This makes me an awful person, and I'm trying to analyze why

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So as some of you might've seen in the news, this fella named Tim Hetherington, who directed an oscar nominated documentary called "Restrepo" was killed today in a mortar attack in Libya.

I'm a horrible, horrible person for saying this, but I figure if I can get it out and analyze it, I can find a way to transcend the feelings I'm having. Right now, I'm glad he's dead.

Why? Why? Why?

For one thing, I saw a photo of him, and he is my physical opposite. Where I am small and slight he's broad shouldered, and tall, like he could've been a runningback. He is square jawed and quite handsome, while I am quite unattractive. He went to Oxford, I went to A No Name public college in the middle of Bumblefuck.

We're both filmmakers. I'm a struggling one, with five films under my belt, none of which have mattered a damn. I'm no one, not respected, not well paid, doing crummy work to make ends meet, trying to get my next film going, and wondering if I'm good enough. This guy gets nominated for a bloody Oscar on his first bloody feature. He just does a film and it gets a f*****g oscar nom. He travels all over the world, is beloved, respected, must be paid well working for Vanity Fair, and has success.

So in a sense he is everything I am not, a reflection of who I want to be, but probably never will. And so when something bad happens to him, it's like a leveling of the cosmic scales. Yeah, he had everything going for him, and now he's dead. At least I'm still alive. It feels like things are equal now.

But of course this is a poisonous attitude, and but for the grace of god, etc, etc. Does my analysis make sense? And how do I retrain the way I think?

Your analysis makes sense I guess. You wanted what he had. You were angry at the fact that he was able to achieve success so quickly. You were happy to hear that something bad had happened to him. I am not saying that this is necessarily an appropriate reaction, because it is not generally a good thing to be happy about someone else's death. But who am I to judge? I read about his death this afternoon and it stirred no emotion in me whatsoever, neither good nor bad. I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to feel bad about it, but I don't. I didn't even know who he was. Does this make me an awful person? Maybe. But this is how I tend to react (or rather, not react) to death.
As far as retraining your attitude, maybe just try not to compare your appearances and your career to those of other people. Have your own standard for yourself that is not affected by anything that anyone else does/has done. Then maybe you wouldn't think about the need for "cosmic payback". You were jealous, and this feeling is generally not a good one to have, because it will only bring you dissatisfaction in the long run. Just focus on yourself, and the things you are experiencing, while they are happening, and the let them go and move on. You made 5 films. Those are 5 unique experiences that you have had, and I'm sure there was at least one thing about each one that you enjoyed, or else you would not have made them. Be content with those experiences and don't worry about the fact that they didn't win awards. Just focus on what you are doing now.
If I let myself stop and think about everything that I was supposed to have achieved by now in my life/career, it would drive me nuts. It is obvious now that I am not going to be able to follow that path that everyone thought I would follow, so I need to be content with what I am actually doing. I see the people I went to college with achieving all kinds of great things, traveling the world, getting started on their PhD's, etc...and it makes me sad. But I wouldn't want those things to be taken away from them.
I hope this helps.

Jealousy is a cruel fruit to bite into.

I can tell you one big reason why he's successful. He wasn't cynical. Take that to heart.

Last edited by Jonsi on 20 Apr 2011, 9:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Perhaps a natural sense of the disproportionate burdens of misery and suffering in the world being shared more fairly and this guy representing overprivileged people, it's not bad to think that but as long as you realise you didn't really know this guy, how good or bad his life really was or what he felt inside.

Yes.

Find some way to begin praying/hoping/wishing nothing but the very best in life for other people without regard for oneself.

Sounds like a case of envy and schadenfreude. You hated him because you felt envy for what he had, and you were pleased when he died. Jealously is completely normal to experience, just like anger and sadness. Just like all emotions however, too much can be a bad, bad thing. Of course, this has all been stated.

I am assuming, correct me if I'm wrong, that "cosmic payback" is similar to karma or whatever it is you call the balance of right and wrong. I'll admit; seeing someone better than you get put down a notch feels amazing sometimes. Like when I was able to outsmart a guy in my class (school rival, long story) on the survival habits of lizard's based on tail length, it felt good to have subtly put us on the same "level".

Still, keeping these thoughts in your head will not better you in the long run. Seeing people "better" than you get hurt shouldn't be the only fuel you use to be happy. If it is, only the pain of others will give you that feeling of accomplisment. But you obviously know that this isn't right, so honestly I think your not that bad of a guy.

Just remember to look for the good in everyone, and maximize yourself to your potential.

This doesn't make you a horrible person actually. It makes you rather...normal.

You will find that humans often have ideals that most humans don't meet...thus they are called ideals.

Idealy you wouldn't feel happy this man is dead. Realistically, you do, as would many people in your situation. You didn't know this man but you were jealous of him for the reasons you stated above.

But the question was, why should you...or people in general, feel such a way as you do?

Well, while you did not know the man personally, in a sense, he was a competitor in a way who had an advantage over you, and from a self preservation standpoint, when we have one less competitor, we are safer, so it's not unconceivable that humans might be hard wired to feel pleasure at the demise of a competitor.

Studies have shown that the brain interprets emotional pain in much the same way as physical pain, and that humans (males in particular) receive a high degree of satisfaction from physically hurting those who have hurt them.

And last, this man gained success rather easily, while your toil and strife went ignored. So perhaps you also feel neglected in a sense, and from an evolutionary standpoint, being ignored or neglected is detrimental to survival, because if one cannot acknowledge your hardships, how can they accommodate you appropriately?

Now that we have analyzed that, I'd like to introduce some points that might change your views.

1. That this man became successful means that the world is such that you have a chance too. For example,many people are jealous of Bill Gates and Warrent Buffet, but they fail to see that the system that enabled these men to earn such large amounts of money does not inherently exclude others, in fact it facilitates it. So they should be happy they live in a country with an economy that does not bar them from such enterprises should they have the aptitude to embark on such endeavors.

2. This man couldn't help his physique any more than you can help yours, and he may have had issues with it that were not outwardly apparent. I have a friend who grew to be very tall and looked and sounded like a full grown man by the age of 15 but this made him feel very scared and vulnerable because he wasn't nearly as tough or mature emotionally as he looked physically. I think very manly looking men are more likely to have their emotions and feelings disregarded to be honest with you, so there is almost always a down side to something.

3. Though our brains like to tell us otherwise, sometimes those who are more successful than us can prove a valuable ally if we can network with them. Even if you can't, you can still try to learn from them and follow their lead.

As I was replying, Chronos made a much better post. So I'll just say that I think it must be an aspie thing to analyze feelings like this. It drives me nuts when I feel something and don't understand why.

that does not make you horible I think. It makes you human. most people gets jelous at some tiem in there life. I get jelous of my sister. I wish I was more like her. I wish I could open my moth and just talk like her. she is prety I am not. she is smart I am not. she is mums favoirt I am not. people are proud of her. people are imbarased by me. it is normal to feel jelous. I would not be glad if she died btu I love my sister. You do not love or no that man. I think it is noraml. do not worry. that you make a post about it writing that mabe you are horrible shows how not horible you are.

great post chronos!! !

Anyway,
as an artist myself, I can tell you this getting famous is not about skill....it is about learning how to market yourself. I suggest taking some classes in marketing. There was probably alot of background work and dealings with folks that never see the light of day for him to get that oscar nomination. if you dont believe me check out the works of Jackson Pollock. His paintings while he was alive sold for tens of thousands....meaning while he did them with a stick, a few buckets of paint.....while drunk on his @ss.
Now if I was an envious person, that would piss me off, but I dont want fame....I rather just stay in my cave and create unknown to the world. I dont really wnat to be famous...too much energy focused on me...I rather just focus on my work.

This.

I really had an awakening when I read a book by someone who had trouble understanding feelings. She had (being rich enough to get away with this) rented a beach house for I think over a year and done nothing but analyze herself, not coming home until she knew herself. And one of her discoveries was that jealousy felt like hurt and pain. She could not move past it until she learned to recognize it. That it felt to her like the person she was jealous of was hurting her. Even though they weren't.

And the fact that the other person is not actually hurting you is an important thing to remember. I have been viciously attacked before by someone who was jealous of me for something I had no control over. Very similar to your situation actually. I had been making a bunch of what I thought were crappy amateur videos. Then one of them went viral. Then reporters started contacting me. Then I appeared on a couple different news programs and magazines and the like, because I thought getting my message out might help people (I was nonplussed when they started focusing on me and actively distorting the intent of that video... it was meant to be about all people who get stepped on for not communicating in the right way, I said in interviews I made it for a girl with severe CP, but without fail they said I made it to "teach people about my world"). And I got invitations to film festivals all over the world (which I declined, and soon declined to talk to reporters either).

Meanwhile, this person was an expert, well-trained filmmaker and had spent her whole life making films much technically better than mine, and she had been laboring in obscurity for longer than I'd been alive. She'd never had any of her films "discovered" the way mine was. And she was upset about this even though all I'd experienced was "15 minutes of fame", not true fame and not even close to winning awards or even being distributed by anyone. Meanwhile my videos were quite obviously amateurish and done with a crappy digital camera that only had a minute of recording time. So she felt that she deserved the attention and that I hadn't earned it by toiling the way she had.

Here's the thing: I wanted her films to be recognized too. They were really, really good from the bits and pieces I'd seen. I had no choice about the attention I received: I'd been pressured by reporters until I finally agreed, and as naive as I had been at the time there's no possibility I'd have known I was allowed to say no to them. I hated the attention and would have given it to her in a heartbeat. I even tried to use the attention I was getting to get them to showcase work by others, but at best it didn't work and at worst I actually got credited for one other person's work. I protested this but was told by the reporter in question "It's not really that important." I was just way too naive and inexperienced to figure all this out. I'm quite socially passive and that didn't help. All this was a nightmare to me, and I would gladly have given the spotlight to anyone but myself. (In fact I tried to do so but it backfired into them showing other people as "inspired by me" and not as human beings in their own independent right). I only learned how to avoid reporters after all this happened, although even so I recently had some trespassing in my building and literally banging on my door, which was terrifying. If she wanted all this so bad I would have done anything to get it to be her, not me, getting all the attention.

But her jealousy blinded her to all this. She blamed me for the attention I was getting. She even went so far (or so said mutual friends anyway) as to wish me harm. And for what? Getting involuntary attention I was too inexperienced to know how to deflect. Getting seen as special by other people, getting fawned over, even being seen by some as able to do no wrong. Having people actually believe all the things about me that the media got wrong. She was too jealous to see I didn't want those things. That I didn't consider myself special or better than anyone. That I'd spent my whole adult life arguing against the whole idea that some people are better than others. That everything I'd gotten recognized for was an attempt to help others, not an act of self-promotion. In an ideal world the two of us could have been friends, could have bonded over mutual interests, or at least liked each other but the jealousy ensured there was no chance.

The jealousy also hurt me. It made her say and do cold, mean things when if I hadn't gotten the attention she would have been nice the way she was to most others. It also hurt to be blamed for circumstances beyond my control. For being in the right place at the right time. For having experiences that she coveted and that I saw as torturous. For being treated as if I really was who the media said I was. When I tried to express all this she saw it as false modesty, couldn't imagine a person could find this so unpleasant, assumed I'd approached the media rather than the reverse, in fact assumed the worst about my every action and created a distorted image of me in her mind. So she felt compelled to hurt me in revenge for the way her jealousy hurt her (which she experienced as me hurting her).

Anyway I thought showing how it feels from the other side might help to show what it's like to be an object of someone's jealousy. I'm not implying you've done anything near as bad, AFAIK you haven't hurt this person at all except in your thoughts. But thoughts can easily turn into actions... even if you try to be nice to the object of your jealousy, the hostility still peeks out in places. I very much agree with the poster who said the antidote to this is practicing truly wishing well to the person. It reminds me of an exercise I read where a person picks people who are genuinely being mean or selfish and wishes for them to be given the best possible situation for them (without trying to imagine details, without self-congratulation).

Your reaction is quite human and understandable. I felt much the same for years and it caused me a great deal of stress. Over many years I eventually learned that I was concerning myself with worldly success and not with the work itself.

I don't know that "retraining" how you think is the key issue. The feelings are natural and common. But what you can do is to examine what is really important to you. Is it important to be lauded as a great film maker, to win an oscar, to have financial and personal success? Or is it important to make a good film?

As long as you put awards and congratulations ahead of doing good work, you will have a very hard time succeeding. Good work is achieved when you focus on the work rather than on the pats on the back you expect to receive for doing the work.

Think of it this way; is a film like "Citizen Kane" a good film because critics speak well of it or is it because it's a well told story? What comes first, the good film or the award? Do people go to see films because the film won an award or do they see films because they want to see a good story?

I think also you assume that if one person succeeds, another person must fail. The logical extension would be if "Citizen Kane" had not been so good a film and had sunk into obscurity, then "Breaking 2: Electric Boogaloo" would be a better film.

The death of another film maker does not make you a better film maker. It also doesn't make you a worse one. Perhaps it opens an opportunity for another film maker to get a film seen because it does not have to compete with films that now will not be made, but that only becomes a realistic opportunity for you if you are working on making a good film that might fill a similar niche.

I understand the frustration of working hard with no success. That's what most film makers experience. The ones that do succeed do so because of a fortunate combination of luck, talent, connections and a lot of hard work trying to make a good film.

You clearly have the intelligence and sensitivity to understand that your reaction to this film maker's death is not necessarily appropriate or helpful. I think the one area where you can re-direct your thinking is to focus on only the quality of your work and accept the fact that awards and congratulations may or may not come, but that they are insignificant to a well made film.

Good luck.

I think another factor is doubt about the future. I have a lot of fears that I'll never amount to anything, never matter or do anything that justifies my existence, and when I see someone like Hetherington, it reinforces my fears, because I tend to function as we all do in a logical, algebraic formula. He is not me. He is my inverse. So X = success, and he is X, and I am not like him, I'm the opposite, I am -x, and -x does not equal success. Could -x = failure?

You know it's that idea that some people are. just. born. And what if I wasn't born to be worth anything, but simply mediocre? And it's like, given that I'm a failure in evrery other aspect of human life: love, friendship, financial success, sports, it's like my work in film is all I have, and if I can't excel at that and find success, what is my worth? Am I nothing?

And so when Hetherington is killed, I feel a visceral reaction of vengeance, for the person I am not, and never will be is gone, and that reflection of my own shortcomings is gone, along with the reminder of what I may never achieve, which is a film that people will love.

This is the problem with logic as an all-purpose tool for analyzing every situation. Logic leads you to think in mathematically balanced equations. That leads to seeing life as a zero sum game. But it isn't, really. His gain was not your loss. His loss is not your gain. There are not a fixed number of loveable films to be made. You can continue towards your goal of making a film other people will love but you could do that anyway even if he were still alive. So I hope you will be able to work through these feelings and then get back to the work of making films.

Do what you do for the passion of it and not for material success or acclaim. Personal glory is overrated.

There is nothing wrong with being mediocre, especially if you are doing what you love.

I think the bottom line may be - it wasn't fair.

He had the looks, the schooling, the opportunity, probably amazing connections - everything seemingly came easy for him. That's not fair to the rest of us. It's only natural to question why was he better and natural to thank whatever stars you beleive in that he burned up his karma - his free ride wasn't fair but at least it was thankfully short. This is exactly the sort of human condition that Buddhist work so hard to eliminate from their lives - the addiction to the material. Success, money, acclaim, beauty... it doesn't make you wrong. It makes you human.

The fact that you can question it is already worlds more enlightened than most of the planet.

You didn't mention whether or not you believed he was actually talented.