Things that people know: why are we happy for Eid?

The proverb "There is no joy like the joy of Eid" arouses the curiosity of Moshe who asks "Really?"

Joy to Id. Created using DALEE 2. Definitions - Avi Blizovsky
Joy to Id. Created using DALEE 2. Definitions – Avi Blizovsky

Of course, there is no "shamometer" to measure and compare the joy we will feel if we manage to shed 5 kg on a diet to the joy we will feel if our friends lose 5 kg. But even if it is impossible to determine whether the joy for Eid is the greatest of joys, it is undoubtedly the strangest of them. This is the most common type of joy but also the muted, repressed and disguised in our emotions. There is almost no children's story or folk tale that does not provide the listener with the pleasure of humiliating the wicked, and there is no police TV series that does not include a close-up of the criminal in handcuffs. Simcha Laid is behind a large part of the jokes and enjoyment we derive from watching her in sports but she is almost never acknowledged. The alienating attitude towards this emotion is evidenced by the fact that in the 200,000-word dictionary of the English language there is no translation for "gloating" and English speakers are forced to import the German word Schdenfreude (gloating is not a satisfactory translation since it is a verb and not a state of mind and is often used in a sense similar to that of the verb) to mock" in Hebrew). It is tempting to see the omission of joy from the English vocabulary and its existence in the German dictionary as evidence of a deep cultural difference, but the psychologist Steven Pinker testifies to Anglo-Saxon students encountering the term Schdenfreude for the first time "They don't say 'How can there be joy in another person's suffering? I don't understand the idea that it doesn't exist In my language and culture. Their response is 'Hey, is there a word for that?' King Solomon is responsible for this small advantage of Hebrew over English when in the book of Proverbs he drowns out the concept while sharply condemning this pleasure "Sneer to the old, do it in the winter; rejoice at Id, he will not be cleansed" (Proverbs chapter XNUMX) only to fail himself with joy at Id in the same Book himself: "Lost Rashaim Rana" (chapter XNUMX). Simcha Laid appears already in the third year of life when a child competing for attention or social status in the group fails.

Why is such a powerful emotion needed?

Why is such a powerful emotion needed and why is it so difficult to admit it? Humans have a unique ability to feel empathy and compassion, that is, to adapt the other person's point of view and participate in their feelings. This is an essential ability for social life and the brain is adapted to identification through areas that respond to transmissions from others by activating "mirror cells", meaning nerve cells that are active both when we experience an emotion and when we recognize it in others. Two emotions require us to act completely opposite, the envy in which we experience distress in the face of another person's success and the joy of the pair in which we recognize distress and respond to it with joy. The need for the "opposite feelings" may arise from the need to punish a person for deviating from rules, so for example, it was found that "mirror cells" were not activated when a person was previously observed cheating in a game. But even when it comes to fair play, it's not worth identifying with those who are too successful. Social status-an essential resource for survival and reproduction is relative: we need to be not just good but better than the members of our social reference group and when our status is threatened we should take off our gloves. Magnetic imaging of the brain allows researchers to check how areas of the brain are activated in different situations. Jealousy is processed in the same area of ​​the brain where we experience "social pain", it is the result of a conflict between our positive assessment of ourselves and a fact that is incompatible with this assessment. Acknowledging inferiority always hurts and it signals a real danger to social status. According to the school of evolutionary psychology, we are the offspring of parents whose social status allowed them to reproduce, that is, those who were not indifferent to their position in the hierarchy and developed a motivation to eliminate threats to the status. This impulse may trigger an action designed to increase our achievements, i.e. "writers' envy", but the fall of a competitor promotes us in the same way and, therefore, stimulates to action brain pathways linked to positive reward, i.e. joy, and in particular awakens to the activity of the Striatum - a part of the brain that provides us with a reward for successes. When, under laboratory conditions, the subjects (students, of course, who else would spend their time watching videos while connected to an MRI machine?) were shown interviews with other students, some excellent (and therefore representing a threat to status) and some mediocre. After the interview it "turns out" that the student was caught in a criminal act and expelled from the university. It turns out that the threatening excellence turns off the identification mechanisms in the brain, so we stop "putting ourselves in the shoes" of a person whose success threatens us and the way is opened to feelings of envy and joy for the person. When the student who fails is presented as inferior in his achievements, the identification with him is maintained and the feeling is of sharing in the sorrow. The joy for Id is especially strong towards members of the same sex: men will be more happy for the troubles of men and women for the downfall of other women as can be expected from emotions designed by evolution for "internal" competition between males or between females for relative position in the group. The connection between jealousy and joy and the desire for inferiority is at the root of its repression: recognition of such feelings means recognition of the superiority of the other and it itself, therefore, endangers our status. Perhaps this is the reason that joy at Eid is often disguised as the pursuit of justice, that is, as a legitimate emotion to express those feelings - it is permissible to rejoice at Eid if only there is a moral justification for the fall of the opponent. Poetic justice is a wonderful way to enjoy the joy of Eid without pangs of conscience and feelings of inferiority. As mentioned, Id's jealousy and joy will be directed towards a competitor in the group we belong to; And they are unnecessary when it comes to someone we don't compare ourselves to. Privileges of aristocrats did not arouse envy and their fall did not arouse joy among the common people as long as the hermetic social separation existed and nothing that happened to them changed the status of those outside the aristocracy. Similarly, we can rejoice in the joy of a Hollywood star but find it difficult to digest the success of a friend who went to high school with us. Joy to Id is a complex emotion, an examination of people whose different parts of their brains were damaged revealed that it is possible to lose the ability to feel joy to Id even when empathy is preserved, i.e. the ability to correctly identify emotions in others and adapt their point of view. Joy for Eid requires the activation of several areas in the two lobes of the brain required to simultaneously represent an emotional state of the other person and an opposite state in "I". Brain science confirms that "there is no joy like joy for the soul" - this is an important emotion that there is a good reason to feel and an equally good reason to repress.

Did an interesting, intriguing, strange, delusional or funny question occur to you? sent to  ysorek@gmail.com

More of the topic in Hayadan:

One response

  1. Interesting and "nice", only that unnecessary bravado should have been avoided
    and instead of "situations" write situations,
    instead of "status" rank or position,
    We have had enough of the mocked foreign language on other sites
    What else the writer demonstrates his linguistic ability
    By comparing other languages,
    We will write and speak Hebrew without the goat

Leave a Reply

Email will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismat to prevent spam messages. Click here to learn how your response data is processed.