There is nothing worse in a human being than cruelty, and yet it has never been more justified than now.
Consciously inflicting harm on a weaker being to cause any kind of pain or harm is a common practice, a propensity of man, at least, since Cain killed Abel.
People, institutions, states and religions use it to prosper and justify it for the common good, the general interest, thus diluting the border between good and evil.
Machiavelli considered that it is better to govern from cruelty than from indulgence and today there is no leader who does not pay attention to him.
Cruelty is evident in dictatorships. The emptiness that surrounds the tyrant favors her. It is a void that fear has opened. The fear of those subjected to losing their heads, but also of the courtiers of falling into disgrace if they disagree. Inequality reigns in this void. The more the leader is idolized, the greater the inequality, the more the void widens and cruelty thrives.
Cruelty is also evident in free and democratic societies. It not only manifests itself in isolated cases, but is a current that gains strength day by day. Populisms, for example, are genuinely cruel. They attack minorities and sacralize an exclusive ideology. Its message, loaded with hatred and greed, penetrates every home, dividing families and society.
Social networks increase the cruelty that resides in political ideas, in the interpretation of laws and the performance of any collective activity because they create a vacuum around the aggressor similar to what an autocrat can have.
Every troll and every idiot moves in the networks with impunity and the distance of the master over the slave. Its impact on the social body is devastating. They keep ordinary people from the basic knowledge they need to understand the world. They radicalize her.
Every day there are more citizens at the extremes, happy in their ignorance and overflowing with cruelty.
A political leader or a media businessman fears nothing more than snubbing them, asking their bases to withdraw after having ordered them to occupy the streets. You have to have special courage to put the genie back in the lamp. Who dares?
Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, retires regretting having created the Trump monster. Covering up and amplifying his lies has been cruel, but also beneficial. Murdoch has made a lot of money from the ratings generated by Trumpism, and his last-minute lamentation demonstrates the ties that link cruelty with hypocrisy and progress.
The despot becomes depressed when he realizes that his life is not going to have the historical significance he thought and he usually dies killing. Putin, for example, may do so.
The conqueror, however, has almost nothing beyond his military and repressive force. He can subjugate a people, but not transform their behavior. He is Unamuno's “you will win but you will not convince.”
Today it is still much easier to win than to convince. The loss of trust in politicians and the media seems unstoppable. Who can trust the ruling class in Europe, China, the United States, India or any country in the world? What happens in a rule of law when there is more cruelty in the punishment than in the crime committed? How many bosses still think that they have to be a jerk to their employees to get things done?
As long as inequality is maintained, that is, the increasingly greater distance between the narrators and those told, cruelty will continue to be reproduced both at the top and at the base of the social pyramid. The French banlieues show us this every few months.
The arrogance of power is not cured by promises of equality but by examples of modesty. Nor is it cured by appealing to the common good. Under this excuse hides the arbitrariness and vanity of the powerful.
The just leader will never be arbitrary. The magnanimous, yes. The drama for all of us is that this righteous leader can also be cruel.
Just as the good citizen does not have to be a good person, the just leader does not have to be pious.
It is the laws and material needs that keep us together as a society, not the morality of the State or of each of us. At the same time, however, there is no doubt that society advances from the sum of anonymous and individual morals and heroism.
I think, for example, of Iranian women, of the courage we must have to resist and denounce, to try to change what seems immutable, but also to live in resignation and die without fanfare, satisfied with having been normal in a world which is not.
People who resist cruelty convince even if they do not succeed. They are braver than the powerful and their defeat is only temporary. His is the definitive version of history. They make us better and, yet, it is so difficult for us to see them.
