Spite: I don't care if you read this anyway

Between keeping my journal and little jots of rhymes and songs I've written here and there, I wasn't sure whether it made sense to write a blog. And who is going to read it? But, whatever. I decided to write it anyway. And herein lies the topic of my first post (well, the first of this current string of posts).

Spite. It's fascinating. We learn it early as children (I don't want my dinner anymore, I've been waiting too long!) and continue to reap the visceral titillation of it as adults (Just leave the lights on-we're paying enough for this hotel room as it is!). Yet those actions we take in spite are spiteful precisely because we don't derive any sort of quantifiable benefit from them. In the economics sense, we are deriving utility from non-utilitarian actions, actions that do not actually benefit us in a measurable way. Yet somehow we derive pleasure from them.

For many of us, myself included, spite just feels good. It's illogical, it's irrational. Or is it? Take a deeper look at it, and there are a couple of ways to rationalize it. First, perhaps the individual craves a sense of power or control. If the action taken in order to spite another person has its desired effect, that person, the perpetrator has successfully affected the well-being of that person. On some level, this can provide a morale boost, a confidence boost, in that the perpetrator has some level of power, and thus can take shelter in the notion that he can influence another human being and bend that individual, even if only slightly, to his will.

Another possibility is that we don't want to feel alone. If someone is feeling stressed, or angry, or frustrated, or whatever, he perhaps does not want to be alone in his state of being, and wants to share his state with others, especially those he may view as had having a role in his negative state of being. This and the explanation above can be equally applied to happiness and goodwill, but the difference with those is that such actions can win one friends, loyalty, and other benefits. Spite does no such thing!

Regardless of the underlying cause, spite is so intriguing because it represents one's abilities (not necessarily just humans-animals too who can be seen laughing at annoying other animals or humans) to empathize with the situation of another individual, to project oneself into the state of that entity and imagine-imagine!-what that individual is feeling. No man is an island. We build ourselves through the relationships we have with others, we are who we are because of others, or even a lack of others with whom to interact. Spite is just one particularly interesting trait, fascinatingly irrational, and-dare I say-fun in spite of this?

What do you think? Don't answer that. (hint hint)