Why are we so spiteful?...
Why are we so spiteful?... Our culture is pettily vindictive in part because it is unequal. But we cannot punish our way to a more just society.
The purest eruption of spite I have ever witnessed took place at a former friend’s birthday party some years ago. We were all in our early 20s, and alcohol had been flowing freely. I slipped into the kitchen to refill my drink; when I returned, the birthday girl, her cheeks flushed from the wine, had become incensed at her boyfriend for some unaccountable transgression. On the coffee table was an enormous cake, brought by her now-disgraced beloved. The birthday girl seized the platter and, with a terrific crash, hurled the cake to the floor. “Now none of us can have any,” she seethed, raising an accusatory frosting-covered finger as guests began edging toward the door.
Spite defies logic. We act spitefully—lashing out to harm someone else, even at a cost to ourselves—when the desire to punish overrides other considerations. People in the throes of spite’s poisonous pleasures do not care if they injure themselves, or make the whole world worse off, so long as they satisfy their rancor. Yet because spite involves a self-inflicted cost, this petty and ultimately antisocial emotion bears a family resemblance to altruism. Many spiteful actors believe they are behaving nobly: meting out justice where it is due.
That we live in a particularly spiteful age is the very plausible premise of Spite: The Upside of Your Dark Side. According to Simon McCarthy-Jones, the book’s author and a psychologist at Trinity College Dublin, spite “may be the last weapon of the downtrodden.” Disadvantaged people acting out of spite can pull their oppressors down a few pegs. As a form of costly punishment aimed at the rich and powerful, spite can weaken dominance hierarchies and promote fairness. The book suggests that spite can be soothed, though never banished, by more just political arrangements. Yet the extent to which spite can serve as a mechanism for establishing egalitarian politics—rather than merely a registration of our discontent—is less than clear.
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Originally Posted by RMNIXON
