the reporter (when he asks something embarrassing to a celebrity) and become in some way revenged?

A. The reporter “represents” the “bloodthirsty” public. Belittling celebrities or watching their comeuppance is the modern equivalent of the gladiator rink. Gossip used to fulfil the same function and now the mass media broadcast live the slaughtering of fallen gods. There is no question of revenge here – just Schadenfreude, the guilty joy of witnessing your superiors penalized and “cut down to size”. 

Q. I would never dare asking some questions the reporters from Panico ask the celebrities. What are the characteristics of people like these reporters?

A. Sadistic, ambitious, narcissistic, lacking empathy, self-righteous, pathologically and destructively envious, with a fluctuating sense of self-worth (possibly an inferiority complex).

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By Sam Vaknin Published: 12/10/2004

I have long pondered hatred with a logical mind and come to the conclusion hatred has no logic, nor does it have consistency.  Hatred is opportunistic and hence it bends to maximise its justifications. Hence it is completely futile (and exhausting) to address or answer to hatred using logic.  So if one is utterly logical, one best leave hatred to self destruct.  The phrase ‘get a life’ is actually very helpful.  For when one leaves haters to it, their world is actually nothing more than a pimple on the arse of humanity.

I’d like to finish with a poem sent to me by a commenter.  Its called The Genius of The Crowd by Charles Bukowski.

Donna Williams, Dip Ed, BA Hons

http://www.donnawilliams.net

http://www.aspinauts.com