Values, attitudes, behaviour

This chapter identifies the social, religious, political, economic, and cultural forces which facilitate cruelties. It reveals patterns of values, attitudes, and behaviour, beginning with the age-old stigmatizing of victims. Such negative labelling is implemented in policies of national inclusiveness: whom to regard as normal and worthy, as compared to policies of exclusiveness which designate whom to see as abnormal and unworthy. Even where notorious killers and torturers could be identified, the moral and cultural contexts of their acts require an examination, which includes cruelty to animals and violence to the environment. The chapter also looks at the evils of violent cultures, such as the security politics of Israel, Iran's authoritarian theocracy, America's love of imprisonment, and entrenched discrimination in the Indian caste system.

Explaining causes

This chapter addresses the causes of cruelty. It covers a continuum of explanations from the banality of evil to automaton-like behaviour in bureaucracies, from pleasures derived from sadism to the cruelties fostered by selfishness. The banality thesis identifies widespread acceptance of cruelties if legitimized by states, their governments, their policies and/or by other powerful institutions. Analysis of conditioned behaviour refers largely to operators of state and non-state organizations who keep the wheels of cruelty turning, yet such personnel usually remain invisible, inaccessible, and non-accountable. Completing the cruelty puzzles requires accounts of sadistic behaviour, which is embedded as much in cultures of violence as in the pathology of any one person. The explanations overlap but have distinct characteristics. The chapter also considers cruelty driven by managerial demands for efficiency, a powerfully addictive notion which is not value neutral, and looks at the civil war between Colombian government forces and Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) rebels in Colombia.

Humanitarian alternatives

This chapter focuses on humanitarian alternatives as a response to the persistence of cruelty worldwide. It explores the diverse forms of advocacy for a common humanity through literacy about non-violence and for the health-promoting values of creative, non-destructive uses of power. A common humanity refers to a quality of living, as in the enjoyment of political and economic rights, and to a set of values, as in the acknowledgement of responsibility to care for others. Commitment to 'humanity' includes a moral imperative to respect such rights and to live by such values and begins by assessing the ways in which power is exercised. Ultimately, the philosophy, language, and practice of non-violence offers the fulfilling alternative to a global fascination with punishment and other forms of violence. In commentary about the vision required to build an economy not based on inequalities and injustices, the chapter also assesses the place of technology, whether it is help or hindrance.

Cruelty as policy

This chapter assesses four ways cruelties have been formed and fomented in policies. It moves from cruelty as a deliberate motive to situations where it looks as though the architects of policies enabled cruelties to take place but did not direct them. Then come the denials and deception: who could possibly think that countries such as the United States, Russia, Israel, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia, Iran, or Myanmar would indulge in human rights abuses such as collective punishments, ethnic cleansing, floggings, torture, arbitrary imprisonment, targeted killings, and executions? Finally, there is collusion. Alliances are made with countries which commit cruelties but their allies behave as though this is nothing to do with them. When the United States ignores Israeli cruelty to Palestinian children, that is collusion. The European Union and the United Nations may also collude by silence which encourages perpetrators.