At the time of writing this article, due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the news is dominated by images of war and alarming headlines. I have always thought that it is good to keep abreast of the news but this makes for distressing watching, added to the usual barrage of reports involving things cruel people said or did, or cruel new laws being passed.
Whatever platform the information is being delivered on, consumers are looking to the correspondents and reporters to help them come to terms with and understand President Putin’s actions. Or is he simply just cruel?
In recent years, I’ve also noticed in my personal life and as a Holistic Brain Health practitioner, that unfortunately cruelty seems to be on the rise.
This issue of Psychology Today with the featured article discussing the rise of toxic behavior, also served as a reminder. And, according to the global communications firm Weber Shandwick, a record number of Americans (69%) believe the country has a civility problem, this has grown from 65% in 2010.
So what is causing the increase in cruelty?
According to research by Weber Shandwick, most people blame politicians and social media. As I wrote in my article Why We Lack Control Over Our Thoughts, our environment and what we are exposed to has a profound influence on what we think. If we have any tendency to be cruel, the cruelty we engage with in the news, social media and entertainment gives us unconscious permission to do the same. We are not immune from our environment. If we were, politicians and advertisers wouldn’t go to so much expense using it to try to influence us.
That being said, we don’t all respond to watching cruelty in the same way.
Interestingly, in a study published in 2014, researchers showed that watching violence activates the brain differently in aggressive people than calm people. Aggressive people had reduced activity in the decision making part of the brain (the orbitofrontal cortex), and more activity in the emotional center of the brain (the amygdala). They also showed a rise in blood pressure.
So, if aggressive people respond differently to watching violence than calm people, what makes people unkind in the first place?
1. Fragmentation:
Freudian psychologist Heinz Kohut said that sadistic behavior comes from when people become unhinged. This can happen when people you are close to don’t understand and accept you. And directing rage, hatred or cruelty at another can help people feel like they are holding it together.
2. Inability to be vulnerable:
Giles Fraser wrote that cruelty stems from the fear of being vulnerable. When we feel neglected or abandoned, a healthy response is to acknowledge and accept our feelings. But if we deny them, we don’t admit to ourselves that we are vulnerable – and we certainly don’t admit that to others. But, when we don’t accept our emotions we redirect them elsewhere, and others may suffer the consequences. For more about this, read my articles 3 Reasons Why Just Be Cool is Bad for You, and about the Heart Wall, that describes what blocks us from being vulnerable.
3. Lack of self-compassion
The Buddhists say you can’t have compassion for others until you have compassion for yourself. And, Tara Brach, author of Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of the Buddha, says this concept hit her when a friend of hers mentioned she was learning to be her own best friend. So, its worth considering whether you treat yourself as well as you would your own best friend.
4. Spirit of Abstraction
Alex Lickerman M.D. wrote in Psychology Today that what makes people cruel to each other is summed up in the concept of the spirit of abstraction. This is the practice of conceiving of people as functions rather than human beings. For example, Hitler singled out part of the German population as ‘Jews’ and in doing so convinced the rest of the German people that they were inferior. We have called African Americans ‘slaves’, and the Japanese ‘Japs’. Defining people as a collective function in this way, and associating them with derogatory terms reduces them as human beings. This in turn dismisses that they have hearts, feelings, and needs equal to everyone else.
So when we label people, whether in their role or job or by their race, it is important to remember that behind those labels are human beings with lives as complicated as our own. We tend to easily see the humanity in people that look like us, but have a tendency towards a lack of empathy with those that look differently from us. We must challenge ourselves to see the humanity in everyone.
Know others that are struggling to understand how others can be cruel? Please share this article with them!
I agree. Humans degrade other people and animals using words like “gook” or “steak” to hide the fact that another being has feelings and doesn’t want to be killed… As if a word can hide the atrocity of one being against another.