an essay on cruel people
Answers
Answer:
In primitive cultures, the primary source of threat to human beings is Nature. But in economically-advanced countries, it is not nature, but other human beings who make us feel threatened most of the time.
Human beings are constantly hurting each other in both their intimate relationships and in their social relationships. Yes, sometimes the pain they inflict is physical, but most of the time it is emotional in nature. With a bit of reflection, it becomes quite apparent that Emotional Pain is the single greatest remaining threat that human beings must deal with in the modern era.
Just how big is this Emotional Pain Problem we are dealing with? Well, it is only responsible for virtually all of the suicides, homicides, acts of violence, and cases of clinical depression that we see every day. It is responsible for most of the wars that have been fought in modern times.
It is also responsible for the sad fact that most marriages, which begin as special unions between 'best friends', end up as painful wars fought by 'worst enemies.' Emotional pain is the biggest continuing problem that most humans will deal with in their lifetimes.
While human beings have displayed an impressive ability to tackle the challenges of biological pain, when it comes to the problem of emotional pain, they have remained largely clueless.
In this essay, I propose a 'solution' to the problem of emotional pain. What is perhaps unique about this solution is that it is not the personal answer that so many individuals have sought for themselves. It requires that we work together to conquer a common foe, just as we have worked together in organized efforts to provide for our many biological needs.
The first step is to expand our understanding of precisely what it is that motivates people to do the things they do.
Explanation:
In social environments, most human beings try to protect themselves from the emotional pain of disapproval by employing certain strategies/tactics inspired by their biological instincts. We rely on the simplistic 'reasoning' of these instinctive strategies when we are unaware of more sophisticated response options.
Consider the 'logic' of the most evil of all biologically-programmed instincts: the Anger Instinct. The Anger Instinct encourages us to 'hurt back' any enemy object that it suspects might be responsible for hurting us. If you experience a great deal of pain because you accidentally stumbled on some inanimate object, your Anger Instinct will encourage you to hit or kick the offending object to 'pay it back' for hurting you.
What sort of strategy is implicit in such a response? The Anger Instinct apparently seeks to bring an end to the continuation of pain [or the fear of it] by urging relentless attacks on perceived enemies until they are finally rendered incapable of hurting or threatening any more. It may not be an especially sophisticated defensive strategy---based on a thorough understanding of the nature of a threat---but it nevertheless has its own 'logic.'
(The Anger Instinct begins to surface in infants as young as ten-months-old. If one baby happens to pick up a toy rattle that another baby had just reached for herself, the latter will invariably strike the former without having ever witnessed such behavior previously. Such observations lead us to the conclusion that anger and violence are biologically programmed behaviors and not 'learned' behaviors as many now assume. Yes, learning is involved in aggression, but what people 'learn' (or are inspired to imitate) is not the feeling of anger that makes them want to strike. What we 'learn' are different ways to express, or act on our feelings of anger. The fundamental urge to hurt a perceived threat or to exploit a victim is generated by our genetic programming.)