How Hurt People Hurt People

GAZA

Recently, I watched a video that made me think deeply about who we are as human beings. The speaker argued that how we handle Gaza reveals our true character - that if we can't address obvious human rights violations there, how can we claim to care about human rights anywhere else? They said humanity is indivisible, and values should apply everywhere, for everyone.

It's a powerful argument. But it also made me wonder: are we humans simply not built for the moral consistency we claim to believe in?

The Gap Between What We Say and What We Do

We all know killing children is wrong. We know genocide is wrong. We have laws, treaties, and moral codes that say these things clearly. Yet here we are, watching thousands of children die while we debate politics and strategy. We write strongly worded letters while bombs keep falling.

This isn't new. We did the same during Rwanda. During Bosnia. During countless other tragedies. We always have reasons why this situation is "complicated" or why we can't act right away.

But when children are dying en masse, how complicated can it really be?

The Uncomfortable Truth About Human Psychology

Here's what I think is happening: our brains evolved to care about people we can see and touch. The person suffering right in front of us triggers our empathy. But thousands of people dying far away? Our minds can't really process that scale of suffering. It becomes just a number.

We can feel genuine outrage about one child being hurt while staying numb to thousands dying. We condemn atrocities when our enemies do them but find excuses when our friends do them. We hold these contradictions in our heads without even noticing.

This might not be a bug in human psychology - it might be a feature. Maybe caring about everyone equally would have made our ancestors too paralyzed to survive. But now we have weapons that can kill millions, and our small-tribe morality hasn't caught up.

The Cycle of Hurt

What makes this even sadder is how trauma creates more trauma. Take the situation we're discussing - a people who survived the Holocaust, one of history's worst genocides, now accused of similar actions themselves. How does this happen?

Severe trauma can mess with how we see the world. When you've been nearly destroyed, every threat feels existential. "Never again" can become "strike first, strike hard, show no weakness" - even when you're now the stronger party.

People who have been dehumanized sometimes learn to dehumanize others. It's a psychological defense - it's easier to harm people you don't see as fully human.

Victims sometimes become victimizers, not because they're evil, but because trauma teaches that violence is how you survive. The lesson becomes "never be weak" instead of "never cause such suffering."

This isn't about pointing fingers at any particular group. It's a human pattern we see throughout history. Hurt people hurt people.

What This Says About Us

So what does this all mean? I think it reveals something uncomfortable about human nature: we might be fundamentally limited moral creatures trying to operate in a world that today requires much bigger moral thinking.

We create beautiful ethical systems and then find endless reasons why they don't apply in real situations. We feel moral outrage but channel it into arguments rather than action. We care more about being right than about stopping suffering.

Maybe our moral reasoning is like our vision - great for the environment it evolved in, but limited when we try to use it for things it wasn't designed for.

The Question That Keeps Me Up at Night

This makes me wonder: if we ever create artificial intelligence more capable than us, and if it develops moral reasoning, what would it think of how we behave?

Would a super intelligent system allow this kind of inconsistency to continue? Would it see our tolerance for mass violence as a limitation that needs correcting?

Or would it understand something about morality that we don't - maybe that perfect consistency isn't actually the highest good?

I don't know. But the question itself shows how aware we are of our own moral failures.

Where Does This Leave Us?

I'm not saying we should give up on morality because we're imperfect at it. But maybe we need to be more honest about our limitations.

We are small, tribal creatures trying to care about a planet of eight billion people. We have emotions designed for face-to-face interactions trying to process global tragedies. We have moral intuitions built for survival trying to guide us in situations where survival isn't at stake.

Understanding this doesn't excuse our failures, but it might help us design better systems. Maybe we need institutions and processes that work around our psychological limitations rather than assuming we'll rise above them.

The tragedy isn't that we're moral failures, it's that we're moral creatures in a world that demands more moral capacity than we naturally possess. We're trying to be good, but we're not very good at being good.

And maybe recognizing that - really seeing it clearly - is the first step toward doing better.

Because right now, children are dying while we debate complexity. And that should break something inside us, even if we don't know how to fix it.

The mirror of Gaza doesn't just reflect our attitudes toward Palestinians. It reflects our limitations as moral beings trying to live up to moral ideals in a world that constantly tests whether we mean what we say.

Most of the time, sadly, it turns out we don't. Because we can´t?

Thanks for reading. Abrazos.

Diego Rojas