What we think of as our sensitivity is only the higher evolution of terror in a poor dumb beast. We suffer for nothing. Our own death wish is our only real tragedy.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
We have to be aware of our fragilities as human beings - when we see cruelty, to understand that in certain conditions, we could be cruel, too.
When humans behave murderously, such as inflicting senseless slaughter of innocents in warfare, we like to blame it on some dark, 'animalistic' instinct.
Animals are thinking, feeling creatures. They're sensitive.
The truth is that humans have the potential to be horrific. And I think being conscious of that is important.
We are still fearful, superstitious and all-too-human creatures. At times, we forget the magnitude of the havoc we can wreak by off-loading our minds onto super-intelligent machines, that is, until they run away from us, like mad sorcerers' apprentices, and drag us up to the precipice for a look down into the abyss.
We, as human beings, have the capacity for extreme cruelty.
We are more often frightened than hurt; and we suffer more from imagination than from reality.
Sensitiveness is closely allied to egotism; and excessive sensibility is only another name for morbid self-consciousness. The cure for tender sensibilities is to make more of our objects and less of our selves.
It is possible that the contemplation of cruelty will not make us humane but cruel; that the reiteration of the badness of our spiritual condition will make us consent to it.
I always think you have to show a degree of humanity and sensitivity when you're dealing with people in extreme circumstances.