Understanding Cruelty

I understand people being mean to other people; I have been mean to other people. I am not proud of it; I look back on my moments of cruelty with shame, but I understand why I did it at the time. I can occupy the feeling of wanting to be mean to people, and the satisfaction that comes from it. I understand wanting to hurt people, and I understand vengeance. I am not proud to admit any of this. These are not easy feeling and not pleasant actions, but I understand them. I have occupied these spaces. Regrets or no, I understand meanness, cruelty, vengeance from all sides.

Where I struggle is with what I call the “turncoats.” I can understand people who do not know me who are mean to me. Yes, it makes me angry, but I get it. When the owner of the dog that Tibe bit said that she wanted Tibe banished from the neighborhood and put down, I could understand her feelings. I understand vengeance when one has been injured. (This is, of course, why I do not support the death penalty; if an intimate of mine were killed, I would want revenge; I would want to invoke the death penalty. I want society to protect me and others from my basest instincts.) I can understand abstracted cruelty; I can understand cruelty to others, to people unknown.

I cannot understand when people who are friendly, when people know one another in some way, turn and are mean and cruel to people they know. These turncoats cause me the most grief and pain. They lead me to not trust myself, my instincts, my ability to judge other people and the quality of their character. I think of the people who do not like gay people for religious reasons, of the people who will not serve people wedding cakes or officiate at weddings. I can understand this behavior. They do not know the people ordering cakes. They do not know the harm that they are causing to people, unless the people have been friendly, have known the truth about people’s lives, and then decide to be mean and exclusionary.

This is not to say that I do not understand conflict and disagreement. I do, but I cannot understand being mean to someone to whom you were formerly kind, to someone to whom you have shared the basic tenants of human engagement. The most painful experiences of my life have been when people I thought were friends took a moment of great pain to hurt me further. In one incident, days after returning from my mother’s funeral, someone who I considered a friend attacked me as self-aggrandizing and egocentric. I do not doubt that both of these things are true about me, but attacking me so soon after my mother’s death? Kicking me while I was down? This is not something I can cotton.

So, one of the most painful aspects of our Tiberius situation has been the people who turned on us. I understand the anger and the desire to hurt me and my family from the owner of the dog that Tibe bit. We deserve their anger and vengeance (though again I continue to believe that we do not live or want to live in a world where anger and vengeance shape our system of justice). What I do not understand is the people who I had been friendly with, the people with whom for years I have walked dogs, the people who I had given holiday gifts, the people with whom I have gone to theate events, how could they call animal control and organize people to request that Tibe be put down? What cruelty is that? How can I ever understand this capacity in humans? How can I trust my own ability to judge people in the future? How can I trust my ability to trust people? How can I live in a world where people can be so cruel to me and to other creatures?

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