The Drama of Everyday Sadism
It seems quite clear to me that most humans love hurting each other. In fact, I think our denial about this fairly ubiquitous trait is causing significant problems with the organization of our society.
Of course, we all have different levels of sadism. The most common level of sadism, is getting pleasure out of seeing “our enemy” in pain. This is, effectively, the basis of action and superhero movies; it feels good to watch someone else suffer, as long as we perceive that person to be “wrong” or “evil.”
In fact, this sadism seems to be a trait we share with apes, who are also capable of sadism. I couldn’t find a streaming version of it, but I remember watching a documentary on an airplane once (I think called The Demonic Ape) that talked about the presence of sadism in apes.
What it pointed out, ironically, was that (in animals) there is one trait that must be present for both empathy and sadism, and that is a theory of mind. Theory of mind is, effectively, the ability to understand that other beings also have different mental states, like yourself. Or, phrased another way, the only way a creature can possess sadism, empathy or both is if they understand that other creatures have awareness, feel pleasure, and feel pain.
In the documentary, they demonstrated that some apes do have a theory of mind with a hiding-banana type experiment. I forget exactly how the experiment went (because I couldn’t find the documentary to re-watch it) but if I’m recalling correctly, the scientists would basically release multiple apes (I think they were chimpanzees) into an enclosure together, using different situations to hide a banana. Then, the apes would behave differently depending on their perception of what the other ape knew.
For instance, I think one of the experiments was hiding a banana and either letting one ape or both apes see where it was hidden. If only one ape was shown the banana location, and this ape saw that the other ape hadn’t seen where the banana was, they’d be crafty and sneaky about getting it so it wouldn’t get taken from them. However, if the ape knew both apes had seen the banana hiding spot, they’d just rush to get it as quickly as possible — which, implies, an ape will use different tactics based on a projection of what the other ape is thinking. At least, I think that’s how it went.
In case my badly remembered documentary isn’t very convincing that chimpanzees possess theory of mind, here’s a link to another experiment, that used eye tracking to see if apes projected their own interior mental states on to others:
Moving forward, one implication of apes possessing a theory of mind is that when an ape causes another ape pain, it knows the other ape is in pain. The Demonic Ape then documented cases of apes going out of each way to hurt each other, in ways that didn’t appear to be simple squabbles over food — and, also demonstrated documented cases of apes taking pleasure in their behavior. If I’m remembering right, this sadistic pleasure seemed to happen more between rival gangs of apes rather than within the same gang. Just like us, apes seem to enjoy seeing their enemies suffer in pain, and they seem to know what this means.
More simple animals, and uh… humans up to about age 4 do not have a theory of mind and so are not capable of this type of sadism. If an alligator attacks you, it doesn’t know it’s hurting you. Similarly, the meaning of aggression in a child at age 3 is different from aggression at age 5 because during that time, the child has begun to learn that other people feel pain. Children under the age of 3–4 do not have the ability to be sadistic; the majority of children after age 5 do have the capacity for sadism.
Which, simply stated, is understanding that other people feel pain, and taking pleasure in it.
Now, this may be a controversial opinion, but it also just seems apparent that sadism is an everyday part of our lives. Perhaps this is a somewhat unique perspective as a sexual assault survivor who has dated multiple emotionally abusive men, but it just seems normal to me that people behave this way. In fact, the few people I’ve met who seem to have exceptionally low sadism have nearly all been categorized as not “mentally normative” by mental health professionals. Interestingly, even though schizophrenia is sometimes associated with violence in the “popular media,” the few schizophrenics I’ve met have seemed to exhibit exceptionally low sadism relative to the general population — in my opinion anyway.
To put it simply, a healthy dose of sadism will read as normal in American society, which is all well and good, but we seem to be in massive denial about it. For instance, this article on how everyday sadists are among us says that OMG up to 6% of people admit to getting pleasure from other people’s pain, and OMG ISN’T THAT FAR TOO MANY?
And I’m just like, 6%!? I’d believe a number closer to 96%. Maybe, 6% of people admit to it, which puts about 90% of people in denial around it. Just consider our popular culture; a significant portion of our movies are basically some variety of murder porn, whose primary purpose is to set up an emotional catharsis for when the bad guy “gets what he deserves.” And like, that’s fine — I don’t judge you if you watch murder porn. I only judge you if you like murder porn, and also claim to be non-sadistic.
Even forgetting about murder porn for a second, the ambient sadism of a typical workplace tends to be very high. It actually accounts for my recent fascination with passive aggression, not so much because the mechanisms of passive aggression are very interesting, but because when you can see passive aggressive behavior quickly, you start to see sadism is everywhere. Everyone is taking little passive aggressive barbs at each other all the time, and the workplace is a prime place for this because people are implicitly set up to compete with one another. As discussed earlier, people feel sadistic pleasure when dealing with rivals or enemies. Any situation where we create rivalry we create sadism.
The thing that’s hard about passive aggression, is that it allows people deniability about what they’re doing. But, anyone who is passive aggressive is doing it because some part of them enjoys putting other people in pain. Like… that is the emotional payout of passive aggression, a feeling of satisfaction upon observing that you’ve put another person in pain. However, the value of passive aggression, isn’t just that it’s deniable to others but also that it’s deniable to yourself. The way this works, is that a person will behave passive aggressively, feel satisfied with their behavior upon noticing how it impacts someone else, but not fully connect up that it is the other person’s pain that is driving this satisfaction. For instance, if I make a comment to my coworker that her coding is “really coming along!” in front of the team (a comment that’s superficially nice, but also subtly implies that she wasn’t a very good coder to begin with) when she acts slightly embarrassed, I can dismiss my own behavior as normal (because of superficial niceness) while also getting subconscious pleasure in her embarrassment. And, the worst part is, the “nicer” a person someone believes themselves to be, the more resistant and in denial they will likely be around their own sadism.
And, the thing is — why I write about this — is we’ve become so dysfunctional around sadism that we can’t even admit what’s going it. In American culture, a significant portion of politically directed behavior seems to be designed mostly to hurt other people (usually, political rivals) but we are in such deep denial about it that we can’t even begin to problem solve it. So, I would really encourage people to examine their own sadism. One particular benefit of looking at your personal sadism, is that it actually allows you to more clearly see the sadism of others.
On a personal level, I’ve been somewhat aware of my own sadism ever since I was a wrestler as a teenager. I remember getting my photo taken during a match, and seeing myself put another girl in a headlock — she had a grimace of pain on her face, and I had a subtle smile on mine. (Man I wish I could find that photo! Maybe if I clear out my childhood bedroom one day.)
But anyway, as I looked at the photo, I had to face something about myself; despite my “pacifism” and vegetarianism, and whatever else I was into in high school, in that moment of that wrestling match, I was enjoying putting my opponent in pain. I know why it feels good to put people in pain; it feels like winning. I began to notice everyday sadism in other areas of my life also, like video games, work, and sometimes with my partners. For a long time, I believed I just had naturally sadistic tendencies and uh… just didn’t talk about it very much. I dated a few masochistic guys and tried to find appropriate outlets, like jiu jitsu and video games without opponents.
However, as I began to observe other people more, I actually began to believe the level of sadism I had was normal — possibly even on the low side of normal (of course, wouldn’t we all like to think that?) One of the benefits of my awareness of my own sadism, was that I could choose to only engage with it with willing partners (like, masochistic men, or jiu jitsu opponents who opted into the situation) and not actually behave unethically. I am especially opposed to any workplace sadism, because people need to work to earn a living, yet sadly, it seems to be the area (outside of relationships) where people encounter it the most.
One of the interesting questions posed by theory of mind is, how might we know what another person is thinking or feeling? The answer is, we often assume we know what someone else might be thinking or feeling because we know what we think or feel. Consequently, when we are in denial about our own sadism, we are more likely to be victimized by the sadism of others because we can’t consciously understand their motivations. We can only understand the sadism of others by understanding the sadism of ourselves.
So, I’d encourage you to look in yourself — at least, so you can protect yourself. It is not unethical to have sadistic feelings, it is only unethical to have sadistic behaviors and a deeper understanding of the former can help prevent the latter.
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