"Snarkenfreude"

I ran across this delicious word for a malicious behaviour in a column by Aretha Van Herk, in the Winter 2012 New Trails magazine from the U. of A. Alumni Association ("Telling Hard Truths," page 9, for those who worry about the finer details of apparatus).

It's a portmanteau from "snark" and the German word "Schadenfreude." "Snark" everyone has had experience of, probably even spoken or written an example of. You might be familiar with the word via Lewis Carroll, but Urban Dictionary says "snark" already a portmanteau, is a "combination from `snide' and `remark.'" "Schadenfreude" refers to pleasure in the misfortunes or unhappiness of others. Hence this combined term for taking sarcastic or snide pleasure in remarking on the misfortunes or unhappiness of others. Or maybe taking pleasure in causing unhappiness or misfortune for others through snarkiness: Snarkenfreude.

One place snarkenfreude tends to show up is in the "Comments" sections of the blogosphere. In one form, it is cyberbullying, the online hobby of literate narcissists and cybersociopaths.

The Van Herk column brings up the word in a discussion of a bigger issue worth thinking about. Why do we assume that "the hard truths" are always the unpleasant ones? At least, that's the way the saying gets passed around. And some just take snarky pleasure in spitting it out to watch the misery it creates.  Is good news, then, a "soft truth"? Is that why when we have a hard truth to convey, and we are not in a snarkenfreude mood, we look for language to soften the blow? And end up, in my all-too-frequent experience, muddying the issues, confusing the situation and making a sour hash of something better made short and, if necessary, unsweet.

Why pretend the bad news isn't really that bad? Why not just let the person receiving it get on with the next stage--anger, grief, frustration, depression?...  Of course, there is always the fear that the recipient will shoot the messenger--even if the messenger did not create the bad news in the first place. Messengers tend to be less powerful (which is how they get to be messengers in the first place), so easier to take things out on--less dangerous. Fewer bodyguards and enforcers.

A former student was by my office today. She has been working for Health Canada, but is on a lower rung on the seniority ladder, so is likely one of the upcoming Budget-Balancing Layoffs. She was one of the thousands of recent public service hires, after all, of the minority Federal government, so will be one of the face-saving victims of the majority Federal government. She was telling me she was going to think of it as an "opportunity." Sad, thinking of her going gentle into a different good night.

There is a passage in Timothy Findley's Not Wanted on the Voyage that keeps coming to mind when government or any other institution begins to solve its own self-inflicted financial or other problems by resorting to decisions to cut back everything and everyone they have been spending madly on for years:

The building of the ark was a monstrous undertaking--and once the keel frame had been laid and the ribs of the ark itself set in place, it was obvious how vast its size would be: the largest structure ever built in the whole district. The workmen now were in awe of it, as though they were building a temple, and this produced a thoroughly satisfying atmosphere of  "no more questions asked--no more questions needed." Noah was able, now, to stare each workman squarely in the eye and dare him with a look to challenge the grandeur of the project. As if the grandeur of the ark was its own justification. (119)

In the present circumstances, that would sound something like: "Just question how we're balancing the budget--we dare you. Surely you must believe that the budget needs to be balanced and the deficit we created for you must be paid off? Surely you don't want to leave a mess for your children and grandchildren to pay off and repair after you have taken more than your fair share out of the system we built to give you access to more than your fair share as a way of buying your votes the way we now are forcing your shamed silence?"

I recall a hospital administrator, in the mid-1990s, when Ralph Klein was slashing budgets of all sorts of Alberta public institutions in order to eliminate the deficit, to make this the one shining glory spot in the nation, the only province without a debt--well not one to talk of, anyway. All that decayed or never built infrastructure? Not worth mentioning: "Go on, mention it. I dare you." The administrator, who had yearly asked the province to increase the budget of the hospital, for the good of the public and to create better access to health care, immediately turned tail and proclaimed that his could be a better institution for the cut-backs--a leaner, more efficient, more effective machine. In one of those cases, he had to be messing with the hard truth. Maybe in both.

In Alberta today, if you question the grandeur of some of the tar-sands development policies, such as the virtual holiday from royalties the richest companies in the province enjoy, at the expense of the taxpayer, you are in for a dose of this "dare-you" look.

"Surely you cannot question the need to develop this valuable resource for the good of all?" Nope, I can't. And if it were for the good of all, we could all rejoice in its completion. Of course, when it is complete, there will be a big messy hole in the province, and not much carry-over. We'll be the provincial equivalent of a ghost-mining-town, the likes of which dot the interior of British Columbia, northern Ontario, Quebec.

Remember what happened to all those silent, bullied workmen who toiled on the ark?  They were left with their families and animals to drown in the great cleansing flood that carried all the undeserving undesirables to their doom, after they had built the lifeboat for the few deserving desirables: Noah; his wife; their sons Shem, Ham and Japheth; and their wives. Apparently the wives didn't have names, only roles to play in the grand scheme, so a place in the lifeboat. Probably feeding the animals. Then looking after the livestock.

A few snarkenfreude-like retorts begin to frame themselves at the core of my otherwise carefully maintained, mild-mannered Canadian politesse. If only I thought they might cause a few seconds of unease among today's Noahs.

But I'm too restrained and intimidated by years of such symbolic violence as "the look" ever to comment on such things.