It's hard to belong to a species that often acts with such berserk cruelty. We don't just cause each other horrible pain; we do it gratuitously, far beyond what's necessary to reach any of our conscious goals, and in fact to the point it's completely counterproductive for anything we believe we're trying to do.
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It appears that, for humans, once you've started down the road of hurting someone, you must continue. Indeed, you must hurt them even more to prove to yourself these people deserve to be hurt. That's because our psyche's Prime Directive is to preserve our self-image at all cost.
Due to the Prime Directive, when we hurt others our psyche tell us that our victims are dirty thieves. After all, they are trying to steal our most valuable possession: our self-image. And what do you do to dirty thieves? YOU PUNISH THEM. And when they try to make you feel bad about this new punishment, this just goes to show what giant dirty thieves they are, so you must PUNISH THEM MORE.
One of the commentators included this "joke" to further illustrate the point:
An Irishman has been bayoneted by a British soldier, and as the Mick dies slowly in a ditch the Brit kicks him over and over, cursing him and wishing him a painful, slow death. With his last breath the Irishman asks, "Why are you so angry at us?" The Brit leans down, whispers, "You swine, we will NEVER forgive you for what we've done to you."
Another commentor linked to an earlier Schwartz posting inspired by excerpts from a Molly Ivins piece:
[M]ost people have a very hard time forgiving those whom they have deeply wronged. I know that's sort of counterintuitive, but think about some of the bad divorces you have known. When we have done something terrible to someone, we often need to twist it around so it's their fault, not ours.
