Dear Roger,

Excellent essay. You call to mind two things.

Are you familiar with Terry Tempest Williams' book LEAP? The entire book is her wandering around inside Bosch's triptych on the garden of evil. It's a fantastic book, and your review makes me want to see the movie to compare how a filmmaker and an essayist approach similar topics.

You also remind me of what happened when I wrote an essay for salon about the death of my lover. The number of people who came out of the woodwork to disparage me was awful. I opted not to read the letters after a while. Couldn't figure out what was wrong with people.

Thanks for all you do.
Best,
Lorraine Berry

There may not be an answer for a question like this, but the only thing I would offer up is why should there be any greater amount of less cruelty in us when nature itself is, if not cruel, certainly not caring? Since we in some sense evolved out of nature on this planet like everything else, why should we be inherently any different?

With greater self-awareness or a capacity to reflect on one's own existence, comes a greater capacity to bring either kindness or cruelty onto others.

Ebert: Nature doesn't "know" any better. We should. Whole solar systems are destroyed, but so it goes.

Ah, but the cruelty is intentional, is it not, throughout the history of mankind? Public display of cruelty and killing is almost a staple in all societies throughout most of history. They serve a function of intimidation and dominance in the difficult goal of maintaining order.

There is a Chinese saying: "Kill a chicken to scare the monkeys." The horrible death displayed in every town square served to prevent the masses from getting any ideas. Keep in mind that the people in the position of power and dominance are always outnumbered by those in the bottom, and it is no easy feat to keep them there, especially in a time when there was not enough excess production of food and materials to maintain a large police and military force to keep social order and prevent violent uprisings.

Things have changed since the industrial revolution. The production of food and clothes and weapons is now sufficient to maintain a large enough army and build prisons to maintain social order and prevent frequent uprisings, etc. Thus, the few in power no longer need to rely on psychological tactics to keep the masses horrified and submissive. Now, torture and cruelty have to be conducted in secret to serve other purposes.

In answer to your query concerning the inflicting of 'suffering' before death, I believe it expresses the human 'outrage' of the executioner (be it a Pope ordering the execution of a heretic or a rival ordering the demise of his competition, or an enemy of another culture riding himself of his opponent.) By making your enemy suffer, you truly conquer him. YOU BREAK HIS SPIRIT, subdue him, subjugate his will to yours, and make him cry out for mercy TO YOU.

A quick death rids one (in a merciful way) of one's enemy and is used if one DOESN'T really want to execute the subject, but must because the law or politics requres him to do so in order to keep order in the land. But if one is executing an enemy whom the other sees as causing great grief or trouble to himself, he will use torture. Also, as an example to others, execution (openly) combined with torture can serve as a great deterrent to anyone else seeking to oppose the executioner's authority.

What a fascinating subject: the human 'emotional' mind. Animals merely kill for food or protection of territory or sometimes in the course of being challenged for a mate or leadership of the pride, herd, etc. But, the purpose is just to get ride of the opponent. Only humans harbour deeper emotional grudges (hence torture.) Can't wait to see the flick (Brueghel painting).

Beautifully written, Roger. You speak to the power of art and cinema to aid us in thoughtful reflection of our nature and behavior.

"We all know how suffering feels." So true. How then could we be cruel, personally or collectively? No answers either.

This movie is right down my alley--I love Bruegel, and the attention to detail looks incredible--but based on the trailer and what you've said here, I don't think I'll be able to watch it. Capital punishment and torture disturbs me deeply. Why do we do this, indeed?

My favorite "walking into a painting" film is "Crows," the Vincent Van Gogh sequence from Akira Kurosawa's Dreams, with Martin Scorsese as V.V.G.(!) and a Chopin soundtrack. I cry every time I watch it.

http://youtu.be/K8Pnjwu4a6k

It seems to me, after looking at these videos and listening to Auden's poem, that whole civilizations are built upon certain foundations that can be eroded or pecked away, just as surely as the eyes of an innocent passing by ... such that there will be no more witnesses left.

Ebert: I wish I could disagree with you.

I am reminded by your comment of Shelley's "Osymandias."

http://bit.ly/r70C7j

I wish I knew how to answer this question.

This is a beautiful post.

I think some cruelty is an attempt to exorcise what we fear. Some is from hate. Some might not be explicable. A large aspect of cruelty is one person's or group's power over another--it's the ultimate exercise of power.

We have not yet completed our journey to civilization, have we?

I thought of Auden's poem when I saw The Fall of Icarus and had planned to quote it. Then I saw your video link. Always one step ahead of me.

Roger, I wish I had an answer to this question. Strangely enough, I wonder if it's partly a survival instinct, embedded in our genetic makeup. Perhaps we need assurance that our enemy is, in fact, dead.

On a (possibly) related note, I fervently believe that if we could somehow put an end to all child abuse and neglect throughout the world, within fifteen to twenty years, life would be much improved for everyone. Unfortunately, I know of no sure way to accomplish this.

Deep thoughts for a Sunday.

Ebert: What is the engine for child abuse? I don't understand it.

Mr. Ebert, you went directly to the heart of the matter when you stated: "Inflicting torture seems to be uniquely human." I do believe it is a hallmark of Homo sapien (isn't that nomenclature ironic?) that we know better, yet we still commit atrocities. It seems to be a part of our very DNA. I too have no answers; I contend that humans, while having evolved in some ways, have devolved in other ways. If the point of evolution is to continue the species by becoming better than we are, then we are failing miserably.

Thank you for such an insightful post, and now I am intrigued by this movie. This film may fall into the category of "interesting, different but altogether difficult to watch". There are many such films. Whether the film is WORTH watching, I can only decide upon a viewing.

Some of those of us who question the reason for our existence and the very nature of our being often come to the conclusion that perhaps this planet will not survive our species. Your post is substantial food for thought. I cannot answer the question "Why isn't there more kindness in our nature?" I only know that unless we strive towards being more humane, not just human, then we may be limiting our own days on planet Earth.

I think there is more kindness in our *nature* than you seem to think we have, but that our society and cultural values portray kindness as weakness, so that anyone who does have it will see it as a negative and work, consciously or not, towards its eradication. In subtle ways, our society also convinces us that we are unique individuals, and that we do not need other people, which is an unfortunate delusion. In fact, we have much more in common that we are led to believe, and we need one another much more than we realize. Again, unfortunately, society construes this as weakness -- to need support from other humans means that we are not self-sufficient. Realizing, for instance, how interconnected we are encourages a level of compassion and humility that we rarely see in American culture, especially and most notably from our leaders in both the private and public sectors. However, there is hope in the very free will that so often causes us to treat each other badly -- we simply choose to behave differently. Every moment we have another opportunity to make this choice. We can choose to see ourselves in the suffering and happiness of other people. If we are successful, we will find that we WANT to eliminate suffering, and that we WANT to encourage happiness and safety, which will make it easier to make better choices. However, we are many of us addicted to a sense of individuality, and just like any serious addiction, we cannot change unless we first see and are willing to admit that we have a problem.

Reply to: Why do we do this? Why isn't there more kindness in our nature? - Ebert

Not a difficult question to answer at all.

First, living space. Look at the slums of India. The quality of life is abysmal. In order to attain the quality of life that Americans take for granted... well, there isn't any way. They are condemned by the sheer numbers of people.

Europe is crowded. London is gridlocked. While the planet had 2 billion people, life was good. At six billion, it became difficult. When it reaches nine or ten billion, even Americans will understand why rational, intelligent human beings kill other human beings for living space.

Look at the history of the human species. For a big part of it, the first fifty million years or so, early primates, the small mammals the size of today's rabbits, were hunted by replites, then large cats. Our inner voice shouts, "There's something out in the dark that wants to EAT us." Our primitive brains are wired for that. We have a flight or fight response that kicks out adrenaline that makes us do things calm, rational primates wouldn't.

But the answer you are looking for... is power. The power to run a government and own enormous wealth. What you call a "religion. "

Reply to: Then the Spanish chase down the young husband and his wife, and begin to whip and beat him. ...More often, probably, it takes place as a punishment for the religion, politics, race or nationality of the victims. Mass graves are uncovered all over the world, ....Often, ultimately, such murders are justified with reference to God. Sometimes the god is a political despot or a criminal lord... - Ebert

Very simply, this "God" never shows up to complain about the acts committed in God's name. When a man stands up and claims, "God has ordered us to spread OUR beliefs by crucifying our enemies..." the people obey, without question, because they actually BELIEVE that the orders came from their God.

Believing that your leaders speaks for God... is the great evil.

No one speaks for a God. It's just a man who knows that killing his enemies is the only way to keep from being assassinated in his sleep, or when he makes a public appearanc3e. He needs a Reign of Terror so his enemies won't kill him.

Another reason, simply, is revenge. You were mean to me. I'm going to make you pay for it. I suspect you can go through your old reviews and make a list of ten names who think they deserve some payback on Roger Ebert (the snarky one, not the new one after you found a way to be sober.)

The one constant is, the god only exists in the imagination of his followers. Same for Catholics. And Mormons. Only in their imagination. And that means the commandment to kill can't be falsified by an appeal to facts or reality. "God" is actually the perfect justification to kill large numbers of your enemies. Everyone in your village understands "fight or flight"... once the adrenalin starts flowing after a passionate sermon or two.

Roger, this is something, as I've grown older, I continue to contemplate about humanity.

We are capable of some of the greatest things that the world has ever seen. The men who produced this artwork are human, but then again, so were the torturers of the Inquisition.

I have recently been watching the show, "The Tudors," which I've been able to stream on Netflix. As someone who loves history, it is an entertaining for sure, but once again, it really brought home the level of torture/violence men and women have been placed under for unjustifiable reasons.

As an Anglophile, you know the atrocities that occurred during that time period in the name of religion. Only humans could come up with the torture rack, drawing/quartering, etc. And as you stated in your article, religion often becomes the standard go-to reason for committing vile acts whose real motives are maintaining power.

As a physician, I am always stunned by the beauty of nature, the human body, our complex psyche. Yet, philosophers and ordinary people alike have felt this way since the dawn of our time. Look at how prominently preservation of human life is a central tenet of most faiths! Why then, do we subject another human being to such senseless violence--Ruin what should have been so pure?

It is the worst plague that humans suffer from. And it will be the last to be eradicated, I'm sure.

I have spent my life thinking about this, every single day, and think I have an answer. Perhaps it isn't correct, but for the moment I think it is. I have to start way back in the life of a human being to walk you through my theory. I will also digress a bit. I hope you and your readers can bear with me...

When we are born, we are not pure and innocent and all-knowing as everyone likes to think. We don’t open our eyes and think that we’ve arrived in the gosh-darned coolest movie in the world, and we don’t think about how big daddy is and how beautiful mommy is. That simply is not true. We are by nature selfish and self-centered. Not because we're bad or evil, but because that's our first view of the world. We open our eyes and all that exists spread outwards with us at the center. We cry in hunger and the people come and feed us. We cry in fear and the people come and protect us. We cry in pain and the people come and soothe us. We resent them when they cannot fulfill us and cry harder. After a time we call the people parents and we learn how to love them, but it takes time. So to us, in this infantile perspective we are the center of the world and all serves us, always. We do not understand give and take, only the taking.

Even good and kind parents who do their best don’t teach the right lessons, and in a lot of small ways nurture their children’s selfishness and self-centeredness. We see it all the time.
Eventually though, we grow up, as all children must, but the world is not as nurturing as our parents and soon we are faced with a dilemma. How do we maintain the comfortable belief that we are the center of the universe when we are obviously not always as strong and smart and good as others? How do we think we’re the fastest, when someone outruns us? How do we think we’re the smartest when someone else gets better grades?

We begin by belittling others’ achievements. It was easier for them. They’re getting a free pass. It was luck on their part. We “chose” not to win. Think back to your own lives. You’ve ALL done this. All of you. I did it, you did it.

We make our failures seem like strengths. I couldn’t get a good paying job? It’s because I don’t care about money. I’m not a successful artist? I didn’t want to sell out.

Over and over, the answer is always the same: It wasn’t MY fault.

This causes us, slowly but surely, to think of others as the enemy, because we begin to see them as the direct cause of our failure and unhappiness. They’re either passively trying to destroy us through their incompetence and stupidity, or actively trying to destroy us through their evil and corruption. Most people, if you sit them down and ask them, have a low opinion of the world in general and at least one or two groups that they feel are directly responsible for why world is so "horrible" and "vile".

So with that sort of opinion of other people, is it any surprise that we treat them like rats trying to eat our food? Is it any surprise that some people wake up in the morning and need half a bottle of scotch to get out of bed and look at other people’s stupid ugly faces? Is it any surprise that people are so angry at other people?

You wouldn’t feel bad letting a rat squirm in the trap after it bit you and you needed to get a rabies shot would you? Why would it bother you to torment others? They’re not people, they’re not
*you*. Pain hurts less when it's them.

So why are we cruel? Lack of empathy. The inability to put ourselves in the shoes of other people. To see them as equals.

Anyway, that’s all I got. I’ve simplified it, but that’s the overall gist of the whole thing. We are all guilty of being cruel and it all feels very natural when we do it.

Cats are also quite torturous. They often bat around the mice, killing it slowly and watching it die and bat it around some more instead of just finishing the job. Why?

I will see this film to see Charlotte Rampling. An IMDb comment describes her screen presence here as "mesmerizingly beautiful." Good enough for me. I am a Rampling groupie. Maybe the last. Would any last remaining groupie be an oxymoron? Are there still groupies, or are they as generally forgotten as Bruegel and my namesake?

Great post...as for an answer to it, i don't think there is 1 answer for all situations. Sometimes its for revenge, sometimes the torturer thinks they are doing it for the greater good, and sometimes the person doesn't realize the effect of what they are doing(this applies more so to emotional cruelty, like when teens are bullied to the point of suicide), and sometimes there is no good reason. Some people just are the way they are.

I'm surprised that nobody else has mentioned this, but the capacity for cruelty isn't uniquely human at all. Dolphins are the most widely-known perpetrators, as they have been observed torturing other animals purely for the own amusement for hours, until the victim dies. They bully, drown, and even rape other dolphins for reasons that we really haven't been able to identify. They have been seen to torture other species as well, until the victim is too exhausted to swim and sinks to the bottom of the sea.

With humans, we often talk about revenge or punishment as a reason for cruelty, but in dolphins we plainly see that these motives cannot possibly exist. It is done for pleasure, for entertainment, and possibly as a social bonding exercise for the torturers.

Similar behaviour, but much less overt and difficult to be specific about, has been seen with other high-level animals like primates. In monkeys we have seen an individual singled out by the group for exclusion - not physical torture at all but simply by refusing to allow them to join in with group activities, until often the shunned individual seems to lose interest in living.

On this evidence, I think it's too easy to try and explain cruelty in terms of providing some kind of revenge for the torturer, or showing other potential offenders what horrors await them if they commit crimes. These are superficial reasons. The real cause of cruelty seems to be something inherent in the complex social structures of intelligent beings, as well as the all-too-common case of some individuals simply being born sociopaths who get an intense visceral thrill from the suffering of others.

One idea that appeals to me is this: If it is possible to develop a brain that is capable of higher thought, like ours, then surely if that brain becomes sick and malfunctions, then that might easily manifest itself in the form of psychpathy, including delight in the suffering of others.

Either way, we know incontrovertibly that cruelty is a natural phenomena, not limited to mankind at all. Perhaps we are the only species to be intelligent enough to despise it and work to stop it when we can, even if we are not always successful.

We primates are tribal. Kind within our tribes, amorally vicious outside them. Those outside the tribe aren't seen as human; aren't subject to empathy. If your "tribe" includes everybody, known or unknown -- well, that would be Christlike. If your "tribe" is one person -- you -- you're called a psychopath. Most of us are somewhere in between.

Our pastor is doing a sermon series on the Fruits of the Spirit, and coincidentally today's sermon was on kindness.

Two thoughts from that sermon:

"Be who you say you are. If you say you are a Christian, you must be kind."

How often we fall short of that.

Second, we discussed the Crucifixion of Christ. Both in terms of the cruelty of that act, and also in it representing the ultimate in kindness - that Christ laid down his life that all humanity might be saved.

We ended the sermon with a committment to each other to be people of kindness. I'll strive to do so.

I think the perpetration of cruelty comes down to power. There is a great pleasure to feeling like like the top dog, who can do whatever he likes -- ask any elementary school bully -- and I don't think it's mentally that difficult to jump from verbal cruelty to physical cruelty. Both have the goal of inflicting the same psychological damage on the victims, to make them submissive and underline the torturer's power. In the case of a public execution, the submission of the victim doesn't matter so much as the submission of the people watching. If a once-powerful rival submits to you, you have won, and your public knows it. It's a human version of the dominance ritual, existing not in spite of humans' ability to understand that other people suffer like we do, but rising out of it. We deal pain sometimes because we know it hurts.

There are almost certainly people who can't comprehend the pain of their fellow man on any level except the theoretical, and they approach it like 17th century vivisectionists. "Can they feel pain? Let's find out!" But most cruelty is perpetrated by people who do experience empathy on some level. I don't think people who abuse their spouses and children are necessarily lacking in empathy (offhand I can think of a few who were/are legitimately and earnestly kind in many other areas of their lives). I think they feel powerless, and cruelty demands an acknowledgement of the abuser's authority.

Well, here in America we are taught from day 1 that baby boys should be welcomed into the world by being strapped down and sexually mutilated. This is also done to intersex children to help them "fit in," and covertly done to girls whose parents come from circumcising cultures.

It probably does reflect the darker side of human nature that is an ingrained part of us, but as a society we should continue to move forward and leave barbaric practices like the torture of prisoners and the genital mutilation of children behind.

Who knows, maybe one day we can even end wars.

'About suffering they were never wrong,
The Old Masters; how well, they understood
Its human position; how it takes place
While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along";....Auden

Dear Roger,
There is no short answer to your question. I am browsing the new book on Why Violence has Declined by Steven Pinker, it is vast. I worry about people who refuse to take a view of history that includes more than technological progress and the progress of ownership. It takes a superb moral approach to history to truly insure that we do not repeat our errors.
I am a hopeful mortal. There seems to be so much knowledge and information being generated now I find it improbable that the randomly generated quarrels of the future will not be the source of lessons that will reform us all for the better. How else can I recall the brutality of public movements of the past and compare them with the public movements of the present and not conclude that we are more capable of resolving our issues more peaceably than before. That history is moving more rapidly than before is for sure, but that it will move with more dimension is a possibility flourishing in our age. What about the socialism of G. B. Shaw, do we have the courage to remember a cultural heritage obscured by the past century?
I don't know. I am young and I find the world exceedingly complex and my hope is less that violence will abate my entire life but that when it comes I will be courageous and moral.
Sincerely Branden Floyd-Rennie.

As someone who works with abused and neglected children, and has also studied history, I'd say cruelty comes primarily from 3 sources:

1. Fear - if I do not engage in this act of barbarism, someone may do something to me/my family/my community, either immediately or ultimately. This fear can justify both individual and mass acts of cruelty.

2. Revenge.

3. Greed. Greed could be for money, status or, simply, pleasure. Pleasure is a little complicated. To quote Randy Newman, "I Just Want You To Hurt Like I Do." There is some sort of strange relief in making others suffer as you suffered, particularly where the original source of your pain has been removed or is remote. A related feeling is Schadenfreude. I see this so often in cases of child abuse.

To enable people to engage in the most vicious acts of cruelty, some deadening of empathy is required - by religious belief, political theory, drugs or alcohol, or mental illness being the most common.

Somehow, it is our intelligence and creativity that allows us to elaborate on what for most other animals are more simple acts of violence.

Ebert: What is the engine for child abuse? I don't understand it.

That's because you, yourself, were not abused. Folks who abuse children were themselves abused. Unless they go through deep healing, when they become parents, they'll abuse their own children.

To a child of abuse, abusing your own kids seems ... normal. Natural. The way that God intended it.

This is the way this cruelty gets passed down the generations ... And so it goes ...

Why are we cruel? Simple: Given the social structures that have evolved in human (and pre-human) communities, a certain degree of cruelty has confered a survival advantage. Even if that's not true today (and it probably is true), it takes time for instinctive behavior as well as fundamental cultural norms to change.

Cruelty clearly exists among other animals. Various species of cats play with their prey before killing them. Sometimes the purpose is to train the young in killing, but often it appears to be solely for the amusement of the predator. Dolphins are known to use harbor porpoises as toys, slamming into them and tossing them around apparently for the dolphins' amusement. Chimpanzees can be unspeakably cruel to one another. (Contrast that with the peaceful behavior of the very closely related bonobos.)

As to the question of cruelty versus kindness: People who are usually very kind can be terribly cruel in certain contexts. How many compassionate, considerate warm Southerners cared about the treatment of blacks in the South in 1900?

I have a simple answer to your question. You will not like it but it's true. Torture is intelligent. Only an intelligent being is capable of torture, whatsoever the purpose may be.

And why indeed do we derive a vicarious pleasure out of viewing such themes on canvas and screen? Can it be that we all partake of this nature? Shakespeare painted such a picture with relish in Titus Andronicus. In each of his million characters we see an aspect of our own persona. As Brando says " It wasn't him, Charley, it was you."

Having just watched "Apocalypto" yesterday, I was struck by that film's suggestion (rightly or wrongly) that whole cultures can be based on cruelty towards other people, and appalled by what I take to be Gibson's fetishistic fascination with violence. On the one hand, it's a subject that could hardly be more important. On the other, the urge to vicariously revel in violence and cruelty doesn't seem to further the conversation in a meaningful way. That said, there may be something to the idea that the violent nature that we share with chimpanzees, for instance, can be ritualized and contextualized in such a way as to mitigate the damage done. That sports is a substitute for war is a debatable notion, but that adrenaline and testosterone will out is undeniable. A neo-Jungian (whose name I have forgotten) said that destructive urges that are repressed, rather than being recognized and externalized in a conscious way, tend to return in more harmful forms. I find this argument compelling, which is why I tend to reject as naive suggestions that we simply need to get beyond all forms of violence and competitiveness. There's an aspect of Christianity which does address this problem, in that meditation on, or identification with, the torture of Jesus may in some way temper our sociobiological blood lust. Still, to paraphrase another whose name I forget, Christianity (like Marxism) is a good idea that's never been tried. In terms of religion, the Buddhist approach strikes me as offering the most psychologically acute analysis, without the oppressive theological elements, while the three semitic (or Abrahamic) religions seem self-contradictory, bizarre, and tribalistic by comparison. The willingness of adherents of the semitic religions to kill each other in vast numbers tends to reinforce my conclusions. Tribalism means dehumanizing outsiders, and dehumanization is a prerequisite of torture.

I've thought quite about cruelty. Some things I heard about bothered me so much I had to come to some kind of understanding so I could keep functioning. My feeling is that there is a hunter instinct in most of us that finds energy and even joy in attacking something weaker and more vunerable. Our civilization was meant to distance us from the hunting ethos except to exercise it in sports and competition but the hunter instincts are let loose now and then. Overall I think our civilization is much more peaceful and self aware than in the past. That we are disturbed by cruelty is a good thing. One thing that bothers me lately in politics is the "I've got mine, to hell with you" line that is so successful lately. I think aggressive messages have more power in stressful times.
The most fascinating book I've read is "Born to Run." Human beings developed as persistance hunters. It explains why we lack fur, run on two feet, and work in teams.

Same thing ruined my trip to England some years ago. My new husband and I thought it would be fun to take a ghost tour. The stories we heard of true-life cruelty and torture (all within eye and ear shot of the general public) haunted me the whole trip and still bother me today.

My husband explains this behavior as a psychological "circle of concern" and that the victims are outside of the onlooker's group in some way (nationality, religion, etc) and therefore, empathy and concern aren't extended. Maybe partially true, but I don't know if that explains all of it.

A friend from Israel told me once to stop trying to find a reason beyond "a love of horror". "Some people do things *because* it is horrible. No other reason," he said. Maybe, but does that apply to crowds of people?

When visiting the Colosseum in Rome, I came up with my own theory. I decided that in societies where the average life expectancy is low, where death is often violent, bloody and painful (without the aid of medicines), where a religious afterlife sets people free from the pain of living and where children are intimately exposed to these brutal realities early in life... people wind up f'ed up! I try not to think about it beyond that. :\

I think its two things: it's because they are only understanding fighting; and it's because they are living mechanically, living in some kind of fantasy world...and I guess perhaps because, on top of that, that they are not living up to that fantasy and the fighting is a primitive way to try to gain status; if you've beaten somebody to the floor, there's not only no way for them to be above you in status, but they are literally below you. So, I guess there would also have to be a misplaced worship of things, not just status, but a worship of everything but what should be worship...perhaps because we are religious creatures and so if worship gets misplaced, we end up worshiping everything: even the worship of being against religion. It's like all these people on the news, such as serial killers, or shooters etc., who really are doing it as a way to gain status, not just from taking status by force, but also by getting it from the news reporters who want to hear everything about them to get a juicy story. I think what comes with this cruelty is an insistence that they are better than everyone else...which is really just part of that primitive way to get self-esteem. What comes with this insistence of being better than everyone else is an insistence to take that status by force if necessary. But, as I said, it comes from only understanding fighting...that part of us that angrily rips stuff up. So, I think there is that mechanical wanting to succeed in some fantasy combined with only understanding fighting. What is only understanding of fighting? It means they just want to see that pissed off look on your face...that's all they want in life...aside from the fantasy that they are better than everyone. So, when you combine wanting everyone to be pissed off with insisting that you're better than everyone than what you have is people who kill and such. That moment before they kill someone that person has that pissed off look on their face that says "Hey, what did I do to you?!" and then they kill them and think "First of all, you look pissed...which makes this killing seem okay..and second...because I'm threatened by you...and now I don't have to be....oops, I mean, I'm better than you and everyone." Also, I think with con artist there is that same thing going on. They first have to insist on themselves being better than everyone and will treat you as such, and then use that to get a Big Mac...and of course, you're going to have that pissed off look on your face...which makes it seem ok that they did that.

I second the commenter above who mentioned Steven Pinker. His new book, while a dense read, is incredibly reassuring in showing that not only are wars, murders, and genocide in decline (yes, even factoring in the 20th century with its two world wars), our MORAL sense has improved as well. Horrific as the example above is, most people today would not agree that "it's the way things are done," and the sheer number of people that are executed today (even factoring in some of the more backwards Middle Eastern countries) is a major improvement over even a century ago. There are several videos of Pinker's presentation floating around if you don't have time to read the whole book:

http://edge.org/conversation/mc2011-history-violence-pinker

Short version of my last comment: it's because they only understand fighting (just want to see that pissed-off look on your face) combined with being threatened by everyone else's status and so having to take status by force.

It's like the painting. That says it all. The guy has taken status.

"Who's ass is on a stick? My ass isn't on a stick. HIS ass is on a stick...given me that pissed off look on his face cuz I came at him with a knife...always thinking he's better than everyone."

This reminds me off a rather disturbing book that was recently released in Germany. It had several interviews as well as taped private conversations by German PoWs during WW2. It was horrifying how fast these men, often enough family men who lived in an industrialised country all their life, were corrupted by war. Many chatted non chalantly about shooting civilians or other war crimes they had committed. The author concluded that Humans are fast to change between sets of rules, between the rules of civilian life and the realities of combat and a war of extermination.
In a society like early modern europe or modern third world countries, violence is a part of the normal rule set and people develope an indifference to it that is disturbing for the people of wealthier nations.

One more, just to get some back up here from the movie "Compulsion"..... in the movie (based on real life I think), the KKK burns a cross in the Orson Welles character's front yard just because he is representing the two boys who are accused of killing... and Orson Welles says to the other attorney's who, just like everyone else, want to see the kids hangs, he says (I'm paraphrasing) "denying these kids a fair trial would be going along with the same kind of thinking that started that fire."

Think about it. The KKK white supremicists thinking is equal to these attorneys not giving the boys a fair trial...in other words, both acts of cruelty come from a kind of wanting to gain status by force.

. Oh yeah, and in the movie "Compulsion" the kids accused of murder were white, not black...(forgot to say in last comment).

There's an old joke: Have you ever been in a line (at the airport or theater) that wasn't moving, but when someone gets behind you, you immediately feel BETTER? ;)

Alain Resnais' "Mon Oncle D'Amerique" (and I know you've seen it Roger, because it was the Sneak Previews review that originally made me rent it, so you should know better) had the idea of comparing the lives of frustrated yuppies in Paris to scientific footage of animal behavior:
Put one mouse in a cage and subject the floor to electric shocks that his limited mouse-understanding can't explain, and he'll withdraw into a corner....Put TWO mice in a cage, subject them to the same "mysterious" shocks, and they'll begin fighting each other. The film crosscuts this with our main character's fierce competition for an office promotion.
Yes, yes, Roger, I know we'd love to get on our self-defensively athie-abstract soapbox and twist that into "See, we're all animals, so what's the point?"....But that's not the point. The point is, we're NOT animals, and we know better. We won't make the economic, social or political shocks go away by fighting each other, or by hitting the people close to us who were "safely" unlucky enough to behind us in line.

...Wanna cure that? YOU start first.
Try doing something with your own finger besides pointing it at your fellow man and calling him a "symbol" of something in the headlines you're frustrated with--After all, you don't know where it's been.

I've seen a few commenters invoke the Discredited Trope that abused children see abuse as normal and become child abusers themselves. In reality, most abused children do *not* see abuse as normal and do *not* become abusers as adults. Most abused children see that the abuse that they are suffering is in fact abuse and is neither normal nor desirable. Rather than wanting to hurt others, the abused child is more likely to wish that others will not suffer as he or she has. I write this from experience.

(Yes, it's an apparent paradox. Although most child abusers were abused as children, most abused children do not become abusers themselves. Consider that an abuser can abuse more than one child.)

Hi Roger,

It was a rainy spring, a little more than 30 years ago. I was about fifteen, I guess. I was walking down a muddy forest path, full of puddles. In the puddles, frogs. In my hands, a pellet gun. Every few minutes, I would stop at a puddle, and shoot a frog. After the splash, a few seconds would pass and then the frog would reappear, floating upside down, white belly exposed. I didn’t feel much of anything, a certain amusement perhaps.

Now, why did I do a cruel, stupid thing like that? And what has changed in me so that I look back at those actions with shame and bewilderment?

I believe I found part of the answer recently, in an article that mentioned Simon Baron-Cohen’s concept of an empathy quotient (yes, the actor’s cousin) which I found through one of Roger’s tweets. I haven’t read Cohen’s work, so from here everything is my own interpretation.

Our empathy towards other beings is not fixed, but variable. It can change with education, proximity, our own personal situation. Some of our empathy is genetically determined, but some is acquired. The root of cruelty is indifference. Today, I can’t watch a horror movie, but I can gut a fish and eat a steak. I’ll pick up a spider with a piece of paper and set it free outside my door, but I can kill a fly (almost) without a care and triumph when I finally kill that annoying, buzzing mosquito…

Institutions such as the government, the church or the army can use various means to reduce or increase my empathy towards others, so I can kill some with less feeling, or protect others with greater force.

Cruelty is not exclusively human. I’ve seen my cat playing with a mouse, or a fly. There is both active cruelty and total indifference there. But I can lean to be less cruel, an option that is not open to my cat.

Regards,

Michel Lamontagne
Otterburn Park
Quebec, Canada

cruelty
I am a man of 2011. I bought a shotgun and I feel both better and stupid for doing so.

I was having this conversation the other day, about some famous sociological experiments at US universities.

One entails a group of grad students, divided into "prisoners" and "guards" in a mock prison situation. Although educated and moral young men and women, they quickly devolve into a "Lord of the Flies" barbarity as the "guards" become serial tormenters and abusers, because they can.

The other, a classic, is when one subject is in a closed room behind one-way glass, attached to a brain monitor and to an electrified chair. The other subject, an "observer" is sitting at the controls inside the observation room, asking questions of the subject. Whenever the subject gets an answer wrong, they are administered a shock by the observer. The observer in turn is being monitored by a technician in a lab coat. He and the subject are actors; the subject is in no real pain.

But the observer believes that the subject suffers every time they are shocked. When instructed by the authority figure, the apparent doctor or scientist in the lab coat, the observer administers greater shocks, until they believe the subject is in agony. And yet they continue, dissociated from the suffering by the thinly plausible permission granted them by the "scientist".
And these are average, intelligent and civilized people, empowered to deliver pain on command and free of remorse.

But there is a saving grace note to this. One man, an observer, retains enough presence of mind and self-awareness to say "No." He will not inflict torture on an innocent, he tells the "scientist" to get stuffed, and he marches out of the experiment. It's not easy to maintain yourself in the face of the pressure of your environment, but it is possible. We're slowly evolving.

Hey, Roger --

I believe that some people are cruel for no reason other than they are created that way, either innately or through experience or both. If a person commits murder, he most likely knows what he is doing is wrong. What makes him do it is something in his brain that he can't help; something that reason can't affect.

With all that happens on the Earth; with all of the people on the Earth -- super smart people and super dumb people, super strong people and super weak people -- it's inevitable that there will be super good people and super bad people. It's just how things are.

"No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks." -Mary Wollstonecraft

Would we like to rid the world of torture?
Perhaps we could start by refusing to watch movies which feature it.

Just on the subject of inflicting evil, I would wonder, but I also always wonder why religious people always refuse to create a coherent explanation for why a God would make a beast that needs to eat meat to survive, in a way God is a torturer I would say. That possibly sounds a bit puerile but so it is.

As for why humans are cruel, I'll theorize it's because our dreams will it, we are capable of imagining it, animals are not. And if something is possible, history shows, it will eventually happen at least once. Why it happens more than once I have no idea.

Not all, but most, cruelties have as their mantra "Now Look What You Made Me Do." It is why we kill civilians, why we make and stockpile guns, why we smash spiders, why we slit water bottles meant for people traversing the desert, why we coerce confessions and then execute the confessor.

What I meant to say in the first paragraph of my previous comment (which was written hastily) was that humans are each given a brain that is affected by experience in it's own way. One man witnesses torture and feels disgust while another man witnesses torture and feels pleasure. It is no fault of the latter that he feels this way; and when he chooses to go out and commit torture, it is not his fault either. I say this because there is no "his" or "him." There is just a brain given by nature; a brain that is affected by experience in it's own way -- however terrible that way is. We should each go out and piss on a tree or something every time someone does something immoral.

All of this may be very obvious. I'm not sure. Am I missing the point? I'm going to put more thought into it and may comment again later.

"Why are we cruel?"

Indeed, what are we? Various answers as to what constitutes a human individual have been given by various religions, philosophers like Freud, Jung, and the literature of the world, and indeed the historical records accumulated. Iago is a profound almost incredible example of sadism. My appetite is roused by the judge in "Blood Meridian", which I have not read.

The writings of Shakespeare, taken as a monolith is perhaps the most comprehensive representational of a single Man. Only thing he leaves out is the less often surfacing Christ-likeness, which indeed is an essential if submerged component of each psyche.

The only place I know of where the that thing called life is grasped in it's totality and awesome dimensions of time and space, projecting on the screen both good and evil and myriad "life conditions", which are the stuff we are all made of, is in the teachings of the thirteenth century sage activistic, Nichiren, elucidated in modern idiom by Dr Daisaku Ikeda. Indeed, the human mind is a cosmos, or an ocean, including things both strange and familiar. Also the wherewithal to use this knowledge to identify and pursue a way through the morass.

Roger,

As one commenter said, "Folks who abuse children were themselves abused." I suspect this is generally true, though it raises the question of "Who started this chain of abuse?"

On a somewhat hopeful note, i recommend Steven Pinker's latest book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, which points out, using an awful lot of hard data, that we've been getting gradually less violent and sadistic as the millennia roll by. Yes, really.

Not all abused children grow up to be child abusers. Not all abused children see abuse as "normal". My wife and I both grew up in abusive households and we watch each other, we know what behaviors to look out for and step back when we see them in ourselves. We made conscious decisions about how we would and would not raise our children. Both of are daughters are on their way to being valedictorians of their classes, active in their communities. Our abusive parents have praised us and my father was shamed into admitting how bad of a parent he was. It's not easy, but passing down abuse is not inevitable.

As I read this, the following quotation came to mind: "It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace." -Chuck Palahniuk Perhaps in the human psyche, pain has greater weight than kindness, and we attribute higher value. So torture feels like payback where death may seem hollow. Kindnesses are felt with the weight of a butterfly. Cruelty cuts.

I think you answered your own question up there. You noted that man is unique in his capacity for empathy. And this is the crux: it doesn't occur to an animal to inflict pain for the sake of inflicting pain because animals lack that empathy. Because humans are capable of understanding the power they have to inflict pain on those who are vulnerable, there will always be a certain percentage of humans who will choose to exercise that power.

What is possible is inevitable, with a large enough population over a large enough time frame.

A few points: I've seen herds of animals showing what we perceive to be cruelty. Swans will torture a sick bird out of their flock, for example.

I can answer this one, though:
Ebert: What is the engine for child abuse? I don't understand it.

It has nothing to do with God's existence or nonexistence. Children of atheists get abused, too. (Sorry, Bill.) People abuse children because they are taught to do so. Or never taught otherwise.

Indeed, the very idea of childhood is a relatively new one.
I worked as a CPS investigator for five years before I got into teaching. Trust me: 99.999% of the time, caretakers (usually parents) love their children and just don't know any better. Almost nobody (there are exceptions, I know) "tortures" children.

Well, the fact is that centuries before (and still today, sadly), some people consider themselves superior to other and, as so, entitled to treat them how they please.

Basically, Nietzsche's ideas, but stripped of all the background, reasoning and warped to fit into a line of thought.

No mention of the woman being buried alive? This has all made me feel kind of sick. All human cruelty does.

a better question would be - why aren't we more cruel? and the answer would be that we have benefited from co-operation and social behavior. but we come from a line of millions of years of cutthroat selection and survival. even a few thousand years ago, most humans were so completely xenophobic that they killed any humans they encountered, there was no communication, no language. on an evolutionary timescale, it hasn't been that long since those days, and the process of selection has favored the cruel as well as the kind, sometimes, much more so. as another commenter pointed out, it is common for predatory animals (like us) to play with our food, so to speak, it is a part of the learning process for many young animals.

We are cruel because we are all psychopaths. We've inherited the tendency from our parents - they inherited from their parents and so on.

It really isn't rocket science. Nor is it difficult to change. Well maybe it is, because first we have to learn to love and affirm ourselves. It is absolutely necessary if we are follow the golden rule...

You do remember the golden rule right?

"Do onto others then split" j/k

"Do onto others as you would have them do onto you" or "Love thy brother/sister as you would Love thyself"

LIFE is torture. Starving in Africa, women walk miles in search of food for their children. People trapped in jobs they hate with bosses they despite, but unable to quit because the desperate need for a paycheck. {A friend of mine once threw up every morning before work until his wife found out and made him give notice immediately! Great woman, loving wife.] Someone just snaps and takes it out on whomever he can. Or abused child 'passing it on.' Maybe we all fight against the baser instincts and most of us succeed while others do not. No clue, really. Just an odd opinion. Thank you, Dear Ebert, for being in my life. Live long and prosper in the riches of your family, friends, and family. Cassandra

Just wanted to add that "The Road to Calvary" is probably the least successful Hope/Crosby picture. The songs are depressing, and the jokes seem forced.

Reply to: In the film, Majewski shows the ordinary people of that time looking on passively as these events take place. They're not happy about them, but they seem to accept that this is the way things are done... All of us know how suffering feels. I have no answer for my questions. The thought of that young man strapped to the wheel stays with me. - Ebert

And here's one that stays with me.

Marzieh Vafamehr

If you don't recognize the name, feel free to Google it. And the movie "My Tehran For Sale."

It's easy to speculate about the causes for senseless cruelty... but if you look at specific examples, there are some causes you never expect.

From Guardian: Marzieh Vafamehr's sentence was reported by an Iranian opposition website on Sunday. "A verdict has been issued for Marzieh Vafamehr, sentencing her to a year in jail and 90 lashes," Kalameh.com reported.

In the movie, a woman shaves her head and then appears without the required Muslim headscarf.

More on "My Tehran For Sale": At an underground rave, she meets Saman (Amir Chegini), an Iranian national who has gained Australian citizenship and lives in the city of Adelaide in South Australia. The two bond over the course of an evening that gets broken up by police, and their mutual attraction grows in the days that follow. Soon Saman has proposed to Marzieh, hoping to help her emigrate to Australia and live a life free from government strictures. He offers her the possibility of living without fear. Shot entirely on location in Tehran,

For those of you who don't understand Islam, a punishment of 90 lashes is usually fatal. With modern medicine, it isn't always, but the punishment was invented in 600 AD.

The reason for this punishment... the Iranian government doesn't like being criticized in movies. Especially movies that attract attention at film festivals in the West. They are going to make an example of this actress.

They are going to murder her to prove that insulting Islam carries the death penalty, as a warning to other filmmakers to stop making such films.

(Who are they? In Iran, such decisions are made by a council of Islamic leaders, not elected politicians. In the press, they are called Judges.)

I'm hoping that Roger's column is an invitation to discuss this open attack on writers and directors and, yes, even actors in Muslim countries. Under the rules of Islam, if one murder doesn't get the point across, more will follow.

My rules is, "Walk Away From Islam." In the last month, I've learned about a man, an American, who had a Syrian-born father. The father abandoned the family. When the boy grew up, he despised Islam and embraced Buddhism instead. Anybody know who he was?

Cruelty is simply the canine teeth in the consuming mouth we're born with--and it never stops consuming. It's the whip held in the hand of Pride, the King of Sins, grinning like Jack Torrance in the snow, confident that the needs of the self are the only needs. And so Pride whips those around it into shape, a shape in Its own likeness--and so what if those it shapes make some noise? They have been "corrected"--and improved: a tasty dish for Pride's groaning board, as Its shapes all Subjects into Objects, bite-sized morsels held in confident hands.

Or maybe it's too much oxytocin--or too little. What do I know?

I would take no pleasure in watching a guy die slowly or taking bets on whether the birds will finish him off before dehydration got him, and I’m glad that we live in a world where, at least on a per capita basis, there’s less of this kind of thing then there used to be. However, I don’t envision ever achieving a world free of evil, and I’m not entirely sure it would be desirable. The root of all evil is selfishness, and we’ll never evolve to not be selfish. Evolution is not a force with a purpose of turning us into what we think we should be. It’s a force of nature, which as you say doesn’t know any better. Evolution favors survival over non-survival, period. Will pure selfless good ever be the optimum survival strategy? I just don’t see it.

Does evil still serve a useful purpose, does it contribute to a greater good? I don’t know. I do think it makes us smarter. I believe that any species that becomes the dominant species of its planet through the path of intelligence would hit a plateau and stop getting smarter, or do so much more slowly unless they had to compete with another intelligent species or compete with each other for survival, just as surely as a species that achieves dominance by being bigger than other species will stop growing once it is unnecessary. If we weren’t evil, we wouldn’t have had a Breugel who only painted cheery bakeries and placid farmscapes; we wouldn’t have had a Breugel at all. Do we need to keep getting smarter? I guess it depends on whether we’re the only intelligent species in the universe. A couple of people mentioned cats and dolphins as examples of torture in the animal kingdom. I don’t think they do it just out of cruelty. I think they do it to keep in practice, to keep their skills sharp so they can catch a faster and smarter mouse or fish. Maybe we need to keep our own skills sharp for the day that we take our place among the other equally intelligent, and therefore, equally evil, species of our galaxy.

Dennis Prager has commented many times . . . the question is not so much "Why are we cruel?", but "why do people do good"?

It is far more prevalent to see those in power hurt and oppress the weak.

I've just returned from Nicaragua. In this nation run by a socialist (his Presidential platform is literally Christian, Socialist, Reformist). There are generations of poor digging through garbage deposits (dump sites, as well as dumps on the side of the roads), looking for food and anything they can sell as recyclable.

I understand the same occurs in the Middle East. And Africa.

Prager derives his notions of goodness and the centrality of moral values from Judaism.

A lifetime of observation has to agree with millenia of Jewish thought.

Hi Roger,

The difficulty I always have with fundamental questions of this sort is that the questioner and the worthy people offering thoughtful replies all seem to be wondering about the behavior of a single person. The question before us is, "Why are we cruel?" How can I take seriously a question that damns us all equally?

Our seven billion brethren offer up to our view a full spectrum of behavior. Some of the throng are cruel, most are not, even though nearly all are in thrall to a greater or lesser extent to the incessant urgings of our lizard brains, primate instincts, and cultural conditioning.

I do admit that it is easier to be functionally cruel when we see someone attached to a label that we've been taught to despise. The label becomes the person, somehow, and that makes cruelty more palatable for some. The damage is not being done to a feeling human being just like me, it's being done to a label, a thing, a fillintheblank.

It is also easier for cruelty to fester when the part we play is miniscule. I do not wield the whip nor assemble the cross, I merely file invoices in the shipping department of Ye Olde Whip & Cross, and I have mouths to feed.

And some people don't even look for justifications. Amoeba-like, they move toward good feelings and away from bad, and our primate brains give a happy druglike buzz to those of us who Belong, regardless of what the community is up to. (If you work in the Wall Street community, from what sort of group behavior does your buzz derive?)

If predators who devour their prey alive are not cruel, surely the life of the male Angler fish is proof of nature's cruelty.

Roger, I've been thinking about your question today - why is there cruelty? - just as I've been thinking its opposite - about my pastor's admonition this week to be kind.

I know your question covers all of history and time, and not just America in 2011. In that context I'm thinking it comes down to two things:

1. The existence of evil. Or, if you like, sin.

One of my favorite pundits, Dennis Prager, discusses this topic a lot. Conservatives are comfortable with that discussions. Prager often observes that the people on the left have trouble acknowledging that evil exists and confronting it. That's been my observation as well.

Some people and some acts are just evil.

2. The absence of the influence of Christianity.

Christianity has lost its influence in Europe, and it's happening in America as well - as evidenced by our culture. Is there any doubt that our culture has declined, and that evil has increased in its place?

An example: Top 40 radio hit by "Foster the People" called "Pumped up Kicks". # 3 on Billboards Hot 100 this week. They were on SNL last week singing this chorus in their incomprehensible lyrics:

"All the other kids with the pumped up kicks you'd better run, better run, outrun my gun.
All the other kids with the pumped up kicks you'd better run, better run, faster than my bullet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDTZ7iX4vTQ&ob=av2e

Really? This is entertainment? All the other kids better outrun my gun? Get your copy on iTunes. Desensitized kids can listen to it in their headphones while they ponder the question how can we be cruel.

We live in a sick society. One where there is a film genre of torture porn.

Kids (and adults) are now fed a steady diet of evil, and we wonder why we can be cruel? How many graphic murders does a teen in America see on TV or at the movies now in the space of a year? What balances that diet of cruelty in their impressionable lives?

Just pondering tonight.

What is perceived as cruelty and torture in our species is simply innate behavior in another species. A praying mantis will bite the head off of her mate after copulation. The reason for this is unknown, but it happens. As a human being, I perceive this as purposeless behavior and therefore cruel. Likewise, how can we explain altruistic behavior? Honey bees, if infected, will abandon the nest to die. This is known as host suicide and is thought to benefit the rest of the colony by preventing the spread of disease. I think civility and empathy have evolved as a trait of modern society.

I have in my library couple of books on how to read a painting. But I've never thought about getting into one like you describe here. I've been to the Ringling Museum, which is not far from where I live, hundreds of time; and I always enjoyed looking at the skills of the artists as displayed in their works. The works too of course but mostly the artistry. This places it in another and deeper relationship. I'm keen on the idea.

Perhaps when one inflicts pain and torment on others, he is attempting to control and manipulate nature. All living beings are at the same time on a march towards death and in a constant struggle for survival. To take another living being and to choose for that being whether it will be nurtured or be tortured, whether it may have the hope of living forever or the misfortune of dying momentarily, gives one the ultimate sense of power. It provides one with the illusion that he exists outside the normal rules of life and death.

It would seem to me, the best I can imagine it, that the more one tortures, the more one is screaming an absolute lie to himself and the world.

A few answers--

You should read The Blank Slate by Steven Pinker in case you haven't. He's a linguist, cognitive scientist, and evolutionary psychologist at Harvard, and an all around genius. He also has some lectures and TED Talks online.

The brilliant and illuminating book is about human nature (and the modern tendency to deny its existence) and it spends a lot of time talking about the tendency of human beings to be violent and cruel. In a world of limited resources, humans evolved to compete, and there are a lot of intrinsic motivations for humans to be violent, many of which ultimately boil down to status, economics, and game theory.

There are also intrinsic reasons for humans to be empathetic. Doing so has something to do with a concept called reciprocal altruism, a strategy of cooperation and conflict avoidance that allows all participants to benefit. But also, the capacity to care about those close to us arises from what Richard Dawkins calls our selfish genes. If humans possess genes that lead them to empathize with and care about their family, this would increase the likelihood that those genes get passed on, since relatives are likely to possess the same gene. Thus the gene gets passed on.

A corollary idea:
Humans also possess something Peter Singer (the Australian ethics philosopher and author of Animal Liberation) calls the "moral circle," inside of which are all the beings humans care about and sympathize with. As society has evolved, knowledge has grown, and the availability of resources has increased, the moral circle has expanded from the self to the family, the tribe, the race, the nation, and now (ideally) all races, nations, and genders, and (for some) animals. Humans avoid conflict with people who fall within their inner circle because they sympathize with one another and recognize each other's humanity.

In my opinion, the moral circle might have a lot to do with torture. By torturing and humiliating someone, you remove their humanity, which allows you to place them outside your moral circle, to remove your capacity for empathy with them, and to more easily inflict violence and punishment on them. This is why, for instance, the prisoners in Abu Ghraib were humiliated, because it made it easier for those doing the humiliating to objectify the prisoners and remove any guilt about imprisoning them and causing them suffering.

So it is part of human nature, though that certainly doesn't justify it.

I second all the folks who point out that torture is not unique to our species. In contrast to the essentialism espoused by Thomas Aquinas and generally accepted to this day, there isn't a definitive line between humans and all other species. It is more of a continuum than an ontological hierarchy--this has become clear with discoveries in both the "inner" workings of overlapping genetic strands and the "outer" behaviors observed in empirical studies of primates, dolphins, etc. as referenced above.

Because the distinction between our species and others is not as clear as many would like to think it is, there is thus a danger in characterizing the "natural world" as free from the moral evil that plagues human motivations. Predation in the wild causes suffering, and the death of prey is rarely instantaneous.

I am NOT trying to equate animal behavior with human behavior, however. It does seem obvious that there is an aspect of premeditation in human infliction of suffering that is lacking in other species - but again, it may be a difference of degree, not of pure presence.

And I have only read excerpts of Pinker's book, and while I would like to believe that his hypothesis is true, I don't believe we have necessarily become less violent over the centuries. I think our methods of violence have simply changed in many cases. For example, subtle psychological intimidation (like the verbal taunting that drove a Massachusetts teen to suicide last year) can be as lethal as brutal physical torture.

I am a grad student in theological ethics, and my dissertation addresses the question of human evil versus the suffering inherent in the "natural" (i.e., non-human) world, so I was very intrigued by your post and the subsequent reactions of many of your readers. I would love to hear your response to more of them.

Ebert: So torture is an available behavior for animals? (Not so much plants, but someone is sure to correct me.)

Ebert: So torture is an available behavior for animals? (Not so much plants, but someone is sure to correct me.)

I think that self-aware animals such as elephants and certain apes would certainly be capable of torture in extreme circumstances. Self-awareness would probably be the prerequisite to it.

It seems to me that we can draw pretty reliable suggestions from films and literature—the themes that Kazantzakis, Scorsese and Schrader explore in the dual nature of us, for instance. I don't mean the philosophical dualist idea, but rather what Kazantzakis mentions in his book "The Last Temptation of Christ" about his struggle between the physical and spiritual nature within himself. We all have that struggle going on. I'm aware of mine. I'm a wee bit concerned about anyone who isn't—for instance anyone who would ask an atheist what restrains the atheist from raping and murdering needs watching. What they are implying is that they would do that if not for externally directed spiritual and moral terror.

It's part of our evolutionary heritage, no doubt. For the uncreative among us, torture is a form of entertainment. After all, let's face it, that's the underlying reason for wars in the past—boredom. As Patton said about fighting in the movie: It beats saying, I shoveled shit in Louisiana.

Another film example that I think hits the nail right on the head is King Fizzle's remark to Lawrence of Arabia. He said that he didn't mistreat his prisoners because he didn't think it was polite. Then he tells Lawrence, "I'll leave it up to you to decide which one is more reliable." Later, Lawrence proves that civilized mandates are superior to feelings, for he later allows his men to massacre the citizens of a town.

By the way being in the same car with someone who gave that performance must have been awesome. The scene with the facial distortions that Peter O'Toole uses to express Lawrence's internal conflicts is among the finest and most memorable moments I've experienced watching a film.

To Jill--

To clarify, I think Pinker argues that the tendency toward violence is still a part of our nature. However, while many people would contend that modern society is a corrupting force that drives people to violence, Pinker argues that society actually keeps us from being as violent as we certainly would be otherwise. Hobbes's concept of the Leviathan turns out to be true--the best way to keep people from being violent is to essentially monopolize violence by creating a government large enough to control people. This sounds pessimistic, but it really isn't. The evolved sense of empathy (dependent on there being sufficient resources to preclude violent competition, which is to an enormous degree also a result of civilization) also encourages peacefulness, though certain aspects of human nature allow smaller cultures of violence to persist (namely in the American South and the inner city).

As he points out though, it's an undeniable fact that we are currently living in the most peaceful period that mankind has ever known. Even including all the deaths in World Wars I and II, 20th century US and Western Europe have experienced a smaller percentage of male deaths as a result of violence than any primitive or prehistoric culture, counting both wars and individual murders. The idea that we're getting less violent is, contrary to public opinion, a quantifiable fact.

Ebert: So torture is an available behavior for animals? (Not so much plants, but someone is sure to correct me.)

. . . .

Seemed like a well-written statement Jill made. Sorry for being so thick, but I don't understand your response. Are you trying to insult her?

Ebert: Certainly not. I'm sure some plants choke off other plants, but not consciously.

I'm going to elaborate some more on what I said earlier (please read that if you wish to reply...press ctrl + f to search), which was half about people only understanding fighting, and to me, I don't think people feel pleasure about someone else's pain. I think, because they only understand fighting, that, to them, happiness is when someone is not abusing THEM. So, when they are feeling that pleasure from someone else's pain, I think that happiness really comes from the misplaced notion of what happiness is, which is that as long as THEY are not being abused, they are happy. As I was saying, I think there is an element of a shortcut to status upgrade with cruelty, and status is a kind of group construct. And I think what comes with this feeling of status upgrade is a kind of pack mentality; when one abuses, one abuses to upgrade themselves AND the pack by default. So, I think that one is cruel because they have been abused so much that they get their feeling of "upgrade" with a kind of feeling that they are also doing it for the pack. So, I think when one is torturing etc. they have been abused so much that to them, this "upgrading" or kind of scapegoating mentality is what gives them pleasure, because, to them, happiness is the feeling of scapegoating someone else for a change. Sorry, that took so long...I barely get any sleep. But anyway, I think this pleasure they get is really about scapegoating...and status upgrade through scapegoating....and not about pleasure in someone else's pain..a misplaced notion of happiness..that since fighting is all they know, and abuse, they feel happy whenever it is SOMEBODY ELSE that is getting the abuse....that to them is what happiness is.

Adding onto my last comment....

think about it. Imagine there were parents who are of the type that are basically going to raise serial killers. They systematically abuse the hell out of them. What do you think happiness is to those kids? Happiness, to them, is when their BROTHERS or SISTERS are getting the abuse, for a change, and they get a moment to sigh in relief. So, I think when they grow up and torture people, in comes from this feeling that happiness is when SOMEBODY ELSE is being abused. Happiness kind of got misplaced and is coming out in a different form. And I think there is a kind of pack mentality behind that. When the parents go off and abuse their brothers and sisters, rather than them, and giving them all that sigh of relief and what is happiness to them, I think there is also a feeling of "join me in abusing them, anytime you feel like it." So, I guess they learn that scapegoating someone else as a pack is what happiness is. Even though, say, a murderer is torturing someone and no one else is around, I think inside they feel they are doing it for the pack...even though there is no pack there with them. Doesn't it seem like, with these murderers, when they torture someone and such, that it feels like they are making a statement that those people, for some reason, deserved it. They usually fancy themselves, like the movie "Seven", to be making some kind of statement in how we deserve it. There's a feeling of the murderer against us. And what is the murderer? His family. His pack.

we enter into the painting, we enter into the artist/ painter's world as well ~

Have a nice day and all the best !

In response to Randy Masters...
Do you really think we were better off, more humane, more kind, in the 1700s or 1800s than we are today? We had slavery, women as 2nd class citizens, but we were more enlightened back then? And the song lyric that you use as an example -- ever heard any of the bloody, violent lyrics from old folk songs that were popular in centuries past? Way worse than that. I'm sorry, but one song does not herald the decline of civilization. And if you're actually familiar with history, you'd be under no illusions that religion makes us kinder. The Crusades? Burning witches at the stake? All in the name of religion. So come on, no matter how bad things are today, we are still MUCH better off than we were in the past.

Concerning "cruelty" among non-human organisms, let me quote our old pal Stinky Wizzleteats: "The little critters of Nature--they don't know that they're ugly."

And then there's our other pal, the late great Stephen Jay Gould, on "Nonmoral Nature": http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_nonmoral.html Remember, kids: You can't spell "ichneumon wasp" without "ich."

Hot dingies, I thought, a chance to use what I learned as a teen from a book called TORTURE THROUGH THE AGES. But it was too long ago and I remember only a philological introduction. In naming an object, we "magically" give it a personality, the author said. We don't really mean "tree" as we think of it, we mean "Mister Tree." My best pal Paul, who eventually bled himself to death, found the idea intriguing.

And so in Brueghel's day torture was a handy way to chase Mister Ashteroth, Mister Astarte, Miss Incubi and a host of other disobedient demons out of a human's body. In the most serious cases, adjudicated by qualified experts only, a good roasting could disentangle these imaginary parasites from one's soul, freeing it for an easy float up to heaven.

It may seem scandalous to some mindsets, but this was the basis for a great deal of modern medicine. We poison the bad germs to death. We buuuurn the cancers. We are still, illusorily, trying to "pluck out the evil" from body, soul or society, and it is considered good.

This practice also still exists, incantations and all, as we see, shamefully, in this very blog as well as at the prison camps where Islamics are being taunted and tortured "for the good of our security."

That "quality" imbecile is still here, a parasite feigning "atheism," demonizing Muslims, telling real human beings they should be dead, and so forth.

And it explains "why we are so cruel:" it's the result of sheer personal stupidities, one ignoramus at a time. The naive and ignorant think that demonization is also "free speech," rather than the obsessed symptom it is. So they humor it, thinking themselves liberal thinkers, rather than shit-blind and spineless. Some are gullible enough to fall for it, providing an imbecilic rationality to increase the verbal vomit level.

Some, given to fantasies of torture themselves no doubt, even think it is "quality." A wart on the anus is better "quality."

Animals trying to bop a sick one out of the herd aren't cruel, ignorant, indiscriminate or unwise, any more than the cells of a body are.

A steady demonizing of "Islam" or other entities being set up for indiscriminate slaughter fits that description. The more it's promoted, the more popular the sociopathic spieler, the sicker the audience, the bigger the witch-hunt, the less to do with uniquely American idealisms and the more the probability of the kind of self-righteousness that looks the other way while little kids are blown to bits for "freedom."

Dear Roger,

I was very impressed by your article about Rick Perry several months ago. I'm Roman Catholic and German - I'd say I have the luck that our country is very secular.

I'd just like to forward you to the following article because there's some other aspect of this obnoxious prayer ralley I haven't seen anyone mention yet.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-moore/rick-perry-mormonism-_b_1016553.html

Kind regards and keep up the great work,

Peter

Ebert: So Perry appeals to a minority within a minority.

Ebert: So torture is an available behavior for animals? (Not so much plants, but someone is sure to correct me.)

About six people so far in the thread have gotten it wrong, but cats do not "play" with mice; simply that the adrenaline of hunting them temporarily shuts off the appetite that made them go hunting in the first place--They don't know what to do with them for the moment.
A lion isn't interested in ethnically-cleansing the hated zebra population on moral grounds or sending a message to the other zebras, he just wants a meal--And if it doesn't happen to be quick for the zebra, well, as Hitchcock often pointed out, it's very difficult to kill something by hand, let alone paw.

So, yes, it is comparatively acceptable: Animals don't turn around and cry for public sympathy that they were "justified" in doing it, they just enjoy their well-earned dinner and growl at anyone who comes close.

My response here is also in tribute to the great Kinski.

Quoth Klaus:

"One should judge man mainly by his depravities. Virtues can be faked. Only depravities are real."

Surprised no one commented on my note about swans.
Birds can be extraordinarily cruel to each other.

I'm lost as to why anyone would derive pleasure from another's suffering.

I think about the Christlike character of Sister Helen Prejean who joined other children in torturing an opossum. And the Milgram Experiments.
And my own regrettable cruelty toward a friend:
I still see the woman I grew up with in the 1970s. She was (is) mentally handicapped. I remember refusing to join the others in teasing her because I had a brother with a similar disability. But I didn't stop them. I am ashamed to even write this now. That teasing I ignored is probably long-lost on Christine now, but it has lived with me for over 30 years.

If we are told something is acceptable, we leave it to others to do otherwise. Sometimes not speaking out against wrongdoing is just as wrong.

Kindness is in our nature. We have simply stopped teaching it.

Hi Roger. It's been a while since I last visited your site, or had a chance to reply to a post. I'm confused about something. But please, do not take it with any disrespect towards yourself. It isn't about that at all. I just want to understand.

Earlier this week you reviewed one of the most reprehensible movies ever to hit the screen, the one about the Human Centipede sequel. I have no desire whatsoever to see that film. And from your review, it was buffer enough for me to never want to. So I want to thank you kindly for your brave service on your part so that I wouldn't have to, regardless of whether you reviewed it as part of your job or not!

But in spite of the horrendous acts depicted in that film, nothing more was said outside of your review. It did not inspire a blog post on the nature of cruelty, or elicit questions about it.

However, a beautifully photographed and artistically detailed movie did inspire a blog about cruelty, showing tortured souls on a wheel atop a pole.

Granted, while one film had no redeeming value, and the other did, both showed acts of cruelty. In my humble opinion, I believe both films could warrant the response of your post. I don't need to go into comparing the acts of cruelty between the two. But it makes me wonder why one made you think of this topic, and the other did not? Both showcase a terrible lack of lovingkindness to others.

Though one may be imagined, and the other based on history, don't they both stem from the same dark places found in human nature?

Why isn't there more kindness in our nature?

The only answer I have for that is sin, but sin derived from either a lack of a loving God in one's life, or a complete misrepresentation of God's word and law, which usually disregards His love altogether.

God bless you Roger,
John

Ebert: John, Welcome back!

I get your point. But I was not attacking "The Mill and the Cross" for its cruelty, but simply using that wonderful film as the occasion for a blog on the subject. Why did we need another attack on the reprehensible HC2?

Cruelty is something we are all capable of, but learning to control our emotions, to not give in to fear (where much cruelty comes from), and to strive constantly for self-improvement should make ourselves less likely to act on our cruelty, and quicker to apologize when we recognize that we have been cruel.

The deeper truths explored in the arts show that, while man is capable of cruelty, cruelty often leads to his downfall, as do other tragic flaws. Or, to paraphrase Dumbledore, we are defined by our choices in life. All of us hold darkness within us, but the more civilized among us know to only release the light.

I would imagine an evolutionary defensiveness manipulated and concentrated by coercive forces.

Cruelty is not unique to man. Many predatory species play with their prey before killing them. For all we know, even paramecium practice cruelty. There are many a shadowy place in our psyche, and darkness in our nature, but the fact that we recognize shadow and darkness is a reflection of goodness.

But it boils down to our drawing lines separating us from others. We tend to be cruel/incompassionate toward others, and tolerant/compassionate toward us.

Goya was another artist with the ability to depict particularly horrifying human behavior, his "Disasters of War" series is still hard to look at, I'm sure the same things still happen today. We hear about torture but we rarely see it, these etchings show it in all it's brutality.

It is of course different from one situation to another, but I think of two specific examples of reasons behind human cruelty to others, and particularly the cruelty of torture before death:

1. Torture and cruelty dehumanize the victim, they are outward projections of our dehumanization of others, and as such serve to harden us to what is to come -- death. To kill someone requires not empathizing with them, and so that's why you see a general tendency by cops to dehumanize criminals or by soldiers to dehumanize the other side's troops and civilians. Our military very often encourages racism and dehumanization of occupied people precisely because it makes it easier for soldiers to be hard and cruel and murderous to those people if they fail to see the others as human beings. In a world of constant conflict over resources, then, the need to justify death and killing and maltreatment of other sorts requires us to first dehumanize those we are going to harm, and dehumanizing finds some of its most extreme -- and effective -- means in torture, does it not?

Look at those images from Iraq, of soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners. Do we have any doubt that the torture served to so dehumanize the Iraqis, that our own troops found it much easier to mistreat them and question and kill them? Society requires us to get along, to relate to one another in a pack mentality, and it thus has required us to sympathize and empathize with "those like us" in our own society, which means we must blunt our sympathy and empathy for persons outside of our own society OR persons in our society who violate our shared norms. The need to dehumanize is obvious throughout history, because when we fail to see the other person as human, we are generally willing to do just about anything to them.

2. We live in a world of natural disaster, of violence and pain inflicted by other animals, by the weather, by earthquakes, and so on. We spent a long time dominated by our environment, before we finally learned to dominate the environment ourselves. One outward projection of our fear and sense of powerlessness at the hands of fate and nature and society, then, could be reveling in moments when we possess some measure of power ourselves. Perhaps no other power holds the same sway over us as the power of life and death, and to hold that power over another person is an absolute exercise in domination. So is the power to cause or alleviate suffering. Mix the two -- pain and suffering, followed by a terribly drawn-out death -- and you have humans placing themselves in the position of domination and power without restraint, often without due cause, just as nature and fate exercise such power and dominion over us as a people. Making ourselves like nature and fate, holding that same sort of power in our hands, makes people -- particularly collectively, when it is an exercise in group unity -- feel on some primitive level that they have conquered or at least equaled the natural world and fate that so terrifies and controls them.

Now add those two reasons together -- dehumanizing those we must destroy, to make it easier to destroy; and wielding power and dominion over others in order that we may achieve some sense of overcoming our own fear of helplessness at the hands of fate -- and you get two of the dominant elements of socialization and power structures in general, and the ways in which society and institutions of power tend to exercise their authority and convince us collectively to participate in affirming the social order and power structures.

Yes, infliction of pain arises inherently from biology, in terms of the need to fight and kill other tribes for the best territory and food, and the need to hunt and kill for food. And within that comes a likely sense of pleasure from victory, pleasure from amassing more food and control, and thus a link between domination and death to pleasure and well-being. Those things probably bred into us a personal and social acceptance of death and violence, for sure. But from that, I believe there grew up inside each of us individually, and all of us socially, and within our institutions and those with power, this larger application of violent cruelty, pain, and death, in other situations.

Almost any example of cruelty and torture that I can think of is an outward expression of anger, power, dehumanization, hostility, and some sort of application of standards and "rules" -- be it personal, organizational, religious, social, or governmental. The degree to which some people take pleasure in inflicting such terrible suffering is typically due to either mental/emotional problems, warping of the person's morals and behavior in some way (for example, the military constant ingraining of dehumanizing of "the enemy" and treatment of war and violence as necessary and enjoyable action), sense of righteousness or outrage (for example, people cheering bin Laden's death, or cheering a heretic being tortured on a rack), or some basic level of enjoyment that someone else's suffering means we gain food or shelter or money etc.

By seeing the cruelty's outward expression of internal motivation, and measuring the degree of pleasure and where it really stems from, we can almost always trace the roots of the cruelty back to the above conceptions of torture, cruelty, and killing. Other additional factors obviously come into play -- a person who was abused in their youth might become more likely to enjoy abusing others, might have a bad temper, or might turn the opposite way and hate seeing any abuse of any sort etc. But while we can understand how these things impact the extent of cruelty and enjoyment of inflicting pain and death, the primary reasons are, I think, far more historical and long-lasting, and go to the heart of society and power structures as they relate to dehumanizing others to empower the group itself in different ways.

Adding one more to my comment, think of cycles, as everyone knows about; a parent beats their kids and those kids grow up and beat their kids. Why? I think they are doing it because....that's what the pack does.

@Ebert

I saw the movie at the NuArt in Los Angeles a couple weeks ago. Yes, it is brilliant. Your piece made me consider the connection to a recent news item (which people might have already commented on here, re cruelty)...

Have you seen the footage of a toddler in China who got run over by a van, and then 8 minutes pass while people walk and cycle by (the toddler is run over a second time) and do nothing to help? After 8 minutes, a woman goes over and helps the toddler. Everyone else just stares vaguely at the suffering. No sign of empathy. They have accepted the situation. Just as they do in THE MILL AND THE CROSS...

This element of human nature will never go away. Suffering often reminds each of us of his or her own death. It is easier to look away from that than transcend our own fear. I think.

Ebert: What is the engine for child abuse? I don't understand it.

Kids are relentlessly demanding of people who do not like responsibility or putting forth effort. They had kids to sate their procreative vanity, then realized there's a lot of work involved, and they resent the kids for it.

Me? I'm a pretty good uncle, but, vain though I am, in no way do I want the responsibility or the pain. Not to mention which, I wouldn't bring a child I would no doubt adore into this shit world.

First things first, the film, it looks incredibly interesting and original. I've had the pleasure of standing before some great works of art while they were being explored and explained by experts. It's a real thrill. I'm reminded of a television series by Sister Wendy, remember her? There are so many layers to art, a veritable feast in superposition. And if you're going to enter a painting on film, you will certainly be doing yourself a favour by choosing Bruegel. Let's face it, the Mono Lisa wouldn't exactly sustain a movie for very long. But Bruegel, with his character filled landscapes? Perfect.

Do animals torture? No, I wouldn't think so, but perhaps it's just a difference in how people define the word. They can certainly be sadistic. I've seen this myself and I'm sure many others have as well. I remember a story by Jake MacDonald, a local writer. He was telling the real tale of a rather cruel hearted bear who would seem to kill and maim for pleasure more then anything. This was not as unusual as one would assume. Jake is very close to the native cultures of Canada and he will often write from their point of view. If I'm remembering correctly, there is a word for bear in Cree and another word for evil bear. Any animal that is neglected or abused will become antisocial and that includes the human animal. Monkeys, when deprived of social contact will become sadistic, masochistic sociopaths. Some, when finally introduced to other monkeys will proceed to bash in the heads of the babies without raising so much as an extra blip on their heart monitors. I'm speaking of course about the Harry Harlow "experiments".

In a way, the actions of the monkeys are understandable, but how do we explain the actions of Harry Harlow? How could anyone read through his "research" without feeling sick to their stomachs? There is no doubt that the monkeys became sadistic, but it was the experimenter Harlow, who tortured them into that condition. Was it only hubris or did he have a predisposition to this sort of thing? Has anyone dug up his childhood backyard in search of pets?

China Chris (comment above) mentions the famous (I should say infamous) psychological study involving mock prisoners and guards. This would be the Stanford Prison Study by Philip Zimbardo which was unique as far as I know. Now, the Milgram Experiments (fake electric shocks) were common and the results across the board showed that most people will be capable of inflicting torture to some degree, with only a minority percentage refusing to go to '10' on the shock meter (I should probably double check that, but I'm pretty sure I'm remembering it right). '10' - BTW - was considered a lethal shock.

The Milgram study was about authority, and how we are susceptible to it's whims and foibles. Abu Ghraib anyone? There are some people who consider themselves thoroughly upright and moral people, but who will willingly endorse a war of convenience with all it's inevitable misery and suffering. Rationalizations abound! Not only about war, but torture itself. Perhaps we should pray on that.

Chris, one quibble, you've mixed up some details in your storyline. The story about the observer who finally says "No - enough" is from the Prison Study, and it wasn't a he, it was a she, Christina Maslach, Zimbardo future wife. I remember this interesting detail from his TED talk, which I encourage everyone to listen to.

I should think it is precisely our evolved brains that allow us to torture. We continually question whether it's a lack of empathy that allows someone to torture--several posts have questioned how we can inflict pain when we know how it feels. It's our evolved minds that have developed the uniquely human gift of rationalization and further turned that into the compartmentalization of our thoughts (If I don't think about it, it doesn't exist).

It's Philip Seymour Hoffman who constantly amazes me in this light when I hear or read interviews with him about a character he plays because he invariably always has something to say about a character's positive motivation, no matter how vile the character may be. Really isn't that the case with all people? Aren't we all the heroes in our own life stories? We rationalize hurting others because we ultimately feel we are doing the right thing. Furthermore we are able to focus squarely on the good we think we are doing and compartmentalize the hurt we are inflicting aside until we've convinced ourselves that the hurt is a necessary part of the good we're doing and hence, acceptable.

Really Machiavelli had it right so many hundreds of years ago, didn't he?

I don’t think humans are the only ones who torture. There seems to be all kinds of evidence of chimps (and other animals as well) who bully/tease, and by my standards, “torture” other less dominant animals, presumably in some kind of dominance display. It seems where there are large hierarchal communities you get this sort of behavior. Humans do it more, probably because our hierarchies are more complex… but I think, psychopathy aside, most displays of cruelty (or the passive ignoring of such) are attempts at either social acceptance, overwhelming need to conform, or else trying to rise in stature in some way. Which reminds me to pick up a copy of Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined”.

I find cruelty to be the most upsetting thing there is... Yes, there are lots of crappy things that can happen, but I find cruelty the hardest to cope with. I've often thought that would be the one thing I would think to change if I could wave a magic wand. I wonder how that would change things? What would the eradication of cruelty/dominance do to social cohesion? I’d be willing to find out.

This question actually reminds me of the review you and Gene did for IN THE COMPANY OF MEN. If I remember correctly, he said he didn't know people like that and you said you did.

I think people are inherently evil. I think depending on whether you decide to be different or not, humans are naturally selfish. The average person right now cares very little about what happens to people who aren't in their personal circle. And even the caring they have for their family or friends, probably comes from a selfish motivation as well. I think the majority of people who seems concerned about the welfare of others basically want to seem concerned for the welfare of others in case anyone is watching. Also they like to think of themselves as nice people. So if nice people stop washing the dishes to think about who's hanging from a pole, then maybe they'll go take a look. But they probably are thinking the whole time, 'I've got to finish the dishes, die already!' Even celebrities who spend all their time on charities are being selfish. They feel guilty for having it so good, so they have to make themselves feel better by fixing other people's lives. But the real motivation is to make themselves feel good.

So why are people so selfish? I guess it's because we're programmed for self-preservation.

Just happened to read this in The Brothers Karamazov, thought it might be relevant--

"'By the way, a Bulgarian I met lately in Moscow,' Ivan went on, seeming not to hear his brother's words, "told me about the crimes committed by Turks and Circassians in all parts of Bulgaria through fear of a general rising of the Slavs. They burn villages, murder, outrage women and children, they nail their prisoners by the ears to the fences, leave them so till morning, and in the morning they hang them--all sorts of things you can't imagine. People talk sometimes of bestial cruelty, but that's a great injustice and insult to the beasts; a beast can never be so cruel as a man, so artistically cruel. The tiger only tears and gnaws, that's all he can do. He would never think of nailing people by the ears, even if he were able to do it."

Take that for what it's worth. Though Nabokov always maintained that Dostoyevsky was lacking the real genius of, say, Tolstoy or Gogol.

It's from "Rebellion" (i.e. Book V, Chapter 4 of TBK).

Roger,

Forgive my english. Your article is very interest in pointing out ethical dilemma. I try to enlighten my boy Joseph your lesson but he not get it. Keep up good film criticism and essayist.

Yours,

Besarion and Ketevan

cruelty explains the insistence on a medical basis for the administration of doobage to the dying.

There is an excellent book called "Highroad to the Stake" about the capture, torture and execution of a family of German vagrants in the early 1600's on grounds of 'witchcraft'.

The book is based on actual extensive documentation by the German officials involved in the proceedings - they had no idea that brutally torturing a family (including a child) into turning each other in as 'witches' then executing them in appallingly horrific ways might someday be looked upon as barbaric - these were 'civilized' men after all.

Anyway, at that time in place, crime was on the upswing and as paid police forces did not exist, authorities decide that a large pageant-like execution of some witches would provide an example of 'what happens to trouble makers'. It was only after the decision is made to 'throw' an execution that a pretext is created to haul in a hapless family of vagrants (some involved in petty criminal activity it must be said).

In societies where the very few oppress the very many, it turns out to be a lot more cost effective to intimidate the public via ritualized displays of ruthlessness than to maintain a large policing apparatus (not that such people would have even dreamed of such a thing as an alternative).

In any case, the torture/execution is a real conflagration of festive pageantry and appalling cruelty far worse than anything shown in "The Mill and the Cross". In some way I get the feeling that modern-day slasher movies reproduce the same kind of convergence between disgust, fear, pity and euphoria

But there seemed to be something in public torture that brought communities together, to bond them in a feeling of relief that it is not 'them' but somebody else - but also made them terrified of the church and the authorities on a subliminal level.

A strange sidenote is that Michael Kunze, the author of this serious, scholarly book, (written in the 1980's) went on to create glitzy, tacky stage musicals for which he is best known - go figure.

Even though most people can feel empathy it is affected by a great many things, Some examples would be the Milgram experiment, people feel empathy towards their victims but do it anyway because of the pressure of authority. Other reasons can be, demonizing, you make the person, or rather the group of people to something evil, another classic study would be the Stanford prison experiment. In everyday life we filter events mostly to our own advantage and our view of the world, people hurt each other for different reasons in everyday life but rationalize them as not to threaten the self image of being good and being right.

On the subject of Peter Bruegel:

I have mentioned Rudy Rucker in the comments section before, he is my favorite fiction author, I have found his nonfiction works helpful in comprehending higher dimensions and the nature of infinity. Known primarily for his cyberpunk classics involving technological singularities as well as his trademark brand of humor, his fascination with the works and life of Peter Bruegel has not only been the major influence on his own painting style but led him to write his only departure (thus far) from speculative fiction; the historical biography As Above, So Below: A Novel of Peter Bruegel . I highly recommend it to fans of Bruegel's work or of The Mill and the Cross.

On cats being cruel to prey:

Recently I took part in the rescue of a stray mama cat and her 5 kittens. She was so thin you could see her ribs. If a cat swipes at dinner and misses, it goes hungry. Cats play with their intended prey, and with everything else, to keep their hunting reflexes sharp, they hunt as individuals and have to be self reliant.

On Human cruelty:

Our planet's greatest mystics have maintained for millennia that humankind's original nature is compassion, and that we are cut off from it because we are "asleep". Modern mystics tell us we are currently evolving as a species from reptilian society - giving us corporations who run the world based on greed and fear - to mammalian society based on cooperation and nurturing. Scientific instruments have identified compassion and love as high energy wavelengths and negative emotions like fear and hatred as slower, lower energy waveforms. If we are indeed connected to all things through consciousness, then the notion that human evolution has been influenced by energy fields radiating throughout the galaxy - as the Mayans asserted - and that 2012 is a transition date into a higher frequency of energy, then the possibility of humankind "waking up" en masse becomes more likely.

If reading the last paragraph caused you to think "what a complete load of hooey" I would humbly opine that you haven't done much actual research into the subjects.

You're well known for being a self-described liberal. Another liberal, the American philosopher Richard Rorty, defined a liberal as "someone who thinks that cruelty is the worst thing we do." Seems apt.

Roger, strapped to that wheel isn't the worst of it. The purpose of the wheel were so bones could be broken and the limbs weaved between the spokes.

I have even read one account where all bones in the body were broken (at least all that were known then).

This kind of treatment says more about the perpetrator than the victim and is a reason why dictators will eventually execute their own most ruthless killers (afterall, would you really want one around after the dirty work has been done?).

I don't believe people are inherently evil. Perhaps self-sustaining, but not evil. When we look at Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it seems plain to me that those who torture have been taught to do so.

(They are the same people who agreed to shock people, march Cherokees into Oklahoma, etc..)

I'm loathe to get into a discussion about religion, but I recall Achan, the biblical figure who plundered. The God of Abraham (whom most of the world still worships) ordered the Israelites to kill not just Achan but his children as well. Its the same benevolent God who labels Lot a righteous man because he chooses to allow his own daughters to be gang-raped instead of offending some messenger angels.

We are taught these (and other ridiculous) things. Thats why we do them.
(This discussion fascinates me, by the way.)

Anybody out there, reading?

That "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech," etc.,

was established to protect the expression and congress of ideas, not obsessions or malicious intents thereof.

Truly free speech is nowhere protected. Just lately, government types are forbidding satirical remarks about one of its most ridiculous wastes so far, short of lies about nuclear disasters, the TSA. Law. The law's been written. These are the same government types who use taxpayer dollars to pay sick cretins to -spread malicious propaganda around the internet, hoping to rile "the people" into agreeing to more rapes of more muslim countries, as we are seeing every day.

"Demonization" is traditionally the obsessed and vomitous ranting of mentally ill religious fanatics against a thing they fear. It is "successful," that is, disastrous, when the mental and emotional illness of the populace matches the vomitous contents of the public ranter's mind.

This sick practice is also employed by the sick, for the sick, to the sick, with the aim of fomenting violence against one political or ethnic or racist group or another.

Neither thing have any relationship with free speech, but rather, are sick exhortations to the opposite.

Now, it is tricky, as the steady tattoo of mental illness and paranoia could be, after all, a disease, for which the perpetrator isn't all that responsible. There have also been laws against "hate speech" enacted, which can also have a deleterious effect on the free spread of worthwhile ideas.

The solution is simply to expose the brainless, ill-minded worm whose sole aim is to continue to spew acidy drivel for some sick purpose, most likely paid for.

This I mean to keep doing.

Very thoughtful essay! I wish there was an answer to this. It makes me think of a question philosophers have asked themselves countless times. What distinguishes humans from animals? We should know better. Still, acts of human kindness and compassion is a unique characteristic in itself..the fact that it coexists with torture makes me wonder if human nature permits the existance of one without the other...

Looking at these paintings makes me think of "The Judgment of Cambyses" one of the most horrific paintings I've ever laid eyes on. Similar, to what you described the people who skin the human alive seem unaffected by the act they may as well be taking off clothes. Those surrounding the tortured man don't even look at him.

There has always been that argument: Are human beings inherently evil or Are they inherently good.

I feel that humans are inherently good. Yet I also wonder why human beings are cruel.

For over a decade, I volunteered at a local animal shelter and was active in dog rescue organizations. When you see or hear about an animal that has been tortured, you really wonder about people. Most animals that end up in the pound are the victims of neglect. People who decide they suddenly are tired of a pet or never took time to train the puppy that has now grown into a large uncontrollable adult dog.

These last couple of years, for the first time, I've had puppies that were not rescues. And I see how open they both are to people. They have this innocent sense of trust because they have never been abused. Likewise, you see such a thing in most children. Perhaps that's why old cultures needed fairy tales about horrible things that can happen to children--to warn them of the cruelty and hate that exists in the world.

Animals can be cruel, but animals don't have murder trials. They still have that survival of the fittest instinct. You'll see dogs attempt to drive an old, weak dog out of the pack or the pack leader drive away older pups--an instinct that helps safeguard against interbreeding). Is this really cruelty? Human society isn't about survival of the fittest. Some physically unfit human beings can be productive members of society.

There is a place for fear and caution in human society, but is there a place for cruelty? If we can teach caution and fear, can we also teach courage without cruelty? That's a question that war crimes and post-traumatic stress should raise in our minds.

Courage is not an easy thing because like all animals, we have the fight-flight instinct and it is easier to run than to take a stand. And if we take a stand, it is likely that we still stand alone. What makes people take a stand? Often it is the same thing that makes people inflict cruelty--religion. As a religious person, I feel that the cruelty in the name of religion is the misuse of religion, while kindness and courage is the true purpose of religion.

Why are human beings cruel? Is it because of our baser instincts? Is it because it is easier to be cruel or even to be apathetic or follow leaders without question?

I think it's also important to ask, why can't we be brave enough to stand against cruelty and, perhaps, that is what the paintings and the movie, are asking.

I watched "The Mill and the Cross" on Monday evening, on the Manaki brothers film festival in Bitola, Macedonia and I absolutely loved it.

"Why are we cruel?"

Sadly, it's very simple. Because we enjoy it. If there weren't a thirst for it within us, we wouldn't do it. It would be like having to exert willpower to keep from bending our legs backwards at the knee. We do it because we enjoy it.

The older I get the more of a hermit I become. And the more I become convinced that it is because we have no true respect for the means by which we are created. Every insult our species has throughout the world is based on the means by which we are created and come into the world. Boiled down to its basics, we hate the act of creation. We consider it filthy, degrading, and insulting. If creation is filthy and low, then destruction must be a high and noble calling. When I was younger, I tried to logick myself out of that realization, but the older I get, the more obvious and undeniable it becomes. That is IT.

"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" George Orwell, 1984

The responses to Mr. Ebert's blog entry could be seen as an example of the variation in "kindness" among humans. Granted, it is a poor experiment because there is no control group and the participants are self-selecting. Most people were considerate and thoughtful, even if they disagreed with another poster's views.

[For the record, just because I study theological ethics does not necessarily mean that I "assume there is a God," as one poster claims. I find religion's influence on ethics fascinating, so I study this intersection. I do not believe that makes me "delusional," as that poster implies.]

Engagement in civil dialogue would seem to be one of the more desirable human traits. The majority of the above responses display such civility. I am grateful for that, and for the inevitable kindness that pervades the tone of that same majority of the discussion. And wasn't "kindness" the main subject of the column's original question?

Ebert: What is the engine for child abuse? I don't understand it.

of course not. if you did understand it, we wouldn't be reading your work.

Hi Roger - Just read your "What Goes Around, Comes Around" and think you've answered some of your own questions.

Sometimes, cruelty just is.

EricJ | October 18, 2011 12:24 PM
... but cats do not "play" with mice; simply that the adrenaline of hunting them temporarily shuts off the appetite that made them go hunting in the first place--They don't know what to do with them for the moment.

also, mother cats will often not kill the mouse because they're teaching the kittens to kill the mouse. the mother smacks the mouse around to weaken and daze it so that it won't get away from the kitten but will still attempt to get away.

being cruel is easy. if you do it once, and you do it well enough, it will keep people away. it will intimidate them and cause them to fear you, thus that fear is mistakenly enjoyed as "respect."

being nice is not easy. it causes people to come back and want more niceness. it causes them to like you, thus you have expectations to live up to, and you'll have many return visits, at which you'll be expected to continue being nice.

in my school, kids from previous years visit me constantly. my classes are interrupted daily by former students who come back to see me because they "sniff" miss me. if you were to read a transcript from a random day in class, you'd see passages like this:

me: wendy, what's wrong with you? why can't you be perfect like gabriela?

jorge: why can't i go to my locker?
me: because i don't like you.

me: bryan, the next time you don't have your student ID card on, i'm going to punch you in the head.

erik: i forgot my homework.
me: i hate you.
erik: i forgot my pencil
me: now i hate you twice

me: john, stop putting cologne on before you come to class.
john: but it smells good. don't you wear cologne?
me: no. take a shower and you won't need cologne.

on paper, i seem kind of cruel. however, the kids love when i talk to them like that. they see me smile when i say it. they learn that i only say those things to kids i like. recently i told a kid to use the word "permanent" in a sentence. he said, "mr. voza cried when he realized his hair loss was permanent." the kids laughed, and i laughed. the principal was observing my class at that moment, and later she complained. she said, "how can you let them talk to you like that? that was so rude for him to say that."

i argued, "not at all. i'm teaching them to react differently to insults. i'm teaching them to laugh when people say mean things to them, because they're going to hear mean things their whole lives. if they can learn to laugh it off instead of getting mean in return, we'll solve some problems.

by laughing at those who are mean, we can disarm them. if i get mad back, then they win because that's what they want - to hurt me. but if i can show them that they can't hurt me with mean words, it'll take the steam out of their attempts of meanness. they're realize that their best weapon is useless against my happiness. because that's the problem with those who are cruel. they don't know happiness.

I think that for every extreme, there's also an opposite extreme. So the reason there's cruelty is because there's kindness. As long as there's one, there will always be the other.

Pinker's book has its moments. He is certainly right that violent death used to be much more accepted. If you killed someone in a bar fight in 1880 or 1910, the police would usually ask around to make sure it was a fair fight. As long as it was, you wouldn't usually even be arrested, let alone convicted. Violence was certainly more accepted as part of everyday life then.

However, as one reviewer said, Pinker is a gifted psychologist but only a mediocre historian. His analysis of the 1960s and racial issues is astoundingly ignorant, as well as self-contradictory. He calls the 60s a period of "decivilization" because of a "loss of trust in social institutions." One could hardly make a more reactionary statement, when those institutions turned hoses and dogs on people in Alabama, shot down college kids at Jackson State and Kent State, and kept us embroiled in southeast Asia (among other places).

I've often found people from the so-called hard sciences have political views which they would probably describe as clear-eyed and unsentimental, but which give the more humanistic among us the creeps. I'm generalizing, of course, and exceptions abound.

Still, Pinker is right that the overall level of murderous violence in the U.S. and Europe is at an all-time low. Meanwhile, politicians scare voters with the prospect of crime, and incarceration has been privatized and has become a highly profitable industry. The NRA trots out bogus statistics about how many crimes are prevented by gun-owners, while ignoring the statistical reality that one is many times more likely to shoot oneself or a family member by accident or on purpose, or for the family member to do the same to you or someone else, than one is to bring down some modern Visigoth coming through the window with mayhem on his mind. Violence and fear have a primal appeal. Just look at any ad for a home security system.

As for cruelty, it may have its seeds in fear, but is it not more directly the result of rage and egotism?

The New Historicist literary critic Stephen Greenblatt wrote about executions of traitors/heretics (when the church and state are allied there's no real distinction) in Shakespeare's time and earlier, of the type done to William Wallace and only hinted at in Braveheart. The victim was dragged over roughly paved streets while strapped to a board to the place of execution. He was partly hanged several times for two reasons: it made him less likely for some reason to lose consciousness during what followed, and it caused him to get an erection. Then his genitals were cut off and burned before his eyes. His abdomen was slit open, several feet of intestines were pulled out, and those were similarly burned. His arms and legs were dislocated either by pulleys or horses, then the ligaments were cut with a knife so the limbs could be pulled fully off. Only then was the victim beheaded and the head shown to the crowd. Apparently it was not unusual for the mouth to still be moving. Greenblatt pointed out that this kind of torture was not about justice or even revenge, but about showing the populace the "full rage of the state."

The rage didn't stop with death. Wallace's limbs were sent (separately) on a tour of the country, one or another of them displayed to every major city to show what happened to rebels. Later, after the Restoration, the King had Oliver Cromwell's body dug up and beheaded. I think the head wasn't returned to the body until the early 1960s, about three hundred years later.

A hundred and fifty years after Shakespeare, a similar execution -- with a few minor differences, such as pulling off pieces of flesh with hot pincers before the drawing and quartering -- occurred in Paris: that of Damiens, who attempted to kill the French king. It partly inspired Edmund Burke to write about terror, and later inspired Michel Foucault's exploration of punishment and spectatorship.

I see several people here offering some version of Rousseau's noble savage idea. It's society's fault. Institutions create imbalances of power which lead to cruelty. I'm not so confident in our natures. I think Rousseau was answered pretty effectively by de Sade.

If cruelty has an answer, it's not a direct one. One cannot fight cruelty, I think, except by nurturing its opposites. The closest thing to my own perspective comes at the end of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities. Marco Polo and Kubla Khan are talking, as they've been doing the whole book. (They probably aren't the real Polo and Khan, since the book describes cities with airports, with motorcycles, and others that cannot physically exist.) Khan is in despair and concludes that the future can only be the infernal city.

And Polo says, "The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of the inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space."

One reason I read this blog? Roger is not part of the inferno. May he endure.

I would offer up that humans possess a degree of awareness and ability that most, if not all, other creatures lack. A human's learning curve is not nearly as steep as that of, say, chimps. Humans observe the world both as it is and, from paintings and stories, as it was. I believe human cruelty is almost always connected with history, both personal and cultural. An understanding that "those people" aren't worthy of being treated like "humans," or because our ancestors did it, why should we be any different. We exist as a crude parody of nature. Why must we have leaders? Because God won't come down and lead us himself. And if our leaders tell us to do things that might seem cruel, should we obey? After all, we put our trust in them so far. And hey, it could be a chance to show how big you are to humiliate and torture someone. Let them know, and let everyone else know, that you don't play nice. And the next generation will do the same. But the subjugated might also learn a thing or two. And so continues the vicious cycle of violence and cruelty by people who know how to be paranoid, hold a grudge, or just want to show off a little. Maybe some day you too can become a leader. That doesn't completely do justice to the question. I look at my life and I am on good terms with just about everyone I know, or else I just pretend they don't exist. I'm not naive, I just figured I'd be happier if I wasn't afraid. A lot of people live in fear, and fear is the catalyst for just about everything wrong with society.

Man, I've been hearing about this film since it played at Sundance. A week or two ago Bordwell and Thompson blogged about it. Now even Roger gives it a four star review and blogs about it. And yet, it almost certainly won't make it out to my southern Indiana town. I'm about ready to make the drive to Chicago for the weekend, just to see it. I really might.

Also, I've been watching Tarkovsky lately, and he is also a great admirer of Bruegel. He includes shots inspired by Hunters in the Snow in Mirror, and the actual painting plus a couple others in Solaris. Despite his Flemish origin, there is something fascinatingly close to Russian in his paintings. They seem to capture those Renaissance peasants so well, all the little aspects of their daily lives, and that just fits in with the Russian soul somehow. Hmmm. Now I'm thinking about buying a couple Bruegel prints to put on my wall. I really might.

Agree with most comments about our nature. It is in our interest to preserve our species. This was done without a really good explanation until the 19th century (Darwin). We are animals (mammals, not being controversial) and a few distinctions gets over that self awareness, intelligence hoop.

I believe that kindness as a virtue, is first of all a derivation of a Christian value. Taking and caring for others is not the same as empathy. We don't kill others not because a god says so, but because we don't want to be killed.

By the way, there was a hint of discussing what are living things. Not to change the topic, but the concept of living things depends on the definition of life. I think stars are a living thing. Some say even crystals are too. Both of these qualify for the definition of life according to NASA.

Sadism....mmm...

I just hate sanctimony. Some people "deserve" to be tortured, while others "deserve" to be rewarded? Strictly subjective! Illogical in the light of determinism and the absence of free-will!

I would be pleased if people could let go of these cherished, misguided views of "good and evil".

I think empathy and sadism are related. Interesting that our brain releases all those sweet juices when we are hurting those we hate. Rationalizing our actions can soothe the confusion of cognitive dissonance.

Just a lovely world really.

NEWS ALERT

To celebrate the end of Moammar Gadhafi, God will postpone tomorrow's scheduled Rapture.

You can all sleep in.

Harry

Humans pass down lessons from generation to generation. Because we have been able to assert ourselves as dominant beings in the world, we are no longer simply learning how to survive, but what to believe. And belief and fear cloud our perception of people around us. We want to believe in absolutes, good and evil. Right and wrong. Strong and weak. If we take for granted that we are the strong, or the right, then it doesn't matter if we do wrong things, as long as our God is the True God, or whatever. But people also create societies, because God refuses to come down from Heaven and lead us Himself. Look at the NYPD and Occupy Wall St. There are instances where they seem to take extreme measures against the protesters, because they serve the City, and if they didn't do SOMETHING, then they wouldn't be policemen. Make an example, try to instill some fear in the protesters. I don't mean to paint them as completely bad for it. They aren't crucifying anybody.

Society has sidestepped the notion that the strongest leads. Sometimes the strong feel the need to assert themselves in ways to remind people that they're still stronger. In fact, I'd argue cruelty and sadism, when committed by someone who isn't clinically psychotic, is an intellectual act. Rather than killing them and then desecrating the body, the perpetrator hurts them grievously, so they can feel and know that they are at the mercy of their persecutors. The world around us is cruel, and in Man's quest to be like God, we do some terrible things. If we had no God, and no history to speak of, we might be a little more...humane.

Deep deep questions. Not trying to start any debates... But theologically this is also a central theme... as evidenced by the Christ in the original painting... One musical exploration of Kindness - for anyone so inclined:
http://stevebell.com/kindness/

Plants - perhaps Venus Flytrap? ;.) Cassandra.

Roger, do you remember offering 'Mumk' as a possible nickname for Gadhafi. Guess it didn't catch on. Other than your original (March 3) tweet, I couldn't find a single reference to your tendered sobriquet in all of googledom.

I know you guys were contemporaries. Both born June, 1942. Both launched your careers in the late 60's. Both never balded. Both liked opera, wrestling. Both great movie fans. There were differences. For example, found out the Mumk's favorite movie was "Harold and Maude."

Whatever. Guess it's a bit late now for nicknames anyhow.

I'm amazed that anyone could think humans are the only species that torture. Is no one familiar with the cat?

Slowly killing social rivals and/or prey is an evolutionary benefit for certain species. Humans are the only species that evolved with this trait that have the capacity to feel sorry for it.

The following is from the beginning of a best-selling novel published in 1950, the year I was born.

When you sit at home comfortably folded up in a chair beside the fire, have you ever thought what goes on outside there?You pick up a book and read about things and stuff, getting a vicarious kick from people and events that never happened. You're doing it now, getting ready to fill in a normal life with the details of someone else's experiences. Fun, isn't it? You read about life on the outside thinking of how maybe you'd like it to happen to you, or at least how you'd like to watch it. Even the old Romans did it, spiced their life with action when they sat in the Coliseum and watched wild animals rip a bunch of humans apart, reveling in the sight of blood and terror. They screamed for joy and slapped each other on the back when murderous claws tore into the live flesh of slaves and cheered when the kill was made. Oh, it's great to watch, all right. Life through a keyhole. But day after day goes by and nothing like that ever happens to you so you think that it's all in books and not in reality at all and that's that. Still good reading, though. Tomorrow night you'll find another book, forgetting what was in the last and live some more in your imagination. But remember this: there are things happening out there. They go on every day and night making Roman holidays look like school picnics. They go right on under your very nose and you never know about them ...

You ask "Why are we cruel?"

There as many kinds of cruelty as there are kindnesses.
And if the truth be known, the capacity for cruelty exists in all of us.
Not just physical cruelty, but mental and emotional cruelty - and that latter is far more widespread than the physical kind.
Those who practice cruelty every day - those who the world calls 'bullies' - develop the skill early, and spend a lifetime cultivating it.
And one of the first things they learn is how to hurt without layng a hand on their targets.
Little kids learn this in the schoolyards. The bullies, the mean kids, dominate the bullied, the weak kids. Any one who grew up in the second group can tell you how much their tormentors openly enjoyed what they were doing - to the point that efforts to stop or at least curb them were futile.
As they grow into adulthood, the bullies get meaner and meaner, and if no one stops them (or even tries to) they regard this as tacit encouragement. This is how the bullies attract the circle of "admirers" who follow them around - the ones who cheer on the bad behavior, principally to avoid being on the recieving end themselves.
By the time all concerned attain "maturity", the roles are set: the most vicious target the most defenseless, while others sit on the sides, glad that they're not in the line of fire.
It's that latter group that I think you're addressing your question to, Roger - those of us who watch/read/listen to the cruelty of the world, both factual and fictional. We watch the cruelty of others, relieved that we're not getting any of it ourselves.
But here'swhat I wonder about sometimes:
What are the targets of cruelty thinking?
Are they perhaps thinking of the day when they'll strike back at their tormentors?
Hurt them worse than they are being hurt themselves?
And those of us who just watch - aren't we rooting for them to strike back?
Nothing more satisfying than seeing a bully get payback, every bit as cruel as what he's been dishing out.
That's those of us who consider ourselves to be good people.
But what of those who identify with the bullies?
The ones who point, laugh, and cheer when the bully downs his target.
Those are the people in the movie audience that you descrtibed, Roger - the ones who cheer when the pretty girl gets hacked up, or when the bad guy wins through humiliation.
That number seems to be growing, at least to me.
I hope I'm wrong.

These days I'm watching the last days of One Life To Live's network run.
One of the main characters is a teenage bully named Jack Manning. This rotten kid has nearly driven one other kid to suicide (stopped just in time). Totally devoid of remorse, he targets this same kid with a cruel "practical joke" which results in the death of the kid's mother. The rotten kid's equally rotten father thereupon uses money and influence to enable the kid to get away with it all.
Watching this story unfold every day, I am seized with the desire to see Rotten Jack 'hoist on his own petard' - I want this punk to be on the receiving end of the most brutal payoff possible (within the limits of broadcast TV's standards, of course).
Which I guess makes me as bad as he is - and I happen to be a real person, while Jack Manning is merely a creation of OLTLs scriptwriters.
So i guess that brings me back to that quotation I put in at the start of my comment.

Oh, I didn't mention where I got it from, did I?

That paragraph is part of the opening of -
- MY GUN IS QUICK, copyright 1950, by Mickey Spillane.

Reply to: I know that every day humans are tortured. Why do we do this? - Ebert

In Iran, the punishment for a Muslim woman drinking alcohol is 80 lashes. Its one thing to make vague statements about why humans are tortured, but let's look at specific cases. Why would you torture a woman who drinks alcohol?

The first time Mohammed mentioned alcohol, he said, "It is wrong for a Muslim to drink so much that it affects his ability to participate in prayers." And then, it grew. It grew from a minor suggestion to a punishment for behavior that Americans consider quite normal.

I'm watching the Conrad Murray trial. A year ago, Conrad Murray would have sued you for slander, if you accused him of willful malpractice. Yesterday, an expert witness listed 17 things Murray did that gell under that definition.

If you want to see how a man looks when he is terrified, watch Dr. Murray's face as he sits at the defense table.

Dr. Murray... was protected. Because people would cry out if you made any kind of negative statement about an African American doctor. The same way people don't think it's right for me to attack Islam.

Why did Michael Jackson die? His airway was obstructed, Probably his tongue fell backward and closed off his air. Seems strange, but that was the expert testimony. If Dr. Murray had put a plastic tube down Jackson's throat, he would not have died. But he didn't have one. Now, here's another strange one. The expert said, if Dr. Murray had simply raised Jackson's chin, his tongue would have moved back into normal position... and Jackson would not have died.

Think of me as an expert. On Islam, on religion. There are so many "religious folks" who are like Dr. Murray. They fail to meet even simple standards, and our soeicty is making it harder and harder to confront them with the truth about their faults.

Today, in France, in London, England... Islam is trying to do what they will try to do in the United States a few years from now. They want to establish a different government based on Islamic principles. And those principles include 80 lashes for a woman drinking alcohol, and 90 lashes for a Muslim woman removing her head covering in a film.

When someone accues me of "demonizing"... I would simply reply, there's a real case in Iran today. The actress in "My Tehran For Sale" is going to spend the next year in prison. Explain, if you can, under the rules of Islam, why an actress is being held in prison for appearing in a film without covering her head. If your answer makes sense, I might be willing to explain a bit more. What I usually get is, "Your question makes my head hurt, so I can't answer it." Which is the way Dr. Murray learned medicine, I guess.

Biologically, maybe there's a competitive advantage for creatures to test others' limits every so often. You'll get more control and resources if you can chip away at those around you without going beyond your means. So it's not surprising that some creatures, including people, are predisposed toward casually inflicting pain on weaker beings. It helps them establish dominance over their surroundings. Also keeps them in shape for when they need to deploy all their skill to survive.

Not that I'm endorsing it. I'd rather have a pacifist society than Social Darwinian.

RE: Cats and Mice.

I can't recall where I saw this - maybe at "The Loom" blog by Carl Zimmer, but the number one reason why cats play with mice is to exhaust them until they are too tired to fight back, before killing them, because even a small bite or scratch can become infected, and in the wild there is no penicillin. In other words, it is an adaptive behavior which promotes survival.

My guess is a lot of human cruelty has a similar basis, but in addition to such behaviors we have mirror neurons which allow us to model other creatures mentally and emphasize with them. I don't know if cats have mirror neurons. It is also my vague recollection (see any blog on neuro-science), that use of mirror neurons is a trained skill which must be developed in youth - similar to the development of speech. (Feral children who grown up alone in the wild never develop the mental processes that are required for speech and never learn how to talk even after they are fostered.)

Don't take my word for this, of course, but I think neuroscience and evolutionary biology have a lot of the data and some of the conclusions necessary to understand this issue. People, myself included, often think they can answer such questions based on gut reactions and arm-chair philosophizing, but those aren't good substitutes for the scientific method - as you know.

Both of these qualify for the definition of life according to NASA.

but that's not life according to sound science. to be alive, there are six necessary traits:

1. a need for and an ability to obtain food

2. an ability to react to one's environment

3. an ability to procreate

4. an organized structure, such as cells and working systems that sustain the life form

5. a need to breathe, albeit oxygen, carbon dioxide, or other gas

6. an ability to grow

Perhaps in the way cruelty is shown in Mark Twain's story The Mysterious Stranger, we inflict pain because we are afraid of being a victim ourselves.

I notice Mr. Ebert has often employed the tactic of fear and belittling in his reviews. One could argue it's his modus operandi. Going by Mr Twain's theory, that's why so many would imitate the style of Mr. Ebert, fear? But of course, it's simply a matter of being cruel toward the ignorant or the misdirected, and it's done to reduce ignorance and 'make the world a better place'.

Very nice post Mike Doran!

Roger, this is the best of posts because it makes me think throughout the week of the questions posed in your original article rather than be wrapped up in a debate with other commenters.

I've been thinking about it from two perspectives:

1. There is no end of ripped-from-the-headlines examples of human cruelty in just the space of a week. Two examples from this week:

- cops in Philly find 4 mentally-challenged people chained in a dingy basement room, some for years, so that the perps could steal their Social Security checks. There may be more around the country.

- Obama has sent 100 soldiers to Africa to help in the effort to stop the madman leading the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). I'll skip the politics of sending troops for this thread. I read an op-ed by Jonah Goldberg describing the acts that the LRA are committing, which I won't describe here but that haunted me for a day. It reminded me of a line from Bruce Willis in "Tears of the Sun" where he said that God abandoned Africa a long time ago.

2. I'm thinking more on the perspective of being desensitized by so much cruelty in our entertainment choices.

As I flipped across the dial tonight, in the 9pm hour, it seemed like every network channel was a cop procedural trying to outdo each other on how vile the crime was that they were investigating. Law and Order is not gruesome enough? How about L&O Special Victims Unit. Let's up the carnage for must see TV. How many murders per day do we need to see to be entertained?

So, now I have a dilemma. Do I see this movie, or not? You've eloquently described the cruelty and torture in the film, derived from the original depiction in the painting. I know it's in the film. Do I choose to go witness the cruelty - and pay $8.50 to do so - as an entertainment choice? Does that further take me down the road of desensitization - one more death played out for me? Do I just say no to artistic death as I do to Centipede cruelty? When do we say no I won't watch?

Worthwhile questions to ponder...

Walk through "The Doors of Perception" and choose to experience either "Heaven or Hell," two fascinating reads by Aldous Huxley, by the way.

Humans spend much time contemplating the birth of Utopian thought and societies. However, anyone who has ever visited Singapore, might have felt an uneasiness at its perfection, or at least the illusion of it. I believe what we cannot see, or what we push far beneath the surface of brightly flowered and manicured minds, breeds much more of a twisted cruelty in the World in the long run. The unseen and the finger pointed outward is the most hideous and destructive monsters to be bred.

We are born with the capability to be terrorists and we have many theories why- probably a combination of social and biological factors,but wired for calculated atrocoties none-the-less we are.

There is scientific evidence that killer whales will kill just for the pleasure of it-not out of fear of a threat, or for food, just for fun. They have been known to play with a seal until it has died, only to leave it floating in the water.

Sometimes, science show us we are cruel for no apparent reason. Because of rapid social evolution, each generation's iq 's increase, and I think this allows us to transcend more easily our primitive urges, not escape them, but understand them much more fully. And, maybe we can reach a "higher mind" mentality, and become more elegant, evolved creatures in the universe who develop advanced societies based on greater intelligence for the greater good.

Stephan Pinker has a new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes, in which you may find some solace.

He provides powerful reasons to believe that things are improving.

The sad reality, or maybe it's irrelevant whether it is sad or not, is that humans are not creatures of universal morals. What counts for humans (as it seems to count for chimpanzees as well, the only other species that seems to revel in war and torture) is that there are rules of conduct, not necessarily what those codes of conduct might be. We are, at our core, a tribal species, and part of being a tribal species is identifying the "us" and the "them". Once you have established an "us" and a "them", you can ascribe to sets of codes of conduct; one for how we treat all of "us", and one for how we treat all of "them".

In some societies, people choose, by and large, to treat "them" to a certain degree how we treat "us". We can afford "them" legal rights similar to those we grant to "us".

But this is not common through time and space. In some societies, even our own upon a time, once a "them" was discerned, discovered or defined, rules could be formulated stripping them of all rights, liberties and privileges ascribed to "us". Whether it was Jews, Protestants, Catholics, blacks, Irish, McCoys, Hatfields, wealthy, poor, illegal Mexican immigrants or however the "us" choose to define the "them", as long as there are rules, no matter how awful, horrific, cruel and vile those rules may be, the mass of society, the "us", will go along with it.

The best any society can do, I think, is to try as much as possible to eliminate the "them", to extend the tribe as far as possible, and thus the codes of conduct, or morals if you will, evenly apply to all.

On Wednesday, several organizations in Hollywood released statements to the press: This one seems particularly relevant to this discussion:

Screen Actors Guild:

Iran has a strong tradition of artistic expression reaching back thousands of years. That tradition is under attack in a contemporary Iran that has seemingly turned against its own artists. Screen Actors Guild deeply deplores the persecution of actor Marzieh Vafamehr and the filmmakers and other entertainment and media industry representatives now under attack in Iran. We add our voices to the thousands of artists worldwide calling on the Iranian government to immediately free Marzieh and the other artists and filmmakers imprisoned because of their artistic and cultural endeavors. We urge Iran to refrain from stifling the artistic expression of its citizens and to let their unique and valuable voices be heard once again.

Having read the SAG statement, the next question is, WHY? Why are filmmakers under attack in Iran?

Ebert Quote: I get your point. But I was not attacking "The Mill and the Cross" for its cruelty, but simply using that wonderful film as the occasion for a blog on the subject.

I agree. I didn't think you were attacking anything, let alone The Mill & the Cross. However, in retrospect to my post, I think I have a better understanding of what happened, and why you were able to post a blog about the subject so easily.

Seeing TM&TC, you see the beauty of art before you, immersive and meditative. In the midst of it, a few moments of cruelty emerge. They stand out in thematic contrast to most of the film's gorgeous photography, and indifferent characters. In the end, the movie leaves you with a question that inspires a blog post. That seems easy enough to conclude.

However, HC2 is awash in cruelty, taking one to that hope of it being over soon after it started. It's a different experience altogether, promoting a different response. Because of the nature of how it was created, you wanted to forget rather than remember, like waking from a bad dream.

Judging from the trailer and your review, TM&TC looks amazing. The photography reminds me of past films that looked so good, you could hit pause on any part of the film, take a snapshot of it, and frame it on your wall. Movies like Glory and The Duelists come to mind. And oh yes, Akira Kurosawa's Dreams.

God bless,
John

A very thoughtful question, Mr. Ebert. I can only concur with what someone else mentioned before - that because we are all capable of it to some degree or another, we are bound to exercise that 'right' (or 'ability', if you prefer) at some point. It is unfortunate that it gets exercised so much, though.
Interesting that Steven Pinker has recently come out with a new book arguing that violence in society has decreased dramatically in recent decades, statistically speaking. Yet, it is obvious to any observer of the media or the cinema these days that violence and cruelty have become a lot more mainstream and in-your-face. I am constantly appalled at the fact that so many people seem to derive some kind of enjoyment out of seeing other people tortured and killed in ever increasingly disturbing ways, in such films as 'Hostel', the 'Saw' series and 'The Human Centipede' movies (not to mention the video of Gaddhafi's death that was just played out all over the internet and TV for anyone, including children, to see). How that can be seen as entertainment is beyond me, although it is essentially just a new form of public punishment as people used to watch hangings/executions, etc. with no apparent shame in olden times (and still do in some countries). Foucault wrote a very interesting essay on this subject - you can get the gist of his points regarding the reasoning behind it at wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discipline_and_Punish.
I just don't get how we have supposedly advanced as a human race and should be getting more humane (and in some respects we are, in terms of more social justice - at least I like to think so), but at the same time films and other forms of media such as video games and art, have gotten extremely perverse, grotesque and disgusting, to be quite honest. Are these 'art' forms merely reflecting what they see in the world, or are they not actually informing and affecting that world? What happened to our sense of morality in art (if there ever was one to begin with)? Shouldn't we be more concerned about these things and where they are headed (I don't think they can go much farther than they already have, but it wouldn't surprise me if they did)? I certainly am not a conservative nor a religious fundamentalist in any sense (I'm not even a parent - I'm a 26 year young man); I'm merely a concerned citizen of the planet, desperately hoping things will get better before I do decide whether or not to bring any more children into this troubled world.
Thank you for reading (if you did).
End of rant.

I suspect the pervasive popularity of the endless bloody reruns depicting Qaddafi's death speaks to some innate sense of cruelty couched in all of us.

I feel humanity has two options. We will either rise above our shortcomings, our prejudices, erase our ignorance with knowledge, become enlightened. Or we will destroy ourselves. It is very difficult to live as an enlightened being. But it is possible.

I'm not Bob Sanders

Hi, Roger. Thanks for the introduction to "The Mill and the Cross" movie. I now look forward to seeing it.

A few days ago I saw "The Human Centipede 2" and noticed today that you reviewed it. Looking at your review I wonder whether we saw the same movie.

**Spoiler** Nobody read more if you haven't seen Human Centipede 2.

You said that the actress from the first movie didn't have any visible scars, but the whole point of the second movie is that the first was just a movie and wasn't real. The main villain in the sequel tries to recruit the actor who played the villain in the first, and he idolizes him. Were the first movie not just a movie, he wouldn't try to recruit him as he died in the first movie.

I saw Human Centipede 2 as a powerful French-style film of the style of "Man Bites Dog." Much as in Man Bites Dog the whole movie is an attack on sensational news coverage that desensitizes the public and idolizes the famous, Human Centipede 2 is a movie within a movie within a movie within a movie that ridicules society more than anything.

My first thought after Human Centipede 2 finished was, "Did this even happen? Was this all in the main villain's imagination?"

We frequently see images of the main villain through a TV-style window where the image is of us seeing the villain on TV. And the villain is constantly watching The Human Centipede on his computer and building a scrap book and fantasizing about it.

And the main villain in Human Centipede 2 keeps seeing people in his own security cameras, and it's never clear whether the scenes where he kills them is in his imagination or really happening. It's practically impossible that it's real.

And the scenes between his Mom and him are magnificent and moving, as are the first scenes between his neighbor and him or between his psychiatrist and him. Tom Six first shows the characters with the vaillain a helpless, quiet victim, as he's always shown where he meets people. Later scenes where the villain becomes a killer are unreal and purely fantasy.

That said, the Mother/Son bullying in Human Centipede 2 reminded me of another great movie called "The Experiment" in which Forest Whitaker lives under the thumb of his mother's oppression but blossoms into a bully just like her when put in the right situation. On the surface the arc of Human Centipede 2 is much like the arc of The Experiment; but I don't believe the villain in Human Centipede 2 ever got past the fantasy level.

More evidence that all the murders are simply fantasies of his is the fact the psychiatrist is sitting in the back seat of a car in the villain's garage he watches in the camera, and the psychiatrist says he would rather have sex with the midget (the vaillain). That's so improbable were it real, but highly probably were it all the vaillain's imagination.

In the end I think Tom Six made a brilliant and delightful attack on everyone's own expectations and prejudices. He used clever directing, smart story writing, good casting, a well developed villain and lots of surrealism. My final interpretation of the movie is that in the end nobody died, it was all his fantasy, and Tom Six made fun of everyone.

Ebert: I must have missed some nuances. Does your reading improve the experience of witnessing the cruelty and atrocities?

How is a better word to start a question than why. Whys are a tower of turtles.

Why do humans torture others? Ask the creators of Sex and the City.

The torment of the tortured reconfirm the power of the torturer. This answer will not satisfy you.

Only we know there are worse things than dying.

Dear Roger,

Your blog post on the work of Bruegel deeply touched me. For the last 8 years I have worked as a therapist with refugees who have gone through years of war, and I have heard of tortures so exquisitely sadistic that I am amazed at the cleverness and creativity of human beings to harm each other, especially the weakest of us (of whom we should be the most protective).

As I read your blog, I could feel within me something I have felt before -- a sadness so deep it goes beyond tears. Over the years I've used Buddhist meditation to help me from numbing out and escaping this feeling, for I so desperately want to pretend that this does not happen in my world. Yet it is so essential in my work to witness the narrative of my patients, to feel this sadness and to sit in silence and grieve with those who suffer so deeply from the cruelty of other human beings.

I have found in working with my patients that it is equally essential to hold them, their torturers, and myself in a state of compassion. I like to tell myself that I do it for the healing of my patients and of the world, but in reality I do it even more to heal myself, for my soul is assaulted too by the witnessing of their suffering.

I think what I am trying to say in this poorly written comment is this: I want to honor your grief at the awareness of how we can treat each other, to share my gratitude that you are a man who does not hide from the suffering of others, and to offer you my experience of compassion for your comfort . . . and mine.

Peace,

Mary

Ebert: It is never enough to simply hurt someone. You must humiliate their souls.

Hi, Roger. With regard to: "Does your reading [of Human Centipede 2] improve the experience of witnessing the cruelty and atrocities?"

Absolutely. The fact that it's all imaginary and in someone head--a fictional person's head to boot--makes all the difference in the world. The difference between real and imaginary is the difference between atrocity and fiction.

In the news when I hear about drone strikes by the U.S. in foreign countries, I view them as the U.S. blowing up houses, huts and villagers to get at someone they accuse as being bad but didn't even put on trial. I view it as atrocities.

In the news when I hear about the U.S. wanting to build a fence between Mexico and the U.S. I view it as nationalized discrimination and dehumanization. I view it as an atrocity.

In the news when I hear about Fed bailing out U.S. and foreign banks (such as the 16.1 trillion dollars they gave to their crony banks and corporations between 2007 and 2010 including 5 trillion to the foreign institutions of South Korea, Scotland, etc.) I view it as impoverishing the U.S. to where normal citizens who can't even afford health care and houses have to provide welfare to rich corporations. I view it as an atrocity.

When I consider the fact that about a million U.S. citizens are in jail for simple things like possession of marijuana which grows naturally or for selling raw milk which is also natural and safe, when I consider the trillion dollars spent in various forms of mal-thought prohibition and freedom taken from normal citizens and governments having financial incentive to cease houses, cars and more, I view it as an atrocity.

Roger, the news, the real news, the real life, is where the atrocities are. Fiction is just fiction. Fiction even allows people to discuss ideas. It's not an atrocity.

Ebert: That doesn't much cheer me.

p.s. Roger, I forgot to mention a movie I see you did not review but that I think you would very much appreciate. It's called "Sleep Dealer" and was directed by Alex Rivera in 2008. It's Spanish with English subtitles, and although it's science fiction, it really isn't. It comes truer literally day by day. I don't even want to say what it's about because part of the strength of the movie is making the connections yourself.

I won't link a trailer because the trailer doesn't do it justice, but I think you'd appreciate this movie. Thanks.

Hi, Roger.

*Smiles* The real life atrocities don't cheer me, either. But I do get a little cheer the more I see liberty fighters getting a foothold at least in voice if not in success yet.

I get cheer that there are politicians like Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich that have a long history of fighting for freedom.

I get cheer that in spite of evil talking heads that perpetuate the Democrat/Republican illusion but maintain the power of global corporations (talking heads like O'Riley, Hannity or Maddow) that there are some shows gaining in popularity that still rail against all the lies (such as Judge Napolitano's Freedom Watch).

I get cheer that there are growing numbers of people protesting in the streets against the Fed and Crony Banks and Institutions even though police are arresting them by the hundreds.

I get cheer that even though Obama refused to pull out of Iraq, he's finally being kicked out of Iraq by Iraq.

I get cheer that even though there's a powerful minority of Americans that want to blame Mexicans for their unemployment there's a growing number that are railing against the real causes, the crony politicians and their crony corporations and banks.

I get cheer that even though the U.S. is sending SWAT teams against organic farmers or fining little girls that sell lemonade $500 there are periodicals like Reason Magazine that blow the whistle on the tyrants.

Roger, I don't get cheer thinking about all the innocent people sitting in U.S. jails or being killed by U.S. military. I don't get cheer by how much power the military, prison and financial industrial complexes have over all the normal people. But I get cheer that the normal people are finally finding a voice. And I get cheer that maybe (just maybe) things will start getting better before it's too late.

You will not, perhaps, agree Roger, but man is born with the ability to be cruel. His is never a neutral mind, the blank page scholastics would make him out to be. He is not infinitely perfectible as some humanists believe. Education will not cure him of his cruelty. In fact, education, science, and technology have only given him new ways and excuses to be cruel. Not that any of these things in of themselves are cruel, but in the hands of man, that's what they become.

Reply to: I'm going to go back to my first comment to you....Why don't make your case?

First, i'm waiting to see if Tom Dark accuses the Screen Actors Guild of being paid by the government to demonize Islam. I mean, I'm curious. Where did that particular delusion come from? Is Tom so entrenched in government conspiracies that he sees them everywhere?

Reply to: ALL knowledge comes from what does NOT exist, because knowledge is about what things are NOT, rather than what they ARE. - Keith

I disagree.

One of my points was, religion teaches you to think in terms of a Delusional world... where any random thought that comes into your mind is valid.

I was just watching Sunday morning Tv. The sermon was, "God keeps promises. God is truth. If you disobey God, there will be consequences."

Three fairly general statements, all of which are completely false.

Did God keep a promise to kill so many Americans with cancer? Or, did it happen for reasons that have nothing to do with the supernatural?

"God is truth" is a sales pitch, a random thought that doesn't hold up to the light of day.

A truthful statement is, IF you start from the simple "God does not exist"... you come up with conclusions that are valid and make sense.

If you start from "God wants you to die fighting the cause of Islam" and "the only way to reach Paradise is to die while fighting the enemies of Islam"... you get cruelty. That's one place where cruelty comes from.

Another thought: now that we have the profile, what do we do with it? How do we convince Iran to release their prisoners?

Major Hollywood studioes could make trailers that shows Mohammed, in a time-travel movie like "Back to the Future," Show Mohammed as a 52 year old man having sex with a 9 year-old girl. Show him murdering hundreds of prisoners by cutting off their heads.

Release the trailers on the Internet.

Show the kind of movie that Hollywood could make... if Iran continues to wage war against the international film community,.

Not sure that would work... but, how would the clerics who run the Islamic Republic of Iran react to a trailer that shows Mohammed in the flesh?

Do cowards back down?

Something to add to the profile: I have a CD called "Matt Monro at the Movies." I listened to it driving back from LA a week ago. I'm still hearing it. Islam has children listeing to prayers five times a day. They can never get the message "out of their heads." Previously, I said it would be OK to take children to visit a mosque. I retract that. Never let your children anywhere near a mosque. Islam is based on a form of brainwashing that most people, including me, don't understand.

If children are subjected to the brainwashing before children acquire the ability to tell truth from lies, then it may become a permanent handicap, impossible to fix.

I hope I'm not duplicating... haven't had time to read all of the comments...

You ask a very important question - why are we so cruel? We do seem to be among the few species on this planet that goes out of our way to hurt others, to take joy in their pain and misery, and to engage in torture and other evil actions.

Yet, I might equally pose an opposing question - why are we so kind? If there is something "wrong" with us that allows deplorable behavior, what is "right" about us that moves us to feed the poor and take care of the sick and house the homeless. Such acts of charity are as equally unknown in the animal world as our acts of cruelty.

Thanks for posing the question. Your blogs articles are a favorite read!

Roger, I was thinking about this post as I was in church today. Our sermon, last in the series on the Fruits of the Spirit, was on "Goodness".

Our pastor, who literally drips with goodness and optimism and kindness, started off with the biblical case that we are not naturally good.

A little humor to open up with: what was his first clue that we are not naturally good? He became a parent! Children don't need to be taught to be bad, they need to be taught to be good. Okay, that's an overgeneralization. But it has some basis in all of our experience with parenthood.

All have sinned and fall short of the Glory of God. (Romans 3:23) We need the tempering of God, and specifically the Holy Spirit, and the influence of the church to be good over the course of our lives.

I know there are many on these threads that would disagree with that statement. I know my nature, and agree with it more and more over the course of my life.

During the sermon I learned that two of the good men of our church, average men but great in the life of our local church for decades each, have passed away in the last week. God rest their souls. I think, knowing both as I did for some 20 years now, each of them would agree with that statement.

That the influence of the Christian churches is waning in America is to our detriment on the question of cruelty. I believe that.

Based upon your review, I drove to Chicago and the Music Box Theater to see this film. It is the best film that I have seen so far this year. Perhaps it was intended to serve as a warning to us that the seeds of cruelty are watered with complacency.

Because we have so much energy we don't know what to do with. We as humans have a great deal of energetic emotion within us, and only some of us learn how to properly use it. When we learn how to use that emotion and energy and sense of wonder, we create amazing works of art. I think the best example of this is Jackson Pollock, whose every stroke and splatter exhibits visable anguish and emotion and life. Sadly, we aren't taught how to channel these feelings and rages, and those of us who learn how to teach ourselves. So most of us end up becoming cruel and violent, getting out the energy in the simplest and most convenient way possible. If only we learned to be artists instead of soldiers. These emotions are the flow of energy from the universe surging through us, and we can either use them positively or negatively. Unfortunately, the negative path is the easiest and the one that comes most naturely to many. But there are some of us who are lucky enough to not be burndened with a tendency towards violence, and those people become artists.

I think Elizabeth Gilbert (and Tom Waits, whose fantastic new album I got in the mail today!!) sums it up a lot better than I can in this great talk, and speaks about some other great points too:

http://www.ted.com/talks/elizabeth_gilbert_on_genius.html

Thanks for another great post, Roger!

By the way, this is totally unrelated, but is something I forgot to mention in my last comment. I saw Citizen Kane for the first time last week. It is experiences like this that are why I love film as much as I do.

Ebert: Oh, yeah.

To sum up my points in one sentence....(pehaps another immortal quote)....

The less you have mentally, the more you'll want physically;and the less you have phsyically,the more you'll want mentally.

Ah, probably could be said better...

So, these people that are cruel don't really have anything going on mentally so they try to take it from the physical world. It's also true that it is often found that murderers have had brain damage from having hit their head at some point in life. When you go to a psychiatrist they will ask you if you ever hit your head...which is their way of notating a susceptibility/probability etc. towards violence.

The answer to your question - we are fallen creatures, living in a fallen world.
Remember the words of the tow truck driver in "Grand Canyon" when he is facing the gang wanting to rob the guy in his broken-down car- " this is not the way it's supposed to be"

This is a broken world. We are mired in our self-centeredness and (dare I say it on this blog?)- our sin.
But sometimes God's common Grace shines through in the midst of the brokenness and gives us beauty, and love, and redemption.
The shame of it all is that we take His Grace for granted and think we are entitled, and never give Him the gratitude He deserves.

When will the film come out on demand or DVD?

"What is the engine for child abuse? I don't understand it."

Few people do . . . few really want to know. Most prefer to believe that the extremes of child abuse are the inexplicable result of monsters being born in the guise of human beings. But this too easy explanation removes the possibility of change from the equation. I don't believe in monsters myself. My mother abused me, but she was no monster. Nor was she evil. She was simply passing on to me what had been done to her in a futile effort to be rid of the repressed rage that she had been forced to bottle up as a child--rage at her mistreatment and humiliations--rage about which she had no conscious inkling yet still sought ravenously for some outlet. I was that outlet, as she had been for her mother. "Parents, in beating their children, are trying to regain the power they once lost to their own parents"--so said Alice Miller (paraphrased slightly here) in her book "For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Childrearing and the Roots of Violence." It is more complicated than that, but this is at the core of the mechanism that has forged the links in the chain of child abuse stretching back millennia. If you would like some amazing insight into this complicated "engine of child abuse," than you could do no better than to read Miller's book.

I very much enjoyed your blog entry here as I always do your writings (though I don't always agree, naturally :-).

Predictably, many comments here are jumping on the "blame religion" bandwagon. But blaming religion when people do harm is as bad as radical fundamentalists using it as an EXCUSE to do harm. Both are scapegoating. Neither answer Mr. Ebert's question.

Friedrich Nietzsche (an atheist) often justified murder, cruelty and a lack of morality. A certain Adolf Hitler held Nietzche's writings in high regard... As did George Bernard Shaw (another atheist) who once suggested that certain undesirables should be marched into gas chambers. The common thread is arrogance. "I'm above that common rabble because _________." Or, "My race is above the rest of humanity because _________."

So it would seem the poison of humanity is not religion or God. If someone takes advantage of a religion to perform cruelty, is it the fault of the religion? Or is it the fault of the people who too readily accept an EXCUSE to be cruel? If it is the latter, then I stress again that religion offers no answers to Mr. Ebert's question. It's just a safe scapegoat so you self proclaimed intellectuals can say, "It's not MY fault. It's that common rabble! Blame them."

I spent time with some Catholic friars who have built soup kitchens, homeless shelters, hospitals, cancer centers, Etc... Yet not a single GAS CHAMBER!

understand why it is that below
on earth all men are not friends ?
The identity of your misfortunes
and your weaknesses, the need
you have of each other, the short-
ness of your life, the spectacle of
the grandeur of other worlds, and
the comparison between them and
your littleness, all this should
combine to unite you in brother-
hood, like the passengers of a
vessel threatened with shipwreck.
There, there is neither love, nor
hate, nor ambition, no one is
debtor or creditor, no one is great
or little, no one is handsome or
ugly, no one is happy or unfor-
tunate. The same danger sur-
rounds all and my presence makes
all equal. Well, then, what is the
earth, seen from this height, but
a ship which is foundering, a city
delivered up to an epidemic or a
conflagration?

--- Alarcon, The friend of death

(freely available here - download buttons on the left side)
http://www.archive.org/details/frienddeathafan00alargoog

I'll offer a simple explanation. Forgive me if someone has already suggested it as I haven't yet read all of the replies.

Perhaps we are cruel as a way to hedge our bets. Many religions inform us of a horrible place that sinners and evil people will go after death where they will be, in effect, tortured for eternity. Anyone truly believing in such a destination for the wicked would probably have no use for cruelty as anything they could concoct would likely not pass muster compared to hell and would be redundant in any case. I posit that these torturers do not, truly in their hearts, believe in hell. Thus the unremarkable end of a person's corporeal existence can not be punishment enough for them. They must send their charges off with a parting gift of pain and misery for fear of no supernatural torturer waiting for them on the other side.

The one thing all religions have in common is that they all claim the "other" religions are false.

Am I wasting my time when we attend the Presbyterian church Sunday mornings? I like singing the tenor parts to old hymns & the cookies taste good afterward.

At First Presbyterian, we (well, everyone but me, I think) pray for the people of Haiti & Japan, the family of my son's best friend, the country. The thing is: It never seems to do any good except make people feel better, or to feel like they are at least doing something.

My son's best friend died about 1 1/2 years ago. There were so many people praying for his recovery. His grandmother told us Christ was the Great Physician after she was informed he had little time left.

Another friend of mine from college was in an accident in 1993. I recall the physician (rightfully) telling his parents they needed to prepare themselves for his death. A mutual friend interrupted and reminded his parents we had been asking Jesus to heal him. The doctor responded, "No, really. He has one foot in the grave." The mutual friend retorted, "Jesus had two feet in the grave!"

If there is a God, S/he is extraordinarily cruel to allow things like this to happen. And they happen all the time, all over the world. Perhaps theists should consider the fact that we practice horrible cruelty as their best defense that we are made in His image.

As an aside:

Prayers' efficacy has been studied for a long time. The data is clear: It doesn't work any better than really hoping for an outcome. Or maybe the two worlds (Spiritual & Empirical) simply cannot exist together.

http://www.abelard.org/galton/galton.htm

Bill,
Reply to: "Much worse, actually. There's a dumbing-down that goes with organized religion. They expect you to sit and listen... when you could be speaking out against the nonsense."

We have been in Ebert World together for a few years now. Have you no memory of me speaking out against religious nonsense? How many times have I debated creationists here? One hundred, maybe?

Reply to: "One point that you don't seem to get... Islam is NOT a religion."

Please clarify for me: How did you get the above from what I wrote? I went over my comments in their entirety and neither Islam nor my lack of understanding about Islam seemed to be there.

From one burgeoning agnostic / atheist to another militant atheist: Lighten up, man. You don't have to be so mean. Logic and evidence is on our side & you will get more flies with honey than vinegar.

Ebert: Randy uses lotsa both. He's a sweet guy except when he gets on politics.

Sorry, another thought:

I see some parallels in some religious tenets and the ridiculous premise in "Anonymous." To believe that Edward de Vere must be Shakespeare because Shakespeare wasn't well-bred is classist. And stupid. Yet so many people believe it.

Breeding does not lead someone to write something as beautiful:

"But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief
That thou, her maid, art far more fair than she."

But then again,
How the hell does someone write something this good with divine intervention?

Ebert: If we can understand it, humans can write it.

Hi Roger,

Ebert: Randy uses lotsa both. He's a sweet guy except when he gets on politics.

I'll say thank you on the first part, and not disagree terribly on the second part. I do get pent up and intense on politics, though not more so than those coming back at me, I hope.

Politics scares the crap out of me right now. It is serious business, affecting all of lives in ways that seem precarious and out of control. Where are we headed?

I know I've used this word several times lately, but the questions before us right now in our divided politics seem "existential". Meaning, are we going to exist as a community and nation much further? It's not a given. Can we survive the debt load we've incurred? The divisions on social issues and war? Or, will we Balkanize within our own geography? I don't know what you are reading on those topics, but I'm reading Steyn, Buchanan, and others and I'm not optimistic about where we are headed. If I may, I would recommend highly Steyn's "After America" to you.

Pleading guilty on intense. If others are not, I wonder if they are not paying attention.

Do you ever think of any of the topics we discuss here on your excellent Journal are "existential" for the United States in the way that I do?

Thank you, as always, for giving us articles that start us off on these threads. And I always appreciate your support for me on here.

Reply to: I often wonder if you're suffering from some form of monomania in regards to religion

When it comes to religion, I see things as they really are. I use the term "Delusional" because it is accurate, but I could substitute more vivid words just as easily.

The Italian magazine Espresso asked Fr. Gabriele Amorth, the leading exorcist in Italy, for his opinion on Satanism and the way to stop it.

Question – What are the links between Satanists and the Devil?

Amorth – There are two types: those who adore the Devil, celebrate Satanic masses, have their own priests and hierarchy; and those who d