How often just yesterday, a person whose character seemed almost ideal to us shows unheard-of and unexpected cruelty towards others. If you analyze his behavior before such situations, you can find some indirect signs of cruelty and aggressive behavior of a person (hereinafter referred to as the subject). Let's look at what you should pay attention to when meeting a subject and communicating closely with him.
Everything is perfect.
You went on your first date, liked each other, and are making nice small talk. Your new chosen one is well-mannered, restrained, devoid of nervousness and calculates his every action. Stop! Everything is too perfect. It is very difficult to control every little detail of your behavior, especially when meeting a pleasant person for the first time. This means that the person has put on a mask and is trying to appear better than he really is. The question is, what is the purpose of this behavior? Is it a great desire to please or a reluctance to show your true self?
Egocentrism.
Everything must go according to the person’s plan and desire. He will never sacrifice personal pleasure in order to please another person. If he needs to accompany a loved one to an event, but misses his favorite auto race, he will choose the latter. We can say that this is ordinary selfishness, what does cruelty have to do with it? And despite the fact that in any situation where there is a choice between the interests of a person and his partner, he will choose his interests, even if, at the same time, the second one suffers (physically or psychologically). The inability to put oneself in the place of another and understand the harm caused is also cruelty, although not overt.
Mood.
The subject experiences sudden mood swings if things don't go the way he wants. Its internal state is completely dependent on external factors. He does not have self-sufficiency, self-control and independence, thanks to which a person behaves calmly and controls the situation (rather than the situation controlling him).
Expression of anger.
Frequent emotional outbursts, manifestations of anger, even in petty situations. Provoke a person into a conflict and see how he behaves. He may, because of a minor complaint, suddenly raise his voice, but quickly become the same. Or raise your tone at the waiter who brought the wrong dish. Or on public transport, rudely scold a person who stepped on his foot. The most truthful emotions last for the first couple of seconds, and then the person regains control over himself and becomes good-natured and calm. Therefore, carefully monitor your companion’s first reaction to provoking factors.
Impatience with other people's opinions.
The subject seeks, at any cost, to impose his point of view. And he gets very nervous if he deals with a confident and conscious person who has his own opinion on everything. Providing advice and guidance is a desire to control someone else's life. But a cruel person does not recognize the will of others and a point of view other than his own. If your friend begins to nervously prove something, while interrupting and not letting you get a word in, this is a bad sign. In future relationships, he will control every step of his other half, and impose absolutely everything - from the style of clothing, social circle and ending with a value system.
The man is a pathological liar. Because of the fear of not being accepted, of showing his true colors, he lies, constantly looks for excuses for his antics and makes others to blame for everything. The comrade does not like to talk about his misdeeds, or finds excuses. As in the situation:
- Darling, where were you yesterday?
- It's a lie! Who told you?
Unusual situations.
You can learn about unusual actions that the interlocutor performed. Pay attention to the following: participation in extreme situations in which the interests of other people (animals) are affected, all kinds of practical jokes on acquaintances who at the same time experienced fear, resentment, and disappointment. He himself may accidentally mention such adventures.
Being forced to perform certain sexual activities without regard for the other partner's wishes. And even vice versa, knowing about a person’s reluctance to do something, the desire to achieve it at any cost. The subject has no internal boundaries, and each time he will invent more and more sophisticated sexual behavior until an unforeseen situation occurs in which someone gets hurt.
Behavior with other people.
Intentionally provoking conflict situations that cause behavior in society. The subject chooses a victim who is weaker than him (physically, mentally), and with equals he tries to behave with restraint and control his actions. Remember, have you ever had situations when, in a dangerous situation (bullies in the alley, aggression of wild dogs, etc.) your companion behaved suspiciously and showed cowardice?
For example, you were walking holding hands, and a crowd of young people passed by and asked for a smoke. And at the same time, your young man’s hand twitched, indicating fear and unpreparedness to defend himself. If passers-by demanded money, your companion could well leave you and run away. The most interesting thing is that such a person will then find a million reasons to justify his behavior, ranging from a rush to catch the last tram to a sharp premonition of the iron suddenly turning on at home.
Behavior in the family.
In a relationship, a person strives to take a dominant position, while humiliating the dignity of loved ones. If he is not rebuffed, he becomes convinced that his behavior is correct and escalates the abuse. An indirect sign of cruelty in the family can be a biased attitude towards children, in which it is important not to understand the situation, but rather to find the child’s guilt and a reason for subsequent punishment.
It is very difficult to immediately identify the hidden cruelty of an interlocutor. This can only be done when a stressful situation arises in which a person cannot control himself and behaves naturally. If you really want, you can deliberately create such a situation in order to see the reaction of a new acquaintance. In any case, if a person’s behavior contains even several of the points described in this article, it is worth taking a closer look at it more closely and objectively. And draw conclusions based on further communication with him.
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Human society has been constantly and intensively developing for many centuries. One era gives way to another, progress in all spheres of activity has elevated man to the pedestal of the dominant species on planet Earth.
One thing is bad: everything changes on the path of progress, but no one, with all their aspirations, strengths and capabilities, could either ban, overcome or abolish cruelty. This character trait, like many others, manifests itself in different situations, changing a person to unpredictable consequences.
What is cruelty?
Cruelty is selfish selfishness, envy, hatred and malice towards other people, towards life and towards oneself. This is the result of a lack of success in achieving one’s own goals and objectives with intentional or accidental harm to everything around.
It's no secret: what goes around comes around - cruelty begets cruelty. Causing harm to everything around in order to gain benefit for themselves, people do not think about the consequences that will not take long to arrive.
Forms of cruelty
Cruelty has different forms of manifestation: inflicting physical pain on a living being without any pity or compassion, offensive words, all kinds of actions and even inaction, and often unhealthy fantasies. She finds a loophole in straightforwardness and stubbornness, in mockery and deceit, in anger and unfriendliness, in intolerance for the mistakes of others.
The worst thing is when cruelty brings moral or physical pleasure. This is already sadism. Moreover, people, animals, plants, buildings, monuments, transport, places of leisure, etc. suffer from the harmful consequences.
Reasons for cruelty
People are not born cruel. In society there have always been norms of behavior, ethics and morality, on the border of which cruelty lay dormant. Abusive people become abusive for many reasons:
- High or low self-esteem. Dissatisfaction with life and yourself.
- The concepts of morality and morality have lost their power.
- Self-affirmation in a distorted form as a misunderstanding of methods of self-preservation.
- Childhood fears that persist into adulthood among people who faced indifference, cruel punishments and a strict upbringing regime in childhood.
- Demonstration of one's greatness and power through humiliating, mocking words, oppression and suppression, violence, murder. Sadism is the highest form of cruelty.
- Pride and, as a result, a feeling of revenge.
- Hiding personal complexes due to inferiority and weakness.
- Manifestation of inhumanity in inaction, taking pleasure in it, deliberate refusal to help.
Acceptable Cruelty
To better understand what cruelty is, we need to consider it as a reaction to intolerable circumstances that threaten human existence. And the more fierce they are, the more the response will go off scale.
The psychology of cruelty is a fine line on which good and evil are balanced. Is it possible to be a harmless, sympathetic, compliant person for everyone if you are faced with meanness, injustice, humiliation and insults? I think no. But the cruel are feared, shunned, and sometimes even respected.
A tough person is a strong personality. Kindness cannot be opposed to cruelty if human life depends on it. Therefore, cruelty should be developed not for violence, but in order to resist it.
Why do cruel people exist? Man by nature is a predator. If you look back at the whole history, you can’t count the wars with the most brutal destruction of all living things. Therefore, in any developed society, laws are necessary, the violation of which is fraught with severe punishment. Cruelty is an integral part of life, which means you need to learn to live and fight with it, and look for new models of behavior.
Examples of cruelty in everyday life
Every person has at least once asked what is also cruelty, examples of which are found all the time. All media are simply replete with reports of outrages and violence. Television, radio, the press, the Internet, fiction and scientific literature, history textbooks - everywhere you can encounter examples of cruelty.
Any historical social system, kings, serfdom, wars, repressions - everything is permeated with cruelty. The cult of cruelty in religions, sacrifice, aggression, intimidation, abuse of power, sky-high crime rates and impunity, terrorism are also cruelty.
In family life, examples of cruelty include suppression of will, energy vampirism, creation of obstacles in the realization of intellectual, creative and professional opportunities, all kinds of prohibitions in planning offspring, budget, leisure, etc.
And, of course, cruelty to animals is an abyss from which it is impossible to get out. If a person is capable of offending a dumb creature, then it is difficult to call him a person.
What is cruelty in the children's world
Very often, cruelty manifests itself in children who are out of control. Child cruelty is primarily associated with unfavorable family relationships. Lack of respect between family members and frequent quarrels in the presence of children reduce the level of trust in parents, which results in anger and aggression in the child.
Attention, care, patience, and frankness will help protect children from cruelty. A personal role model is very important. The absence of cruelty on the part of parents towards children and people around them will raise respect in the family to the proper level. Seeing and appreciating a child’s personality, taking his opinions and interests into account, trying to see the world through his eyes is the key to success in the age-old problem of fathers and children.
How to overcome cruelty?
Knowing and understanding what cruelty is, you can take certain measures to protect yourself from it. Among them are simple methods and work on yourself:
- If you realize that cruelty is evil, then this is the first step towards solving the issue of getting rid of it.
- It is necessary to love yourself, people and the whole world around you, thereby getting rid of internal fears.
- You need to give to the world what you yourself want to receive: mercy, compassion, kindness.
- Increasing self-esteem, the desire for success, and social recognition is one of the effective ways to combat cruelty.
- Limiting your social circle. Surrounded by kind and decent people, the world becomes cleaner.
Thus, cruelty is caused by both external and internal factors that are ingrained in a person from childhood. We talked not only about our own ability to be cruel, but also about the very attitude of other people to such manifestations. Therefore, it is necessary to fight and prevent this character trait from childhood, instilling in the child kindness and mercy towards the people around him.
Cruelty is a characterological personality trait directly related to the moral and psychological aspects of the personality itself. Cruelty is an attitude expressed towards other people or animals, which implies rudeness, infliction of pain, inhumanity, insults and other forms of violence.
There is also another aspect of the definition of cruelty that includes taking pleasure in the suffering of another through actions that are unacceptable in a particular culture. Accordingly, the question of how to combat cruelty can be resolved from the perspective of differences in these approaches, and also have its own characteristics in different cultural communities. After all, what for some may be considered humiliating and unacceptable, for representatives of other cultures can bring pleasure and be revered or express respect.
Common to all manifestations of cruelty is the consciousness of destructive actions. This concept is separate from affective outbursts of aggression or harm caused by drugs or mental illness. Cruelty always means a person’s understanding of the consequences of his actions for another and awareness of their destructive direction.
Cruelty, as a habit, is inherent in people with certain mental disorders. The variety of deviations and their depth can be provoked by a person’s own psychological traumas, a critical moment in life circumstances, or in the process of prolonged ill-treatment of the person himself, as a result of which an adequate perception of the world was disrupted.
The tendency towards cruel behavior is inherent in every person, being the opposite. This means that those who are cruel are capable of generous acts of compassion, and those who have endured and pitied for a long time can be extremely cruel to those whom they previously protected. Until cruelty manifests itself in the active world, a person cannot claim to fully know himself and control his behavior.
The stronger and deeper a person hides his cruelty, the more forcefully it can break out. Thus, mothers who do not recognize this quality in themselves can abuse their children, children can pry at the eyes of live kittens, and surgeons can perform operations without anesthesia.
What is cruelty
Cruelty is often synonymous with aggression, but these concepts cannot replace each other. filled with feelings (fear, hunger, self-defense, possessiveness), and cruelty is empty. It personifies complete indifference to the feelings and needs of others, a lack of understanding that another may be hurt, sad or offended. Cruelty is inherent only to humans and has nothing to do with the animal world; there is pure aggression, which always reflects the needs of reality, be it getting food or defending one’s territory. No animal is capable of causing suffering to others for its own pleasure.
Many believe that cruelty is aimed at maintaining the uniqueness of one's own ego and exclusivity by exerting strength and power over others. Others believe that cruelty is a way of defense, anticipating possible blows from a stronger opponent or gradually weakening him with constant attacks. The theory of psychotraumatic events represents cruelty as a certain shell of insensitivity surrounding an overly vulnerable person who, unable to cope with injustice and the resulting pain, has completely turned off his sensitivity to the world. At the same time, the same vulnerable core of personality remains inside, and if you get to it through all the barriers of cruelty, you may encounter a frightened child in need of support.
Cruelty always reflects dissatisfaction with oneself or the manifestations of one’s life, which brings others to account instead of changes on one’s part. This is a trait that hides deep internal problems, such as excessive vulnerability and complexes, attempts to demonstrate strength that does not exist.
A cruel person is perceived as strong and almost omnipotent (due to lack of sensitivity and decreased moral principles), but this trait is not positive and strong among all others. Since there are no internal and external restraining factors (more precisely, sensitivity to them), the manifestations become stronger each time. So, at first a person can insult others, then slap them on the head, then beat them to the point of fractures and complex bruises, and if everything is not stopped forcibly at this stage, then cruelty takes the form of torture, sadism and murder. Thus, it is a self-accelerating tragedy that often ends in crime.
Abusive people usually have difficulty communicating, have no loved ones, but have a huge baggage of internal pain points. Such people leave themselves with their problems, and their inner world constantly hurts, perhaps this is why sensitivity to other people's pain disappears.
The only period of manifestation of cruelty as a norm is the short period of childhood, when the child learns to control his own emotional sphere and is busy actively exploring the world. At certain stages, there is a need to inflict pain on others, so that through personal experience an understanding of renunciation of this will come, responses will be received and the consequences will be realized. Problems begin when this period ends, but cruelty remains.
Reasons for cruelty
Cruelty has many faces in its manifestations, but there is not a single person who has not encountered it. Some people are luckier and only hear about it in the news, while others live there permanently. There are as many causes of violent behavior as there are cases, but they can all be divided into several categories.
The most common reason is dissatisfaction with one's life, in which the accumulation of stress and irritation requires an outlet. Usually, those who are closest and least protected become such a lightning rod (in families these are children, at work these are subordinates, in deserted places these are animals and tree branches). This state of mixed anger and powerlessness needs psychological adjustment, because... over time leads to psychosomatic disorders (usually the cardiovascular system) and disrupts the social interaction of the individual.
This is followed by misunderstanding or indifference to the feelings of the one who is harmed. Often people cannot understand how they are causing harm through their words and actions, especially if they are not told about it. In situations where the person does not have serious emotional disturbances, responsibility for the abuse lies with both. If you are unpleasant, hurt, offended, but you continue to pretend that everything is normal, neither directly nor indirectly making it clear that such treatment hurts you, then the other person will not be able to find out about this telepathically, moreover, he may believe that that this is the kind of treatment you like.
Cruelty, as displaced aggression, increasingly manifests itself with the advent of society and its norms and rules. When a person does not have the opportunity to show dissatisfaction and aggression, defending his point of view in front of an authoritarian boss, then there is a high probability that he will break down in the family. If upbringing in a family is built on controlling one’s feelings and complete submission, then over time such a person will show cruelty in all other available places. This behavior may indeed look like cruelty, unreasonable, but in fact it is displaced aggression and requires finding constructive ways of implementation.
If in childhood a person was deprived of the experience of pain and did not acquire an understanding of the consequences of his actions, then cruel manifestations can occur quite often in his behavior, without malicious intent, but solely from a lack of understanding. This condition is similar to pathological deviations in the psyche, developmental disorders and decline.
The most terrible cause of cruelty in terms of its consequences is the desire to take revenge for the pain suffered. The harmful consequences of this category are due to the fact that a person chooses the most painful and terrible ways to get even with the offender - from emotional to physical, often stretching it out over a long period of time and striking the most sensitive places. This happens when a person’s own pain inside has burned out all remaining feelings and leads him to madness.
The latter causes of cruelty are the most difficult and long-lasting in their rehabilitation, as well as the perception of the world laid down from childhood. A person who was brought up in cruel conditions believes that this is not only the norm, but also a manifestation of love, and correcting such a worldview requires enormous effort, time and does not always end successfully.
Types of cruelty
Types of cruelty can be distinguished by the object at which it is directed - towards people and animals (usually this division is used in legal aspects to impose punishment under a certain article). Another system that distinguishes types of cruelty is based on its manifestation and severity.
Thus, there is hidden cruelty when a person does not act directly. This can take the form of snarky remarks that look like praise but are belittling, or accidentally spilling hot coffee on someone else's lap. Open cruelty, as the opposite of the first, is usually a bolder manifestation and a harbinger of negative consequences. Here, the previously gained experience plays a big role, which remained painful, and then a person, at the slightest reminiscent situations, can react with increased aggressiveness, even when something seemed to him. But besides such delicate moments, open cruelty includes infliction of physical suffering, emotional violence and bullying, deliberate humiliation and other manifestations. The legislative framework provides for punishment specifically for open cruelty, since it is the only provable and the most dangerous of all types.
Justified also refers to manifestations of cruelty, when a person perceives everything through certain filters, finds explanations for this, but stubbornly does not want to look at reality. Presenting everything in gloomy colors and shifting the emphasis to the bad side can spoil the life of both the person himself and those around him, in addition, it forms a certain type of perception of the world, where everyone is considered an enemy or plotting something, which means they do not deserve mercy. Another manifestation of minor cruelty includes constant mockery, teasing, calling with offensive nicknames and other small but destructive daily manifestations.
Various experts offer different ways to deal with cruelty: this could be imprisonment, compulsory or voluntary psychiatric treatment, psychotherapeutic consultations, a change in activity, adjustment of the education process, direct conversation with the designation of unacceptable relationships. It all depends on the form and severity of manifestation of a given personality trait in life.