“people are fundamentally bad and that’s why the world is so bad. people act in bad ways because they’re just bad people. there is a latent evil in everyone and that is humanity’s default state” -person who is not going to form solidarity with their community or perform mutual aid or figure out why cruelty truly happens in the world beyond the thought-terminating cliche they latch onto or ever even give a shit about helping the world in the first place
If you'd like a bit of a tonic for misanthropy, my friend has been really enjoying Humankind: A Hopeful History, which is basically all about how humans are actually kind of fundamentally decent. It covers a lot of stuff (including the actual sailing disaster that was the inspiration for Lord of the Flies - in reality, the boys formed a fully-functioning society while waiting to be rescued, they never fought and if one of them got upset he'd put himself in a time-out on the other side of the island until he cooled off, and when one of them broke his leg the others made an improvised splint so good that he healed without any issues), but my favorite of the anecdotes she's related to me is about how a vast, overwhelming majority of humans actually have a pretty hard time killing other humans.
The funniest examples of this come from militaries throughout history (at one point the American military discovered that only like 25% of their forces in Vietnam had any confirmed kills, for example (also remember I heard about this secondhand so my recall of specific stats might be off)). But the most remarkable thing came during the American Civil War, when it was discovered while reviewing armory logs that many, MANY firearms were being stored with multiple rounds having been rammed in the barrel. How come? Well, if you've been conscripted into an army and feel kind of Not Great about taking human life, what are you supposed to do? If you're in a battle and an officer notices you aren't firing, or are intentionally firing to miss, you could get court-martialled, imprisoned, and even executed. However, loading the firearms of the era was a complicated process involving retrieving bullets, pouring powder, and ramming, and took 1-2 minutes. And obviously someone who's loading their weapon can't FIRE said weapon! Anyways, there were apparently a LOT of rifles discovered to have two, three, or four bullets rammed down their barrels - one rifle was found with TWENTY-THREE bullets inside it.
