Yet in the 21st century, in the developed world, who needs to be harsh or hard-hearted, except in response to their own unhappiness or insecurity? In general, hurt people hurt people.
In my observation, “hurt people hurt people” is true, in the sense that people generally hurt others due to perceiving unfairness or injustice toward themselves. But the amount of output as a function of input varies greatly between different people, with some being magnanimous and pacific, and others having anger and violence on a hair-trigger. I think a lot of the variation is probably genetic, and it could well be that the more hair-trigger type of phenotype is not very adaptive in the 21st century, but those people clearly still exist. Does it really make sense to not make any distinctions along these lines, and apply “innocent” to everyone equally?
In my observation, “hurt people hurt people” is true, in the sense that people generally hurt others due to perceiving unfairness or injustice toward themselves. But the amount of output as a function of input varies greatly between different people, with some being magnanimous and pacific, and others having anger and violence on a hair-trigger. I think a lot of the variation is probably genetic, and it could well be that the more hair-trigger type of phenotype is not very adaptive in the 21st century, but those people clearly still exist. Does it really make sense to not make any distinctions along these lines, and apply “innocent” to everyone equally?