Some People are Just Jerks

Something happened recently that caused me to rethink a huge chunk of my philosophy towards human behavior.  It wasn't the event that is important but rather what I took away from it.

I used to believe that 99% of people were inherently good. I thought that there was only the 1% of humans that were so bad it was thorough to their core. I still believe that, to a point. I do think that most people in general possess a conscience that will kick in during serious situation. Situations like murder, rape, and robbery, ect... In general most of us instinctively know those things are wrong, and it would be hard for anyone to even manipulate us into those actions.

But, what about less serious actions?

This is where it gets fuzzy.
For myself, I used to think that usually people do the right thing most of the time, unless they just don't know any better. That is where this incident comes in that changed all that. In a 24 hour period something clicked in my head. I realized that there are a lot (I hesitate to say majority) of humans that know better, could do better, but despite this do harmful things to others for no other reason than they can.

This was shocking to me. Perhaps at my age it should not be. I am not young.

It was such an odd, and kind of dark epiphany to me to realize that sometimes people are just jerks simply because they feel like it sometimes. There is some buy in in that they are often jerks in groups, which makes them feel included against some common denominator, but sometimes it's just them, all alone. No buy in to speak of. They just felt like being a f@cker. It served them in the moment. Maybe it made them feel powerful, or let off some anger they were carrying. I simply don't know.

If you're having a bad day, trying to figure out why someone slighted you, or said some unkind words, or was just hateful for no reason you could be dealing with someone that was feeling like a jerk at the moment, so they let their inner f@cker out. May have been that that person's default is a jerk, and they let their nice person out every now, and then, Who the hell knows. What I do know is that there are many, many people that seem to get a kick out of being nasty to others. There's really not much else to it.