So, I was at a conflict management-seminar yesterday. It was quite boring, unfortunately. I'll spare you the details.

At the end of it, after 6 hours, there was a discussion about various emotion and how they could play a part in a conflict, like jealousy, anger, humiliation, happiness, etc etc. The structure was first identifying how the emotion felt like, then when it was positive and negative, then what actions the emotion could trigger and lastly when it played a part in a conflict.

One of the emotions discussed was happiness. We came to the part about when happiness could be negative, and most agreed that happiness was negative when it resulted from the misfortunes of others, like getting happy when someone else is hurt. It was just taken as factm without any arguments backing up the assertion. So, HoreTore changed from bored to pain-in-the-ass, and asked the following question:

Why is it bad to feel happiness at the misfortunes of others? If it doesn't result in a negative action from me, why is it negative for me to experience a positive feeling? I'll feel good about myself and the guy getting hurt wo 't be affected, so how can it be wrong?

I certainly got the audience engaged in a collective hissyfit, but I didn't get the arguments I was looking for. So, Backroom, can you do better?