Flippanarchy

Thing is, evil isn't inevitable, it's created by specific systems/conditions* that we can act to remove. It might require hard work and take a long time but it can be done.

*Hierarchy, coercion, individualization/lack of communality and support, competition (between countries, companies, co-workers, etc.), shame/isolation, the insecurity/stress of there being a price tag on the basic necessities of life which means most people have to find a way to consistently make money (e.g. find employment and keep it) in order to survive, etc.

"..the last 30 years or so have seen the science of psychology and studies of the human brain begin to put compassion, caring, and pro-social behaviour centre stage in the development of well-being, mental health and our capacity to foster harmonious relationships with each other and the world we live in. Shortly after the Second World War, researchers such as Harry Harlow (1905–81), who worked with monkeys, and the child psychiatrist John Bowlby (1907–90) began to study the impact of the caring relationship that infants had with their mothers. It was found that a mother’s love and affection had a huge impact on the emotional development of the infant, child and subsequent adult. In the 1950s and 1960s, John Bowlby outlined the approach to human development that he called ‘attachment theory’. This focused on the quality of the attachment relationship in terms of the accessibility and affection of the parent in soothing and regulating the infant’s emotions. Indeed, we have probably all seen how young children become distressed if they lose contact with their mothers and how, in the normal course of events, the return of the mother calms the infant down. Bowlby helped us to recognize that, from the day we’re born, our brains are biologically designed to respond to the care and kindness of others." / "I was lucky in having as PhD students the talented Steve Allen and Chris Irons, who studied the interaction between attachment experiences and those of power and subordination. [..] I was also fortunate that, during the 1980s, a group of us were able to meet every few months to share ideas about the interaction between the innate aspects of our minds and the way our early and social environments can bring out the best or worse in us." / "[in the context of therapy:] it turned out that helping people develop compassion for others and, especially, themselves is not always easy. Indeed, some people are positively frightened of it and resistant to the idea. They see self-compassion and self-kindness as a weakness or an indulgence; to them, it means that you’re going soft or letting your guard down. If they started to feel self-kindness or compassion, it could ignite feelings of grief because they would recognize how alone they’d been feeling for so long. John Bowlby suggested that, if you show kindness in therapy, you can activate your patient’s attachment memories. If those memories are of neglect or unkindness, the feelings that result from neglect or unkindness can reemerge. Far from experiencing the therapist or the procedure as kind, patients experience it through their emotional memories – they feel awkward, anxious and resistant to compassion." / "Children have a natural desire to want to play. However, suppose that, every time children start to play, their parents punish them and withdraw affection. Over time, the children will learn that their own desires for play result in punishment, and so they’ll inhibit these desires or become anxious if they feel such desires within themselves. We can learn to become anxious about our feelings because of how others have responded to them in the past. Let’s look at the desire for care and affection. What happens if children’s desire for care and affection results in neglect, rejection or even abuse? You can see the problem. So when the therapist behaves in a kind way, this can reactivate their patients’ (innate) desire for care and affection, but of course, these feelings are associated with great fear, and that’s what can flood through the patients – so they turn away from kindness." (from the book "The Compassionate Mind" by Paul Gilbert)

"Many people who end up in top positions of power are the product of private boarding school education, which separates children from their parents at an early age. [..] The psychologist Joy Schaverien, author of Boarding School Syndrome, argues that ‘early boarding can cause profound developmental damage.’ She notes in particular that because the institutions themselves provide ‘little time for reverie … the life of the imagination may therefore suffer.’ I spoke to the journalist George Monbiot, himself a boarder from the age of eight, about how a system that produces ‘a repressed, traumatised elite unable to connect emotionally with others is a danger to society’. ‘The effort [..] was very much to throw a tight loop around our imaginations, and confine them to a particular social and cultural arena.’ The result was that many of his fellow students appeared ‘to have had their imaginations surgically excised.… You come out of that system really not understanding how the other ninety-three percent of people live and work and struggle. This is why you have people who have been through that system arguing there’s no such thing as poverty in this country.’ " (from the book "From What Is to What If" by Rob Hopkins)

"Having spent over thirty years at the UK criminal bar, and ‘rather a lot of time in prisons’, Baroness Helena Kennedy QC speaks from experience when she writes: For most people, prison is the end of a road paved with deprivation, disadvantage, abuse, discrimination and multiple social problems. Empty lives produce crime…The same issues arise repeatedly: appalling family circumstances, histories of neglect, abuse and sexual exploitation, poor health, mental disorders, lack of support, inadequate housing or homelessness, poverty and debt, and little expectation of change…It is my idea of hell. In our society, children subjected to the harshest, most impoverished environments are increasingly being criminalised. Kennedy remarks that ‘Ninety per cent of young people in prison have mental health or substance abuse problems. Nearly a quarter have literacy and numeracy skills below those of an average seven-year-old and a significant number have suffered physical and sexual abuse.’ Economic, political and cultural arrangements shape identities, opportunities and, ultimately, behaviour." (from the book "Creating Freedom: The Lottery Of Birth, The Illusion Of Consent, And The Fight For Our Future" by Raoul Martinez)