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(well, not really)

As a sixteen-year victim of child abuse, and then later of domestic violence in adult relationships, I have always wondered why people so often resort to physical violence. All of that violence and it still did not help. There are so many more “effective ways” to wound others, eg. intellectual, social, and financial control, dominance and insults to name a few of the big ones. But why inflict pain at all? We are basically a f**ked up species.

Human beings like to imagine themselves as creatures of reason gently evolving toward compassion. We tell stories about enlightenment, progress, civilization, human rights, empathy. Yet beneath this polished mythology lies a more embarrassing truth: humans are often emotionally intoxicated by condemnation. We do not merely punish; we savor punishment. We do not merely shame; we ritualize shame. We do not merely hate others; we frequently hate ourselves with equal devotion. We are often in a state of confused identity: ascending/evolving apes vs. incarnated angels on field duty because everyone “must suffer to learn”.

The astonishing thing is not that cruelty exists. The astonishing thing is how morally noble cruelty can feel to the people performing it.

Psychologically, hatred is rarely experienced as hatred. It is experienced as righteousness.

A person screaming at a stranger online feels principled. A parent humiliating a child feels corrective. A pet-owner disciplining an animal that “should know better”. A child rebuking a doll as it itself experiences the same from a parent. A religious zealot condemning sinners feels virtuous. A political mob destroying reputations feels morally awake. Even self-loathing often disguises itself as discipline, accountability, or “high standards.”

Human beings have an extraordinary ability to transform aggression into morality.

This may explain why religions across the world contain not only messages of love and forgiveness, but elaborate architectures of judgment, penance, purification, sacrifice, damnation, exile, and cosmic vengeance. Hell is often more vividly described than paradise. Divine wrath frequently receives more narrative attention than divine tenderness. Why? Because punishment satisfies a deep psychological appetite. It creates order out of chaos. It reassures frightened minds that suffering is deserved, meaningful, and controllable.

The terrifying alternative is harder to bear: that pain is often random.

Humans appear deeply uncomfortable with randomness. We would rather believe that victims deserve suffering than admit the universe is indifferent. Psychologists call this the “just-world hypothesis”: the tendency to assume people get what they deserve. It protects the psyche from helplessness. If suffering happens only to the guilty, then perhaps we ourselves are safe — provided we remain obedient, pure, disciplined, correct.

This is why societies so often moralize misfortune. The poor are called lazy. The sick are blamed for their habits. The lonely are accused of weakness. The traumatized are told they “allowed” abuse. Every accusation secretly reassures the accuser: I am not vulnerable like you.

Punishment, then, is not only social control. It is anxiety management.

And nowhere is this more visible than in the human obsession with “learning lessons.” We constantly insist that suffering teaches. Heartbreak builds character. Poverty builds resilience. Humiliation builds humility. Failure builds strength.

Sometimes this is true. But humans often stretch this observation into a moral law: if suffering can produce growth, then suffering becomes justified.

That leap is psychologically dangerous.

Because once pain is framed as educational, cruelty acquires ethical camouflage. The abusive parent claims to toughen the child. The exploitative workplace claims to build grit. The humiliating teacher claims to prepare students for “the real world.” Entire cultures romanticize emotional deprivation as maturity.

The hidden implication is brutal: kindness weakens people.

Many humans seem to believe this instinctively. Compassion is treated with suspicion because it threatens older survival instincts forged in harsh environments. For most of history, life was precarious, violent, humiliating, and unstable. Social exclusion could mean death. Weakness attracted predators. Scarcity rewarded hardness. Under such conditions, punitive psychology may have offered adaptive advantages.

Shame, especially, became one of civilization’s favorite tools.

Shame is social pain. It evolved to regulate group behavior. Humans fear humiliation because belonging once determined survival. A person expelled from the tribe was often doomed. Modern humans still carry this ancient nervous system. Public ridicule activates primal terror.

Which is why public shaming is so intoxicating.

When a crowd unites against a target, individuals experience a perverse emotional fusion: moral superiority, tribal belonging, and aggression all at once. It feels cleansing. Ancient rituals of sacrifice and scapegoating did not disappear; they migrated onto social media, political discourse, celebrity culture, and everyday gossip.

Every era claims to hate mobs while inventing new ones.

But perhaps the darkest dimension of all this is self-punishment.

Human beings often internalize the voices that wounded them. A child shamed repeatedly may grow into an adult who believes suffering is necessary for worthiness. They may distrust pleasure, rest, acceptance, or self-forgiveness. Many people feel anxious when life becomes peaceful because peace contradicts their emotional conditioning.

To such a psyche, punishment feels strangely familiar — even loving.

This may explain why self-loathing can become addictive. Harsh self-criticism creates the illusion of control. If I attack myself first, perhaps others cannot destroy me. If I punish myself, perhaps I can avoid punishment from the world. Inner cruelty masquerades as preparation.

In this sense, many humans become both prisoner and warden simultaneously.

Even morality itself can become infected by sadism. Friedrich Nietzsche argued that civilizations transformed aggression inward, creating guilt-ridden creatures who torture themselves psychologically because they can no longer discharge violence outward freely. Freud similarly believed civilization required repression, but that repression generated neurosis and self-punishment.

Modern culture demonstrates this paradox constantly. People publicly advocate compassion while privately fantasizing about revenge against ideological enemies. Entire moral systems quietly depend on the emotional pleasure of condemnation. Outrage becomes entertainment. Judgment becomes identity.

To “hold people accountable” sometimes means: I want permission to hate you without guilt.

And yet, despite all this, humans are not simply monsters.

The same species capable of torture invented forgiveness. The same minds that create shame also create mercy. Compassion itself may be difficult precisely because it opposes several ancient psychological instincts at once. Genuine forgiveness asks humans to relinquish emotional rewards: superiority, revenge, certainty, tribal unity, righteous excitement.

Love is psychologically harder than hatred because hatred is energizing.

Hatred simplifies the world. It divides reality into innocent and guilty, pure and corrupt, worthy and unworthy. Compassion complicates everything. Compassion forces us to confront ambiguity, woundedness, context, unconscious motives, and the uncomfortable possibility that under different conditions we ourselves might become the people we condemn.

That realization destabilizes the ego.

So perhaps the real question is not why humans punish, shame, hate, and moralize suffering. Those tendencies are ancient, adaptive, and emotionally gratifying. The real question is why some humans occasionally transcend them.

Why does mercy appear at all?

Why does anyone break cycles of humiliation instead of continuing them?

Why do some people, after suffering greatly, become gentler instead of crueler?

Perhaps because consciousness creates another possibility beyond instinct: the ability to recognize one’s own darkness without worshipping it. The ability to admit that pain may teach lessons while refusing to romanticize pain itself. The ability to understand that suffering can deepen a person without concluding that suffering is therefore sacred.

Humans may never fully abandon punishment, shame, or hatred. These impulses are woven deeply into our biology and history. But civilization might be measured by one fragile achievement: reducing the amount of suffering we insist is necessary.

The most radical idea may not be vengeance, purity, discipline, or moral certainty.

It may be the suspicion that people learn best not when they are broken, but when they are safe enough to change.

— Adam Donaldson Powell