Why Do People Hurt Each Other? - Elizaveta Friesem
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Elizaveta Friesem 
My search for meaning has long been fueled by a question that still feels urgent to me: Why do people hurt each other? I am unusually sensitive to suffering—so much so that I often avoid films or stories where pain is foregrounded, and that sensitivity has intensified over time. I do not experience this as moral superiority; it feels more like a particular way my mind and nervous system respond to distress. But it does shape what I notice. Over the years I have come to feel—first through observation, later through more deliberate reflection—that a great deal of human suffering is not caused by storms, illnesses, or accidents, but by the ways people treat each other, directly and indirectly, personally and structurally.When I say “hurt,” I mean it broadly. Sometimes it is explicit physical violence: a person striking another, coercing them, torturing them, killing them. Sometimes it is everyday cruelty or carelessness: a cutting remark, teasing, exclusion, not sharing, speaking as if someone does not matter. Sometimes the hurt is impersonal and dispersed across systems: policies and routines that predictably harm people without requiring any one person to feel hatred. A bureaucrat can “just do a job” and still become a link in a chain that ruins lives. Whole communities can be ostracized for being “different.” People who challenge patterns can be punished not only by individuals, but by a collective insistence that “this is how things are done.” I am interested in these forms together because they may be connected: they often draw on similar mental shortcuts, social pressures, and learned narratives, even if the scale and stakes differ.A lot of debate about this question begins with human nature. Are humans fundamentally good? Fundamentally selfish? Naturally violent—or, at minimum, capable of cruelty under pressure? This approach looks for something universal—an explanation that unites us.One reason this universalizing view feels persuasive is that a body of research suggests that ordinary people can be drawn into harming others under certain conditions—especially when authority, group pressure, role expectations, or institutional routines frame harm as acceptable or required. Experiments often cited in this context (such as the Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram’s obedience studies), along with classroom demonstrations like “blue eyes/brown eyes,” are compelling partly because they seem to show how quickly behavior can shift. At the same time, these examples have also been criticized for encouraging simplified interpretations and for underplaying the extent to which framing, role expectations, and researcher influence shaped what participants thought was required. For me, the most useful takeaway is more modest: circumstances matter a great deal, but people still vary.That is why I think it matters to ask what humans are capable of, and what tendencies are widespread—while also noticing how easily “human nature” claims can flatten real differences. People can be loving, altruistic, and self-sacrificing; they can also be cruel. That tension is real. And it may be wrong to assume that because people share a species, they are all equally likely to become cruel in the same way under the same pressure.A popular counter-argument emphasizes individual differences: people are not all the same. But this line of thinking often slides into a second, very familiar answer: some people hurt others because they are simply "mean and stupid," or "that kind of person." I have a strong aversion to this explanation when it is used as a shortcut rather than a careful moral judgment about a specific act. It tends to do two things at once: it collapses a person into a label ("they are evil"), and it reassures the speaker that they are not susceptible to similar failures. It also feeds polarization. Once someone is filed into the category of "bad people," curiosity becomes suspect: listening to their reasons looks like complicity, understanding looks like excusing, and the only remaining tools seem to be punishment, isolation, or contempt.I don’t find either of these “popular” answers satisfying—not because accountability doesn’t matter, but because pessimism and simplification distort the picture. If human beings are doomed by nature to hurt others, then moral effort and social reform become decorative. If society is basically a battle between good people and bad people, then conflict becomes permanent and empathy becomes naïve. Both stories discourage the kind of attention that might actually reduce harm: attention to motives, incentives, ignorance, fear, social pressure, habit, and the ways patterns replicate themselves.What I return to instead is a more granular question: Through what pathways does human action create suffering for other humans? When you look at the pathways, the landscape becomes more complex—but also more workable. It becomes easier to see how harm can happen without anyone feeling like a villain, and how we ourselves can participate in harm while still thinking of ourselves as decent people.For example, consider harm that is normalized as “just business.” Someone can devote a career to maximizing the cheapness, sweetness, and irresistibility of candy (or any other engineered product), with minimal concern for the downstream effects on health, addiction-like consumption patterns, or inequality. They may sincerely feel they are simply doing their job, meeting demand, and that consumers are responsible for their choices. This is not the same as beating someone with a stick. But it is still one way human choices can contribute to human suffering. Once you widen the lens beyond obvious malice, you can start seeing how systems, habits, and self-protective stories enable harm.So I want to keep a simple premise in view: although not every person can become a torturer, many of us—perhaps most of us—are capable of hurting others in at least some ways. Not because we are “evil,” but because there are many different kinds of hurting, and many different routes by which it happens. Here is a working list, in no particular order. It is not exhaustive; it is simply a sketch of pathways that came to mind as especially common or illustrative.1) A hurts B because A enjoys B’s pain (a rare case, but real: sadism, psychopathy, or a cultivated taste for domination).2) A hurts B because A believes hurting B is right or necessary, for example:
I use AI tools as a kind of writing partner—to shape drafts, clarify arguments, and explore phrasing. But the ideas, perspectives, and direction are always my own. Every piece here is part of an evolving personal project. For more details about my use of AI, see here.
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Why Do People Hurt Each Other?
*last updated on January 30, 2026 My search for meaning has long been fueled by a question that still feels urgent to me: Why do people hurt each other? I am unusually sensitive to suffering—so much so that I often avoid films or stories where pain is foregrounded, and that sensitivity has intensified over time. I do not experience this as moral superiority; it feels more like a particular way my mind and nervous system respond to distress. But it does shape what I notice. Over the years I have come to feel—first through observation, later through more deliberate reflection—that a great deal of human suffering is not caused by storms, illnesses, or accidents, but by the ways people treat each other, directly and indirectly, personally and structurally.When I say “hurt,” I mean it broadly. Sometimes it is explicit physical violence: a person striking another, coercing them, torturing them, killing them. Sometimes it is everyday cruelty or carelessness: a cutting remark, teasing, exclusion, not sharing, speaking as if someone does not matter. Sometimes the hurt is impersonal and dispersed across systems: policies and routines that predictably harm people without requiring any one person to feel hatred. A bureaucrat can “just do a job” and still become a link in a chain that ruins lives. Whole communities can be ostracized for being “different.” People who challenge patterns can be punished not only by individuals, but by a collective insistence that “this is how things are done.” I am interested in these forms together because they may be connected: they often draw on similar mental shortcuts, social pressures, and learned narratives, even if the scale and stakes differ.A lot of debate about this question begins with human nature. Are humans fundamentally good? Fundamentally selfish? Naturally violent—or, at minimum, capable of cruelty under pressure? This approach looks for something universal—an explanation that unites us.One reason this universalizing view feels persuasive is that a body of research suggests that ordinary people can be drawn into harming others under certain conditions—especially when authority, group pressure, role expectations, or institutional routines frame harm as acceptable or required. Experiments often cited in this context (such as the Stanford Prison Experiment and Milgram’s obedience studies), along with classroom demonstrations like “blue eyes/brown eyes,” are compelling partly because they seem to show how quickly behavior can shift. At the same time, these examples have also been criticized for encouraging simplified interpretations and for underplaying the extent to which framing, role expectations, and researcher influence shaped what participants thought was required. For me, the most useful takeaway is more modest: circumstances matter a great deal, but people still vary.That is why I think it matters to ask what humans are capable of, and what tendencies are widespread—while also noticing how easily “human nature” claims can flatten real differences. People can be loving, altruistic, and self-sacrificing; they can also be cruel. That tension is real. And it may be wrong to assume that because people share a species, they are all equally likely to become cruel in the same way under the same pressure.A popular counter-argument emphasizes individual differences: people are not all the same. But this line of thinking often slides into a second, very familiar answer: some people hurt others because they are simply "mean and stupid," or "that kind of person." I have a strong aversion to this explanation when it is used as a shortcut rather than a careful moral judgment about a specific act. It tends to do two things at once: it collapses a person into a label ("they are evil"), and it reassures the speaker that they are not susceptible to similar failures. It also feeds polarization. Once someone is filed into the category of "bad people," curiosity becomes suspect: listening to their reasons looks like complicity, understanding looks like excusing, and the only remaining tools seem to be punishment, isolation, or contempt.I don’t find either of these “popular” answers satisfying—not because accountability doesn’t matter, but because pessimism and simplification distort the picture. If human beings are doomed by nature to hurt others, then moral effort and social reform become decorative. If society is basically a battle between good people and bad people, then conflict becomes permanent and empathy becomes naïve. Both stories discourage the kind of attention that might actually reduce harm: attention to motives, incentives, ignorance, fear, social pressure, habit, and the ways patterns replicate themselves.What I return to instead is a more granular question: Through what pathways does human action create suffering for other humans? When you look at the pathways, the landscape becomes more complex—but also more workable. It becomes easier to see how harm can happen without anyone feeling like a villain, and how we ourselves can participate in harm while still thinking of ourselves as decent people.For example, consider harm that is normalized as “just business.” Someone can devote a career to maximizing the cheapness, sweetness, and irresistibility of candy (or any other engineered product), with minimal concern for the downstream effects on health, addiction-like consumption patterns, or inequality. They may sincerely feel they are simply doing their job, meeting demand, and that consumers are responsible for their choices. This is not the same as beating someone with a stick. But it is still one way human choices can contribute to human suffering. Once you widen the lens beyond obvious malice, you can start seeing how systems, habits, and self-protective stories enable harm.So I want to keep a simple premise in view: although not every person can become a torturer, many of us—perhaps most of us—are capable of hurting others in at least some ways. Not because we are “evil,” but because there are many different kinds of hurting, and many different routes by which it happens. Here is a working list, in no particular order. It is not exhaustive; it is simply a sketch of pathways that came to mind as especially common or illustrative.1) A hurts B because A enjoys B’s pain (a rare case, but real: sadism, psychopathy, or a cultivated taste for domination).2) A hurts B because A believes hurting B is right or necessary, for example:- A and B are enemies in a war, and violence is framed as duty.
- A believes B harmed C and must be punished.
- A believes hurting B will prevent future harm (“for their own good,” or “to protect others”).
- A believes harm is justified by a “good cause” or by obedience to authority.
I use AI tools as a kind of writing partner—to shape drafts, clarify arguments, and explore phrasing. But the ideas, perspectives, and direction are always my own. Every piece here is part of an evolving personal project. For more details about my use of AI, see here. - About
- Books
- Editing
- Blog
- Poetry
- Learn more
- Contact me
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