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And what can we do about that?
All of us sometimes cause pain for other people, and often that is unintentional. We may not notice that we are doing so, or we may lack sufficient self-awareness to realize the harm we are causing.
But some people seem to derive pleasure from causing pain to other people. We call them “cruel”. What in our evolution as human beings, and what in the individual development of cruel people, makes some people cruel? Is cruelty a “mistake” in brain wiring or does it have positive benefit for individuals and for groups in which cruel people participate?
I don’t have a ready answer to those questions, although I tend toward the “mistake” alternative. But I think we can address cruelty among us in several ways.
Individually, and most basically, we can ask ourselves to what extent we personally are cruel. Probably we are all capable of being cruel, but most of us are able to resist that inclination.
Collectively we can ask ourselves to what extent other people, especially our leaders, are cruel. Both historical and recent evidence indicates that we often tolerate, and some of us even support, leaders who are cruel. Why do we do that? We may think they are doing things that benefit us, as long as they don’t direct their cruelty toward us personally, but what guarantee do we have that they won’t treat us cruelly later on, and why do we tolerate their cruelty on our behalf? By tolerating cruelty by our leaders are we not indirectly being cruel ourselves?
Often it’s not hard to detect cruel leadership candidates from their own behavior. Beware electing them!
