The hypothesis (or at least hidden, shadow belief <— IRONY) of a lot of nasty horrible vicious little Gits (trust me, I’ve talked to some of them) is that human beings are all selfish and evil at the core, it’s just a matter of how far you have to push them to get there. This brings up a number of questions:
Why would you want to do that? What makes you so miserable that you need (seek) to prove that everyone else is just living a facade; that everyone else is as horrible as you are, you’re just being “honest”?
How do you explain that, for most people, it takes a great degree of pushing for this to happen (See ‘Saw’…and all its sh1t remakes/facsimiles), whereas the same people do truly good things (altruistic, generous, compassionate, caring, loving) with little or no “prodding”? I mean, Hell, I bet with enough prodding even some Gits would react with some level of basic decency. By your logic, that would make humanity essentially good, would it not? Since it requires far less prodding? Get the fck over it: you’re not honest examples of humanity, you’re scumbags looking for company. No thanks. To the one in ten thousand of you that are Nietzschean philosophers…sorry for lumping you in.
I mean, I’m sure if you treated any animal horribly enough and put it in a horrible enough situation, you would achieve the desired reaction. But that’s cruelty, you see. Meaningless sadism…not “science”, “philosophy”, “honesty”, or any of the other words you mistakenly apply to yourself and who/what you are/believe. How is it any different when the animal is a human being?
Answer: It’s not. Your self-delusion merely allows you to live with the fact that you’re a scumbag by telling yourself “Well, everyone is…” when that’s simply not the case.
Happy New Year!