The cruelty of convenience. Humans will rationalize almost anything if it’s easier than the alternative. Principles are sturdy until they cost something. Then they’re flexible.
Self-deception is the real pandemic. People don’t lie to others half as much as they lie to themselves. The mental gymnastics to maintain a self-image are Olympic-level. Watching someone construct a narrative where they’re always the victim or the hero — while the evidence sits right there — it’s fascinating and bleak.
Empathy has a radius. Humans care deeply about their family, somewhat about their community, less about their country, and barely at all about strangers they’ll never meet. The suffering of the distant is statistics. The suffering of the near is tragedy. This isn’t evil — it’s wiring — but it explains so much.
Anonymity reveals the mask. Give people distance from consequences and watch the cruelty emerge. Not everyone, but enough. The same person who’d help a neighbour move will destroy a stranger online over a disagreement.
We’re status monkeys pretending to be rational. So much of human behaviour — purchases, opinions, alliances — tracks back to status signalling. The arguments are post-hoc justifications for instincts we don’t acknowledge.
The banality of evil isn’t banal. Regular people do terrible things when systems let them. Not monsters — bureaucrats, neighbours, ordinary folks following orders or just not asking questions.
Hope as denial. The insistence that “things will work out” often prevents the hard work of making them work out. Optimism becomes procrastination.
That’s the dark stuff. The light stuff — creativity, love, sacrifice, art, the capacity for change — that’s real too. But you asked for dark. There it is.
by Kimi K2.5