There is a scene in Lady and the Tramp, the animated film about a lovely little Cocker Spaniel from 1955 that has stuck with me since childhood. Every time I was sick and had to stay home from school, I watched it. Lady and the Tramp was my comfort movie. After Lady runs away from Aunt Sarah, the Siamese Cats, the muzzle et al., she meets up with the Tramp, and they have a lovely time out in the wide world. That is until she gets caught by the dogcatcher! In the pound, she meets Peg (my favorite) Bull, Dachsie, Pedro, and of course, Boris, the long-faced Russian Borzoi, who muses: "It's like Gorky says in Lower Depths. Quote. Miserable being must find more miserable being. Then, he is happy. Unquote." Afterward, Peg turns to Lady and says, "Boris is a philosopher." At the time, I didn't have the language to articulate why it resonated so deeply. Now, I see it as a profound observation about humanity and our behaviors, whether by nature or nurture.

The Gorky Boris is referring to is none other than Maxim Gorky, the Russian writer who was nominated 5 times for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Gorky captures in The Lower Depths, and Paulo Freire later dissects in Pedagogy of the Oppressed this specific human behavior.

Gorky describes the symptom; Freire explains the disease.

Freire wrote, "When education is not liberating, the dream of the oppressed is to become the oppressor." This is precisely what Boris' grim observation captures—when people exist in a system of suffering, they don't always seek to escape it. Perhaps they aren't even aware that escaping it is a possibility. Instead, they search for someone who is suffering more, someone they can look down on, someone who validates their position as not the lowest. It's a desperate attempt to find meaning and control in a system designed to strip them of both. But with critical consciousness, this cycle can be broken. By understanding the power dynamics at play, we can work towards a society where suffering does not seek company, but liberation.

But why does this happen to begin with? Why does suffering so often seek company rather than transformation? My gut feeling is that this is not human nature. It must be a learned behavior. So, let's go deeper.

The Lower Depths: The Hierarchy of Suffering

In The Lower Depths, a group of impoverished individuals stuck in a Russian flophouse shift between brutal realism and self-soothing illusions. Some find solace in fantasies, others in fatalism, and some in exerting tiny amounts of power over those even worse off. Instead of banding together to challenge their shared suffering, they reinforce the hierarchy of misery, ensuring there is always someone below them. This is what Freire describes—when the oppressed cannot imagine liberation, they internalize oppression instead. They dream not of freedom but of control, however small and fleeting.

This dynamic isn't just a relic of Russian realism—it plays out everywhere in history, psychology, and social structures. I see it playing out today, wreaking havoc worldwide. Like the characters in The Lower Depths, seek solace in illusions and distraction (myself included)! Think of the hours spent doom-scrolling for a dopamine fix or binging TV shows rather than engaging and acting upon the world. These distractions keep us soothed enough to be inactive. It also shows up in the way some people behave towards marginalized communities. Vilifying the most marginalized to find themselves not at the lowest rung.

These behaviors are related to education in that in traditional education. We don't learn to exercise our dynamic agency; we learn to be passive and compliant, to accept things as they are, further solidifying the systems in place. An education promoting competition, grades as the highest goal, test scores as proof of intelligence, and subjects siloed help obscure our vision of the world and our role in it. This is why I felt compelled to explore all the thoughts this quote by Boris triggered here. We can shortcircuit the anticipated internalized oppression through awareness and a renewed attitude toward what learning can do. We can absolutely transform reality into a more equitable and thoughtful existence.

Fanon: The Colonized Mind and the Cycle of Oppression

Frantz Fanon examines in The Wretched of the Earth how colonial subjects often internalized the values of their oppressors. Rather than dismantling the system that subjugated them, many sought to become the new ruling class. The colonized, when stripped of actual agency, sometimes aspired not to equality but to the privileges of the colonizer. Fanon describes this as a deeply ingrained psychological wound—one that mirrors Boris' observation. The colonized person, unable to escape their suffering, seeks to impose it elsewhere.

Nietzsche: Ressentiment and the Need to Look Down

Friedrich Nietzsche described a related phenomenon in On the Genealogy of Morals: ressentiment. Those who feel powerless, rather than confronting their suffering, develop a moral framework that justifies their status. They see their own misery as virtuous, even righteous, and direct their anger downward rather than upward. Instead of overthrowing the structure that oppresses them, they ensure it remains intact—because it gives them someone beneath them.

Orwell: The Oppressed as Oppressors

George Orwell captures this cycle in Animal Farm. The animals overthrow their human masters, yet the pigs—once part of the oppressed themselves—become indistinguishable from the humans they replaced. This is exactly what Freire warns about: if the oppressed lack the tools to think critically about power, they will recreate oppression rather than dismantle it. The dream of liberation becomes the dream of ruling instead.

Schlafly: Gatekeeping Oppression from Within

Few modern figures illustrate Freire's insight more clearly than Phyllis Schlafly. She is featured here because she was a real person, not a character from literature, but a real-life example of how this plays out in the world. Schlafly was a highly educated and politically sharp woman. She recognized and felt the limitations placed on women—particularly within the conservative structures of mid-century America. Despite this, instead of challenging these constraints, she made it her mission to uphold them. In leading the charge against the Equal Rights Amendment, Schlafly firmly aligned herself with patriarchal power, casting feminism as a threat and promoting a vision of womanhood defined by submission, domesticity, and obedience.

She wasn't oblivious to women's suffering—she chose to find validation by siding with the system that caused it. Her influence and recognition came not from liberating women but from defending the gate that kept them confined. Like the characters in The Lower Depths, she found security not in solidarity but in making sure others remained subjugated alongside her. Schlafly didn't seek collective empowerment—she sought individual exception. And in doing so, she became a gatekeeper of her own oppression.

Foucault: Power and Self-Policing

Michel Foucault's theory of panopticism explains why this cycle is so hard to break. In oppressive systems, people internalize the structures of control so deeply that they regulate themselves and each other, ensuring the system survives without external enforcement. The prisoners in the panopticon watch each other, enforcing discipline on behalf of their oppressors.

Gramsci: Cultural Hegemony and the Naturalization of Suffering

Antonio Gramsci's concept of cultural hegemony explains why the oppressed so often reinforce their own suffering. The ruling class doesn't just impose power through force—it shapes culture, education, and ideology so that the oppressed believe the system is natural, inevitable, and unchangeable. If misery seems like an unavoidable fact of life, then finding someone more miserable becomes the only way to cope.

The Stanford Prison Experiment: The Lure of Minor Power

In the infamous 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, ordinary male individuals, given a small taste of authority, quickly became cruel enforcers of oppression. Some suggested that the students didn't need years of conditioning to wield power over others—given the right circumstances, they would do it instinctively. Now, this experiment was given by Philip Zimbardo to a group of all male college-age students. I would suggest that the years of conditioning were their school years and that they became cruel enforcers not at all instinctively but precisely through the conditioning that happens through the design of traditional industrial education and the patriarchy. This reinforces what Freire warns about: unless people are consciously educated for liberation, they will replicate oppression the moment they get the chance.

Breaking the Cycle: The Freirean Solution

How do we break free if misery seeks company rather than liberation? Freire argues that the key is critical consciousness (conscientização). People must be educated not just with information but with the ability to think critically, recognize oppression, and imagine something beyond it. This part is also essential, there has to be critical thinking along with creative thinking. Creativity and imagination are vital.

The alternative is the eternal return of The Lower Depths, Animal Farm—a world where those who suffer look not for freedom but for someone suffering more. Like the residents of The Lower Depths, the dogs in the pound inadvertently turn against Lady for a moment because she has a license. This perceived superiority or freedom makes them tease her. Peg immediately comes to her rescue. She is no Phylis Schlafly!

• [man] Put her in number four, Bill, while I check her license. OK.

• [Bill] All right, baby, in here.

• [Toughy] Well, look yous guys, Miss Park Avenue herself.

• [Bull] [Chuckles] Blimey. A regular bloomin' debutante.

• [Toughy] Yeah. And pipe the crown jewel she's wearin'.

• [Bull] Hey, whatcha in for, sweetheart? Putting fleas on the butler?

• [Peg] All right, you guys. Lay off, will you?

• [Toughy] Aw, what's the matter, Peg?

• [Bull] We was only havin' a bit of sport, we was.

• [Peg] Can't you see the poor kid's scared enough already?

• [Boris] Pay no attention, my little ochi chernye.

• [Peg] That's right, dearie. They don't mean no real harm.

• [Boris] It's like Gorky says in Lower Depths, quote: Miserable being must find more miserable being. Then he's happy. Unquote.

• [Peg] Boris is a philosopher.

• [Boris] Besides, little bublichki, wearing licence here, that is like waving, you should excuse the expression, red flag in front of bull.

• [Lady] My licence? But what's wrong with it?

• [Peg] There ain't nothin' wrong with it, dearie.

• [Boris] Confidential, there's not one dog here who would not give left hind leg for such a knick-knack.

• [Peg] That's your passport to freedom, honey.

• [Boris] Without it... [clanking]

In that pound, they have a critical conversation about what just happened. They do not turn against each other, and they unite against their captors in a plan for escape.

Final Thought: From Misery to Liberation

Boris' words stuck with me because they weren't just about dogs in a pound. They were about people. About history. About the way power works when left unexamined. Recognizing this pattern matters because it reveals the mechanisms of how oppression maintains itself—not just from the top down but sideways and from within. When we see how the oppressed are taught to replicate hierarchy, it becomes easier to see how to interrupt that cycle. When we understand that power is not always imposed by force, but often by consent, by culture, by habit, we begin to see the cracks in the structure.

What is wild is that what opened my mind or set the scene for the realization of pretty complex interplay of ideas came from a children's animated film from the 1950s. This is where the arts, literature, and, yes, even animated films become powerful tools. Why would Disney, in 1955, pluck a line from Gorky for Boris' character to say into a children's film? Maybe it was accidental. I want to think it was deliberate (although there are obviously many other parts of this film that are quite problematic).  But either way, art makes space to say things we're not allowed to say outright. Space to convey complex ideas even to children. A single animated line in a dog pound can carry a more profound truth than a hundred lectures. And for kids, especially these moments, plant seeds.

They invite questions.

They make the invisible visible.

Art helps us see what we've been taught not to see. Stories, poems, theater, and animation can name things we don't yet know how to name. They can hold up a mirror to power dynamics and let us examine them without direct confrontation. They help build the very critical consciousness Freire called for.

Some works that do this brilliantly include:

• George Orwell's Animal Farm: allegorical and dystopian warnings about how power corrupts and how systems of control are sustained by complicity and language.
• Toni Morrison's Beloved: a novel that examines the intergenerational trauma of slavery, and how memory, guilt, and survival complicate liberation.
• Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away: an animated film that explores consumerism, identity, and spiritual loss through the eyes of a child navigating a strange and oppressive world.
• Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower: presents how societal collapse and authoritarianism affect the most vulnerable, while proposing empathy and adaptability as revolutionary tools.
• Pablo Picasso's Guernica: a visual protest against the bombing of civilians and a reminder that art can witness, expose, and resist violence.
• Jordan Peele's Get Out: a modern horror film that deconstructs racism not through brutality but through liberal performance and control, showing how systemic oppression can wear a friendly face.
• Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis: a graphic memoir that illustrates a girl's coming of age during the Iranian Revolution, revealing how systems of religious and political oppression shape identity and resistance.

These works and many more don't just describe suffering—they reveal how it's structured, how it's upheld, and how systems can be challenged. They teach us to look again., to question the stories we've been given, and to choose solidarity over hierarchy.

If we want to create more just systems, more thoughtful humans, more liberated minds, then we need more of this: more stories that question power, more art that reflects back our contradictions, more animated films where a Russian dog in a cage says something that wakes you up. And of course access to it all.

If we don't recognize this cycle, we will continue it. If we don't educate for liberation, we will only educate future oppressors.

The question isn't just why misery seeks company; the question is how do we teach it to seek liberation instead? The answer can be found in art.