As for older children, having been a camp counselor and a camp director for ten years, I know that few things come more naturally to many children than meanness, petty cruelty, bullying, and a lack of empathy for less fortunate peers. The statement I have never met a bad kid like people are born basically good is simply wishful thinking. To Prager s very elegant words, I would like to add one clarification. This is the kind of selfishness that convinced the people in their cars to stay put. This is the selfishness that, in the Bible, caused both a priest and a Levite to leave a beaten man along the side of a road to die.
Active selfishness is a lot like that.
I m going to hurt you. This is the type of selfishness displayed by the two men in the car the woman rear-ended. She had had the audacity to mess with their ride and she was going to pay. It lends itself easily to a mob mentality. Some better known examples here are the French Revolution and ethnic cleansing in Bosnia.