(This article is written by Madison Park. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Madison attended Emerson College in Boston as a film major, but always gravitated more toward the field of psychology. With the hopes of transferring universities to study psychology and philosophy, Madison explores cognitive, social, and neurological subdivisions of psychology and all things related to the human condition to fulfill and live out her desires to research such an expansive study. Click here to check out her Podcast, The Unqualified Truth)

As our brain is ruled by the subconscious 95% of the time (The Power of the Subconscious), much of the tasks we perform and the thoughts we think are left unexamined, most evidently the most rudimentary, habitual. Concentrating on the idea of the greeting, we acknowledge its circadian prevalence, and the many forms in which it presents itself in social interaction. What differs more often than we think is a greetings’ intent. Ostensibly, greetings serve to introduce, address, or, by the name, greet. Yet, in the same breath, it can acknowledge and validate the individual who receives the greeting, establishing its universal social value. Its weight, however, is often overlooked as our subconscious evaluates the nuances and derives deeper, oftentimes inexplicable interpretations of who is greeting, what they may imply through the greeting, why they are greeting at all. I want to take this piece to explore the greeting, and its seemingly benign presence, and explore the substrates of the impact of our implicit motives in social discourse.   

The Return of the Native: Malicious Joy 

Take the following excerpt: “When the instinctive question about a person is, “What is he doing?” it is felt that he will be found to be, like most of us, doing nothing in particular…The devout hope is that he is doing well. The secret faith is that he is making a mess of it.” Hardy paints the phrase “What is he doing” as a strain of a greeting, a question you would ask a classmate,  not your sibling. This excerpt from Thomas Hardy’s, The Return of the Native, acutely and accurately exposes an inalienable tenet of human nature: what we disguise as care can in fact be a form of malicious hope.

The implicit motives behind such an inoffensive, even courteous, question reveals, as cliche as it might sound, our true character, personality. It’s even possible identity has little to do with such a disregarded phenomena, this response and reaction may well exist in humans universally, independent from the differences of each individual. Then considering Hardy’s acute observation, I can’t help but observe a few, possibly universal, facets of human identity that begs the question: why is it that many of us feel ill will towards others we inevitably compare ourselves to, whether we are aware of it or not? Is it simply hardwired human nature to derive pleasure from the misfortune of others? 

Freudian Analysis of the Psyche

There is an ongoing rivalry taking place inside our minds—a battle waged between our superego and ID (moral conscience and instinctual desires). The superego encourages the morally righteous, and serves as the adjudicator of reasonable action in order to fulfill what is most honorable and virtuous. The ID rules over the impulsive, more atavistic desires, ones that often lack moral circumference. The two lie on the end of a spectrum with the ego serving as a mediator in between—the conscious realm of identity that regulates the two and consequently our decision making processes. Its relation to Hardy’s quote reveals as the “devout hope” is our ideal, socially applauded self-image that we use to suppress the “secret faith” that our threshold of success and happiness should exceed the ones of those around us—the active clash between the ID and superego. Although the idea may feel uncomfortable, at its roots, this simply represents the weighing of our circumstances. However, it is easy to slip from neutral comparison to judgment, equating our abilities, goals, and values to those of people we do not truly know. Oftentimes, it develops into a habit, diluting our self-perception as we entangle ourselves in trivial competition, yet it’s so human. While this experience of “malicious comparison” makes one feel fragile, almost infantile, it is still a ubiquitous part of identity. Ultimately, the idea that others can’t help but seek interest in our lives the same way we seek interest in theirs is why we ask the simple question: “What are you doing?” We can not help but invest ourselves in others in the same way we invest time into ourselves. It is only natural to seek validation, recognition, and connection, regardless of whom it might come from. 

German Origins 

Then, if judging and comparing is but instinctual, what is Hardy referring to when he says, “making a mess of it?” The German word, Schadenfreude, combines the word Schaden, meaning “damage,” and Freude, meaning “joy.” Together, the oxymoron refers to those who experience joy at the cost of another’s pain or misfortune. I am sure many of us have derived harmless pleasure from watching someone slip or trip. What catches us off-guard, then, is that Hardy plants the idea within the innocuous question of, “what is he doing?” In doing so, he points out the Schadenfreude in all of us. The ambiguity of the word “mess” is what makes the idea inexplicably universal. He does not explicitly state the meaning of the “mess,” yet we easily understand the “mess” he refers to. Professors of the Psychology department at Emory University have linked Schadenfreude to the envy theory, stating that “both envy and Schadenfreude derive from social comparison…the former stems from upward comparison and is linked to a sense of inferiority…the latter stems from a downward social comparison and is linked to a sense of superiority” (Wang, Lilienfeld, Rochat, 2019). The second part of the theory posits that learning of others’ misfortunes diminishes one’s envy that they’ve already possessed toward that individual. Acknowledging that they too have or come across misfortunes renders them less enviable, constituting relief rather than a direct sense of superiority or inferiority. Regardless of the theory, this “malicious joy” stems from envy which we use to validate our social identities and/or self-evaluations. 

Connections to the Individual: What should we ask ourselves? 

What Hardy doesn’t directly reveal is that when we wish for one to suffer from an illness or spill juice on a new shirt, the “mess” is the desperation of what we want interfering with the frustration knowing we can not express it. That desire comes to tangible fruition when we compare ourselves to one another, acquiring gratification from knowing that we are not “in their situation.” When we are “in their situation,” or worse, we only hope for someone else to be in the same situation in order to feel less alone. Does that notion make us cruel? No, I do not think so. We shelter our darkest thoughts in tightly sealed glass jars, and when no one else is around, we open them and peek in to ensure nothing has leaked, oblivious to the cracks. With that, Hardy implies a broader idea beyond habits of social comparison: the fear of our true selves, disguised and restrained so obsessively we are unaware that so much of it has been seeping out. The selfishness, greed, and envy we conceal are but a natural part of us—traits we can not cure. Whether we should flaunt them is another question, but to deny the existence of our shortcomings, the effect of another’s judgment, or even our most shameful selves, only serves to occlude a thorough understanding and acceptance of both ourselves and everyone we can’t help comparing ourselves to.

(This article is written by Madison Park. Born and raised in Chicago, Illinois, Madison attended Emerson College in Boston as a film major, but always gravitated more toward the field of psychology. With the hopes of transferring universities to study psychology and philosophy, Madison explores cognitive, social, and neurological subdivisions of psychology and all things related to the human condition to fulfill and live out her desires to research such an expansive study. Click here to check out her Podcast, The Unqualified Truth)