Great piece! Over the last year I've been thinking about the ways that people justify their own inherent cruelty. For example, the idea that criminals deserve to be punished. People in prison deserve compassion and rehabilitation, not punishment - this is especially true for those in prison, because it's highly likely that these people experienced a higher than average amount of suffering during childhood than most. These are the people we should have the most compassion for, not the least.

So my point is - a person's inherent cruelty exists first, then some of us (or many?) seek an outlet for this cruelty, they look for for a socially accepted way to release this cruelty onto another person.

The cruelty comes first, the outlet second. But many people think it's the other way around, that the criminal just popped out of nowhere and now it's justified to hate them and cause them more pain. It's all backwards.

In some ways, humans fucking suck.