Are we naturally evil?
I've travelled to far-flung destinations. All were beautiful but most had a bloody past. As I walked around the Killing Fields in Cambodia, the DMZ in Vietnam and the graves at Passchendaele, the only thing going through my head was how can one human being do this to another.
People are horrible. Truly horrible. The pain and hurt we inflict on each other, even in the tiniest ways, is mostly needless. From breaking hearts to breaking bones, we have an inherent need to punish.
In Phnom Penh, S21 prison entertains bus loads of travellers who flock to see a primary school converted into one of the most brutal prisons in the Khmer Rouge regime. The tiny cells barely fit a human and they weren't allowed to move, not even to scratch their nose. They were dangled by their feet from the monkey bars in the playground for days and they were chained to beds and tortured. The bodies were taken to the The Killing Fields, where they joined hundreds of thousands of others, murdered based on their education and political persuasion. It doesn't stop there, in The Killing Fields, there's a tree that babies were smashed against. An innocent field, an innocent school, all tainted with human cruelty.
The examples listed above are some of the worst types of cruelty that can happen and by comparison, those are tame. We all know about the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust, but millions of people have been wiped out by tyranny throughout the ages. The butchering of Rwandans, the genocide of Armenians and the almost total annihilation of the Aborigines.
The people who inflict this cruelty on others must know what they are doing is wrong. Do they simply have blind belief in their cause so will go to any lengths to see it into fruition? Are they ruled by fear, so go along with it for survival? Do they believe that since it's not their idea, they're absconded of guilt?
I didn't realise morality was so selective.
It's not just extreme cruelty that breaks every rule laid down by Jesus and Buddha where people are evil, they're evil to each other in the most innocuous or clandestine ways.
According to Women's Aid, one incident of domestic violence is reported every day and 2 women a week are killed by their partners. One in four women and one in six men are said to have experienced domestic violence. Especially when you add that reported child abuse cases are over 30,000, according to the NSPCC. And the police reported that rape cases were over 22,000. Those stats are scary.
I don't know how people can claim to love someone when they don't even respect them enough not to physically hurt them. And why would you even consider harming a defenceless child.
You could argue that those guys are lucky, they have bruises, scars and wounds to prove that they've been the victims of someone's wrath or power game. Those who suffer mental abuse have no such luxury.
Being constantly told you're stupid, ugly, useless, etc. is crippling to human development. You can attempt to rise above it, but at the end of the day bruises heal but words echo in your head forever. When you've been denied the things you love, alienated from friends and family and stripped of your identity, you become a trapped dependant therefore a plaything for another to torment. How does a victim describe these things without sounding like they're making a mountain out of a molehill therefore proving the abuser right.
You could argue that those guys are lucky too because even mental torture leaves an audit trail.
There are people who troll on the internet, demanding bosses, commuters who push past you on the tube, lovers who lead you on, cowboy builders, thieves and waiters who spit in food. These are all forms of human cruelty. They are inflicting pain on another for their own personal gain - whether that's financial, emotional, dominance or vengeance.
Human thirst for brutality - in whatever form - is natural. So despite evolution, we're not better than dinosaurs.
First published 18/06/2015
People are horrible. Truly horrible. The pain and hurt we inflict on each other, even in the tiniest ways, is mostly needless. From breaking hearts to breaking bones, we have an inherent need to punish.
In Phnom Penh, S21 prison entertains bus loads of travellers who flock to see a primary school converted into one of the most brutal prisons in the Khmer Rouge regime. The tiny cells barely fit a human and they weren't allowed to move, not even to scratch their nose. They were dangled by their feet from the monkey bars in the playground for days and they were chained to beds and tortured. The bodies were taken to the The Killing Fields, where they joined hundreds of thousands of others, murdered based on their education and political persuasion. It doesn't stop there, in The Killing Fields, there's a tree that babies were smashed against. An innocent field, an innocent school, all tainted with human cruelty.
The examples listed above are some of the worst types of cruelty that can happen and by comparison, those are tame. We all know about the horrors of the Jewish Holocaust, but millions of people have been wiped out by tyranny throughout the ages. The butchering of Rwandans, the genocide of Armenians and the almost total annihilation of the Aborigines.
The people who inflict this cruelty on others must know what they are doing is wrong. Do they simply have blind belief in their cause so will go to any lengths to see it into fruition? Are they ruled by fear, so go along with it for survival? Do they believe that since it's not their idea, they're absconded of guilt?
I didn't realise morality was so selective.
It's not just extreme cruelty that breaks every rule laid down by Jesus and Buddha where people are evil, they're evil to each other in the most innocuous or clandestine ways.
According to Women's Aid, one incident of domestic violence is reported every day and 2 women a week are killed by their partners. One in four women and one in six men are said to have experienced domestic violence. Especially when you add that reported child abuse cases are over 30,000, according to the NSPCC. And the police reported that rape cases were over 22,000. Those stats are scary.
I don't know how people can claim to love someone when they don't even respect them enough not to physically hurt them. And why would you even consider harming a defenceless child.
You could argue that those guys are lucky, they have bruises, scars and wounds to prove that they've been the victims of someone's wrath or power game. Those who suffer mental abuse have no such luxury.
Being constantly told you're stupid, ugly, useless, etc. is crippling to human development. You can attempt to rise above it, but at the end of the day bruises heal but words echo in your head forever. When you've been denied the things you love, alienated from friends and family and stripped of your identity, you become a trapped dependant therefore a plaything for another to torment. How does a victim describe these things without sounding like they're making a mountain out of a molehill therefore proving the abuser right.
You could argue that those guys are lucky too because even mental torture leaves an audit trail.
There are people who troll on the internet, demanding bosses, commuters who push past you on the tube, lovers who lead you on, cowboy builders, thieves and waiters who spit in food. These are all forms of human cruelty. They are inflicting pain on another for their own personal gain - whether that's financial, emotional, dominance or vengeance.
Human thirst for brutality - in whatever form - is natural. So despite evolution, we're not better than dinosaurs.
First published 18/06/2015
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