Human Cruelty

In book club I think we were discussing There Are Rivers in the Sky, which in one storyline talks about the genocide of the Yazidi. One of my fellow readers said with a tsk, “How can people be so cruel to one another?” I have actually thought about this at length, and I tried to answer her question, but I completely bungled it because I was trying to explain it in a single sentence. However, I feel like one needs to fully understand my theory of happiness (the Right Hand of Long-Term Happiness and the Four Stages of an Event) to grasp my explanation. In short, my theory is that people are cruel to others in the expectation that being so will help them meet some of their own Needs: exerting power over others may fill their autonomy needs; contrasting one’s own qualities to another’s with disparaging remarks may help with esteem needs; participating in mob actions might help with social needs (belongingness); and so on.

It takes a courageous voice to speak out against cruelty, especially when it’s institutionalized. Often one has to do so at the risk of one’s own needs (being ostracized (social), threatened (safety), or worse). However, some are called to blow the whistle and feel strongly the purpose of their actions (growth) and some know that they wouldn’t be able to live with themselves if they stayed silent (their guilt would consume them) (esteem).

Am I the type of person who will speak up against cruelty when I witness it? I try to be, but I’m also very calculating and tend to weigh the costs vs benefits of speaking up. Sometimes I’m sure I appear to be indifferent, which is its own sort of cruelty. (Sometimes I’m merely oblivious! I wander around with my head in the clouds.) My guess is that this is probably true of a lot of people (that they appear indifferent even if they have been calculating the risk of speaking out).

Every path of conflict has its costs, and I think we all at multiple points in our lives, maybe on a daily basis, have to weigh the Needs we want to prioritize. We are all human, after all. I do think, however, that, through trauma research, we now have a better understanding that the costs of cruelty can continue to rack up through a lifetime and through generations. From every perspective, human to economic, there’s more value in kindness. It’s an ideal worth aiming for.

This is a rhetorical question: do you tend to be cruel to others, “indifferent”, or a whistle blower?