The inhumanity of humans toward other humans

Many of us feel overwhelmed by the brutality and hatefulness around us — in Israel and Gaza, in Russia’s continued attacks on Ukraine, in mass shootings here at home, in the violence and hostility that erupted at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and continues to divide Americans, in Trump’s vicious lies and rants that fuel racism, xenophobia, and misogyny.

- Robert Reich

How can human beings behave so inhumanely? And how should we respond? What is a moral life in

the face of such barbarism? Civilization is the opposite of the state of nature. Na

ture is a continuous war in which only the fittest survive and where even survivors’ lives are “nasty, brutish, and short,” in the words of English philosopher Thomas Hobbes.

A civil society doesn’t allow the strong to brutalize the weak. It doesn’t incite the weak to terrorize the strong. It doesn’t tolerate violence against innocent people, nor does it tolerate retributive violence.

Without norms and laws preventing the stronger from attacking or exploiting the weaker, none of us is safe. Oppressors can ever be secure from the oppressed. Even the most powerful live in fear of being attacked or deposed. Terrorism always lurks in the shadow of brutality.

No one can be truly free in a society considered by many to be unjust. There can be no liberty where brutality reigns.

Our job — the responsibility of all who seek a just society and a decent world — is to move as far as possible away from hateful violence toward social justice.