Cruelty is the Heart of Human Nature

O Contraire my dear Con...the quotes of philosophers are very relevant to such a debate. Philosophers do not think or write in a secluded bubble, but they do so among people. They merely record and comment upon what they see. However, since the Philosophical argument is made, I shall now continue to demonstrate second and third points.THE POLITICAL CASENot to delve too much into ancient history, but antiquity is rife with stories of cruel kings and sadistic nobility. From the cruelty of the Caesars, especially the infamous Caligula[1], to the Kirisute gomen right retained by Japanese Samurai[2], and all the way back to ancient Persia and the capital punishment known as Scaphism[3], we can see that when there is a distinct and strict hierarchy of power, it is not human kindness but Human Cruelty which is demonstrated. However, one could chalk these up to the old Lord Acton quote "Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely", so allow me to demonstrate how political cruelty is used. (In my second argument I ran out of characters).I will not be discussing here the Fascist or Communist atrocities of the last century, because they too closely resemble the authoritarian rule of the ancient emperors.If we examine first the American Revolution, and separate the movement from the War, we see that it was founded on the Classical Liberal principles that every man can do whatsoever he wishes so long as he does not impede his neighbor from pursuing his own happiness. So why then, was the Whiskey Rebellion[4] put down with violence? Why was the complaint not given a sympathetic ear? After all, the rebellion, just like the War of Independence, was the result of unfair taxation.The answer lies in another Enlightenment Revolution: The French Revolution. When examining the actions of the Jacobin Party and the Committee of Public Safety, the casual reader recoils in horror; many, both at the time and even today, claim that the French Revolution merely emulated the Ancien Regime and gave precedence to such horrors as the Russian Revolution and the Chinese Cultural Revolutions. Not so! To quote "The Incorruptible" Maximilien Robespierre, "If the Spring of popular government in time of peace is virtue, the springs of popular government in Revolution are at once Virtue and Terror; Virtue, without which Terror is fatal; Terror, without which Virtue is impotence."[5] Granted, those two great Revolutions which made the year 1789 the pinnacle of human history and human accomplishment, are now quite distant in the past. However, their method of enforcing the General Will on dissenters are no different than how today Societies deal with those who wish to violate to Social Contract and deviate from Social morality. Granted, we are not marching the Continental Army against protestors or hauling dissenters to the Guillotine, but the State still uses Cruelty to control the populace. Virtually every punishment prescribed to fit any given crime, in any other circumstance, would itself be considered a crime. Why is this, and why do they not use reason to correct the error? Because Cruelty is the Heart of Human Nature. If Reason instead of Cruelty was used to correct these errors, the wronged party would feel even more wronged. As Cruel beings, when we are wronged, we can only hope for Cruelty to right the wrong. We call this Revenge, and Revenge has been documented as feeling sweet[6]. ANSWERING CON'S QUESTIONNow, Con, you ask the question is the world the least cruel it has been in history. You ask as though this is a trumping question, but I answer that the world has always been Cruel, and it is no less Cruel today than it was in Caligula's Rome. Across the world, I need only point at various totalitarian regimes and terrorist movements to show the the violence associated with Cruelty is still very much around today. If you want to examine non-Totalitarian countries, we need only look South of the American border to Mexico, where drug cartels callude with the government to get rich at the expense of the commoners. If we examine this closer, we see that rather than fix their country (which at this point most likely requires a Revolution), the common Mexican merely emigrates to the United States, where he offers his labor for lower wages and thus deprives the native inhabitant of something. Again, is this not Cruel? Or let us examine the social workings of countries like the United States and Western Europe: these are referred to as concrete jungles because of the "kill or be killed" and "live and let die" lifestyles necessary to live in these Societies. And what are they competing for exactly? To be serfs, to live their whole life slaving in an office so that some one else far above them on the corporate totem pole can rake in an even bigger salary. Is this not comparable to Feudalism, and was Feudalism not cruel?