Friends and Enemies

Friends and Enemies

J

ulian once remarked – humorously – that an elderly German colleague of his looked like Rommel, when he wore a peaked cap. He thought he was bestowing a compliment. His colleague was furious with him when this remark was repeated to him by a mischief-maker. Too late Julian realised that one should never compare anyone to the brilliant general of defeated army. Had he substituted ‘Patton’ or ‘Zhukov’ for ‘Rommel’ his colleague would doubtlessly have felt flattered. Human vanity is apparently limitless, as is the human propensity for making mischief.

            A close friend of mine once turned on me savagely, insisting that I had ruined his chances of gaining a Chair for which he had applied by slandering him to the Selection Committee. Nothing I could say could persuade him otherwise, even though I proved to him that I could not have had access to the Selection Committee, since I did not know any of its members. He broke off our friendship. I could only surmise that someone had invented the story and he wanted to believe it to explain the failure of his application. But who would spread round such a story and why? The “motiveless evil” of Iago exemplifies this type of destructive lying. People like Iago are found everywhere. They destroy for the sheer pleasure of destroying. And we are often their willing accomplices as well as their victims.

            The slanderer’s story found fertile ground because my friend had earlier almost died from a heart attack. While he was in hospital, his wife had angrily accused me of having brought on the attack through persuading him to take up jogging with me three years earlier. Yet the doctors said that had he not been so fit, he would not have survived the attack. Nothing they or I could say could persuade her to change her mind. She continued to hold me responsible. The real culprit, as she was aware, was probably her fat-saturated Russian cooking, which had raised her husband’s cholesterol levels to dangerous heights. Once a scapegoat, always a scapegoat. As René Girard.

            My aunt once remarked petulantly, “You know, she’s my best friend yet I can’t stand her”. I told her that I was sure her friend was saying the same thing about her.

            Forgiving one’s enemies is easy, forgiving one’s friends almost impossible. After all, one does not associate with one’s enemies.

            La Rochefoucauld (1613-1680) remarked that it was more shameful to distrust one’s friends than to be deceived by them. To believe this today is rightly to be marked down as a fool.

            “Women look at each other like Guelphs and Ghibellines”. A close friend of Constance’s told her recently that thirty years ago, when they first met, she and all the other women on campus heartily disliked and resented her because when she was out with them, men looked only at her. This surprised Constance, who had never for a moment suspected that she was unpopular. Great beauty, like high intelligence or marked talent, entails serious disadvantages. As the ancient Taoists pointed out, “the sweet spring of water is the first to be drunk dry; the straight tree is the first to be cut down”. That Taoists understood the destructive power of envy.

            So did the Jews. “Anger is raging…but who can stand against envy?” (Proverbs). The envious strike out because they themselves suffer torments. As the Russian proverbs say, “Envy fired and grills itself”. And, “The envious drink vinegar”.

            One of Sharon’s brothers-in-law remarked to her, “For God’s sake, Sharon, never tell your sister any good news about your family. It upsets her dreadfully and she takes it out on me”.

            When my study caught fire, some years ago, almost burning the house down and destroying my valuable library, several of my colleagues could not hide a smile of satisfaction even as they were commiserating with me. One of them even burst out laughing, such was her pleasure. This is the smile of schadenfreude, malicious delight in another’s misfortunes. The Germans have a word for it, the English do not. Clearly, the Germans have more self-insight in this matter than do the English.

            When we sustained a serious financial loss, the schandenfreude felt by some of our relatives was too great for them to hide. Their pleasure was so obvious, it embarrassed us, but not them. We were embarrassed because they did not realise how crassly they were behaving. La Rochefoucauld was right. Only the truly good do not derive some pleasure or at least some consolation from the misfortunes of others, especially the misfortunes of their friends (Maxims, 1665). The truly good do not realise this and hence form wrong opinions about the essential goodness of humanity.

            The police are familiar with a phenomenon they call ‘the criminal grin’. This is also indicative of schadenfreude.

            I once saved a stranger from drowning in Beirut, coming very close to drowning myself as I did so because, as he struggled hysterically, his spear-fishing line wrapped itself around us, twice pulling us both under. To free us, I was forced to cut the line. I dragged him to a nearby reef and held him there till he recovered, with the waves washing us painfully back and forward across the sharp rocks. Back on shore, he reproached me angrily for making him lose his spear gun and stalked off, leaving me nursing my cuts and bruises. As Mark Twain observed, “You must have helped that man a lot for him to turn on you like that”.

            Time and time again, I have known people suddenly turn on me because someone had lied to them about something I was falsely supposed to have said or done. Nobody has ever asked me if the story was true. Presumably, there is some sort of evolutionary benefit in slander, or it would not have survived. If chimpanzees could talk they would certainly lie, for they are known to deceive each other to obtain food. Lying is inseparable from speech, since deception confers an advantage.

COPYRIGHT (C) 2010 J D FRODSHAM