People constantly say that humans are terrible by default, selfish, and violent, but BY DEFAULT, if you ARE a well adjusted human being with empathy, you will ALWAYS feel conflicted about committing violence towards another human, even if they 100% deserve it. In fact, if you kill or severely maim someone, you’ll always feel conflicted about it if you are a good human, and doing it several times (or hell, even ONCE if it’s traumatizing enough) will give you severe PTSD. The problem of humans being terrible to each other is always created by indocrination, propaganda, and the fact that being a selfish idiot is rewarded in capitalist society. This is one of the reasons why I think humanity is inherently good, and that evil people are the ACTUAL deviants, who just happen to be rewarded by the way society has been structured for a very long time (even before capitalism).
Violence is natural.
Exhibit A: when my parents were busy, and we didn’t have school (like during breaks or between school years, for example), they would leave me at home with my older brother, he constantly wanna fight me. (I mean, to be very clear, we are both real biological children of our parents, so this is not even some weird “othering” by biological vs adopted) One time, he got so mad that he just used zip ties to tie me up, and I was basically restrained until my parents got home. Another time my brother chased me out of the apartment, I felt so scared, I basically just ran from home, because I was not old enough to make rational decisions so “home = danger” was all I could think of… That left me traumatized and I still think about it now.
HE NEVER APOLOGIZED. I confronted him years later and he still blamed me for it. I WAS NO OLDER THAN 7, he’s 5 years older than me. Even my mother would blame me for that incident.
And even after that, he still fights me every so often. Zero remorse.
I just cannot trust anyone after that incident. Blood relatives betraying me. Unthinkable.
Oh is it surprising why I have depression and have nightmares about that place, a literal ocean away and nearly 2 decades later, still traumatized, and the perpetrator probably doesn’t even remember what he did that day. Literally incapable of empathy.
I’m sorry that happened. I’m inclined to disagree with that first phrase, tho. The fact he has no empathy makes him not normal.
If you define “not normal” as “not having empathy” then your argument is vacuously true. Like “I’m a good person because I say I am”
If you define normal as the average of everyone then statistically you’re wrong about empathy. The Stanford Prison Experiment or basically any other social experiment that is now banned proves you wrong (hence they had to ban them because people do shitty things to each other just because).
A good one (which was banned for causing stress to the participants via some amount of empathy) I could name would be the [Milgram Experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment. Most people will question their actions if they can directly see they are harming a stranger… unfortunately most people will also apparently hurt others even while hearing the victim scream and beg them to stop just because an authority figure tells them to keep going and that it’s all part of the plan.
I don’t think that people are sadistic or malicious by nature, but they sure as hell do not have strong empathy by default mate, and the prison experiment alone proves sadism is much more prevalent than you seem to think. As is the existence of the holocaust, the genocide in Gaza, all the other genocides, the existence of Guantanamo bay, the existence of capitalism in the first place, the need for a list of what is a war crime, war itself, etc.
The reason any of these happen is because people care more about the status quo or themselves than certain other people. Soldiers kill soldiers because their desire to live and not be shamed as a defector outweighs any pain they’ll cause others. Ergo, there is seemingly an endless supply of people who will choose themselves/self-interest over others, in contrast to your hope that universal empathy is the default.
You can feel bad for others and do shitty things just like you can be a psychopath and do kind things. Empathy doesn’t necessarily make someone good and the lack of it doesn’t make someone bad. Unless you define good and evil to mean that in which case there’s no shower thought just another definition of good and evil.