The Fault-Finding Gene

 

 

What kind of a year will 2022 be? I think I’ll try to stay in the present and take it one day at a time, like I do with everything else. I will try to be a good person, which is not a given for me.

Just to show you what a terrible person I am, there are few things that cheer me up as much as seeing a death notice for someone I did not like. That happened recently, and as the warm glow spread inside, I thought, I’ll never have to deal with that person again.

This may be the acme of schadenfreude, but I console myself that whoever it is will never know, because they are, you know, dead.

I do not talk about it to people. I keep it to myself. I mean, saying you are glad someone has died is bad form, you must agree. Well, unless it is someone whom we have as a culture agreed would leave the world better off by departing. Then it is still bad form, but we are not alone.

At the same time I cannot help but wonder who and how many will breathe a sigh of relief, or maybe say, “Yahoo,” and do a little dance when I fall off the perch. I am not the only one who feels a certain satisfaction at the passing of someone who was a pain in the butt.

Why do I imagine people being happy if I die? Because I have lived around human beings for a long time, and I know what they are like. Plus I know I can be a real pain in the butt myself.

There’s always someone wanting to criticize and find fault. In my experience people can find fault with other people for anything and everything, and make up stuff to criticize, no matter how nonsensical.

I do not know what evolutionary purpose this serves.

For an illustration of fanciful fault finding, I hold up One America News, which is slightly to the lunatic right of Fox News. They like to tell their viewers that Joe Biden has an uncontrollable stutter, and they offer doctored video evidence of him stuttering, which is another proof that he is a morally derelict commie cannibal.

Because that’s the kind of leap they like to make in Delusion World (A denizen of which told a friend of mine that today is the day the UN starts throwing people in jail until they get vaccinated. Sometimes the conspiracy theorists come up with a good, if not legal, idea).

Going from the political to the personal, that fault-finding gene seems to be present in all of us, and if we don’t like someone, we will find all kinds of things to justify our dislike. They are too fat, or too thin, or too bitchy, or too nice, or too sloppy, or too anal, or too slow, or too fast, too loud, too quiet, too late, too early, or too good to be true – it must be an act. Or they think they are so darn smart.

When I review the people who have given me the pip, I realize that mostly they were people who looked down their noses at me. I do not object to people having a good opinion of themselves. I do object to people who have a lousy opinion of themselves trying to make themselves feel better by dissing me.

If I felt better about myself, I wouldn’t notice this behavior, or I’d feel compassion for people who are mired in their own emotional soup and try to make themselves feel worthy by throwing their soup around.

Okay, that metaphor is exhausted.

So – anyway – I see this less than admirable trait in myself. Sometimes when someone dies, and it is someone who has always treated me as a lesser being, I am relieved, and glad.

If I have not sorted that trait out of myself by now, I am probably stuck with it.

Back to work, trying hard to be rational and behave well and fluff up my compassion.

It’s a struggle.