My general assumption for the lowest I can expect a person to behave is basically always looking for their own absolute gain, and any attitude towards other people comes secondary to that. So while a person living by this standard wouldn’t donate to charity without some other motive, they would have basically the same answer to something like the trolley problem as anyone else.
Am I wrong thinking of this as a “minimum reasonable behavior”, or is there something people actually gain from the suffering of other people?
This question was born out of seeing how people are being treated by the US government at the moment, but I’m asking about more than just that. People like abusive partners/family, hostile cops, or just bullies in general.
There’s some distinction to be made too between cruelty, and just plain apathy, dissociation, or whatever (I’m tired and struggling to word today).
When you mow down a heap of homes in Sim City you feel nothing because you’re not linking your actions to a real impact on actual people. All you have in mind is that if you do it, you’ll be able to use the space for something else that works better for you.
To some people, that’s how they view the world.
A feeling of power.
In addition to what others here have already said: Sometimes what they gain is a feeling of power and/or control.
This can play a role in the vicious cycle of abuse. People feel powerless because they are abused. To regain power they abuse others. Then they are the ones in control of the situation.
Assholes want relative gain, not absolute.
Plenty of people get joy or even sexual pleasure from watching others suffer or die. Its not common, but even one person who acts on this can cause huge amounts of harm to dozens or hundreds of others. A lot of the most fucked up crimes are the result of this sort of thing. Unfortunately, these are also exactly the sort of people badly regulated police and military also select for (IE police in the US, the military in most developing nations)
I’m leaning towards this actually being more common than you thought
The roman emperor Caligula comes to mind, if the sources concerning his reign can be trusted.
We’re not rational creatures. We’re basically just jumped up apes who just barely (so far) have managed to control our atavistic impulses enough to stop us from killing ourselves.
There are several options. Sometimes they overlap:
- Direct gain such as romantic opportunity from sabotaging a rival or items of value from theft. Some people are callous about the harm caused, while others rationalize it as necessary or justified.
- Retribution or justice. Most people are happy to hear that a child molester will receive abuse from other prisoners, to give an example.
- Sadism - direct satisfaction or pleasure from causing pain to others. This is unlikely to make much sense to those of us who aren’t sadists, so it may have to be enough to just know it exists.
Now consider politicians promising to harm some out group and people voting for them. It’s a combination of the first two: the politicians attempt to gain elected office by convincing people that the out group is evil or dangerous and promising to do something about it. The voters believe these cruel actions to be justice done to vicious criminals.
The book John Dies at the End has a line I’m going to have to paraphrase that says something to the effect of “cruelty is the purest display of power”, and it makes sense. You do something you know they don’t like, but for whatever reason, they’re forced to take it. Not fighting back is an implicit agreement that the cruel one has more power.
!lemmysilver
This was partly explored in Erich Fromm’s work “Escape from Freedom” and “The Anatomy of Human Destruction”, but basically, if I understood correctly, sadistic personalities use it as a means of defence against loneliness and isolation. By exerting power over another, they temporarily lose the painful feeling of being alone. Abusive people tend to be miserable when their victims leave them and they have nobody to control.
Nobody gains anything from cruelty, it’s a symptom that something’s terribly wrong with the person in the first place. Even animals don’t display acts of cruelty in the wild, they do so only when confined to cages and subjected to other inhumane treatment.
I often wonder about this myself too - especially when it comes to people being mean online. It’s absurd to me that just because I said something they disagree with, they think it gives them the green light to viciously attack me personally instead of addressing what I actually said. And often, it’s from people I haven’t even interacted with directly. I just don’t get it. I never feel the urge to be intentionally mean to someone, and I can’t imagine what these people think they’re gaining from it.
A sense of arbitrary power and control.
It’s ansiolotic. Like people who do drugs or have compulsive behaviors. Some people feel better after hurting others. Usually because they have been hurt themselves.
