If I am a not responsible for other people’s life choices it is OK to revel in their misfortune. No one is responsible for other people’s actions. Therefore it is always OK to revel in other people’s misfortune?
Or is the mechanism different?
Or is the mechanism different?
That's whats going on here. OP isn't going to a buffet and mocking starving kids - both folks were intelligent people, one of whom is justifying their life trajectory, and the other is taking a different tack.
I bet you'd be able to conjure up instances where you go "whew I'm glad I didn't do what that person did". We all can. That's not reveling in their misfortune, it's learning.
If someone dies in a car accident I can be glad it wasn’t me, but I haven’t learned anything.
If I do learn something from someone else’s misfortune, I could be pleased, relieved, possibly proud but I’m less sure about being smug.
I still don’t quite grasp the point about not being responsible for other people’s actions. If it’s never true then I’m not sure it’s all that useful.
It seems more like this is about our perception of other people’s responsibility?
It should not, and you should not have to defend yourself against this kind of behaviour. I would not have phrased it like that, but I agree with your message.
Sure. But that doesn't mean you can't show some basic human sympathy to the people who didn't "dodge the bullet".