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Michaela McKuen's avatar

Maybe. That seems reasonable. But I do tend to think if people have bad stuff in their hearts they cause more problems, which is probably not the same as PTSD but they still attract negative things of various stripes toward themselves. For example, let's say someone is mean to you, and you're scared that if you're not mean back you're being taken advantage of so you be mean back. Then people decide they don't want to merely reciprocate, they want to one-up you so you want to one-up them. Then eventually you're just in a race to act like Satan himself out of a paranoia that otherwise people are going to hurt you. I think that's behind most of the evil in the world to be honest and you just need to decide what point you're going to break things off at. That's probably not fear-you're-going-to-die trauma and that's true, but even spoiled brats act like that and probably especially spoiled brats act like that. I often treat Elon Musk as a case study for exactly that reason, his dad was extremely abusive to him but that doesn't make him innocent, two wrongs don't make a right and all that, he basically just turned around and did the exact same thing to other people. Earlier this year I watched Citizen Kane because I wanted to study the psychology of someone who would sue over a movie and I decided William Randolph Hearst was almost the same person as Elon Musk. It reminds me of what Carl Jung said, healthy people don't torment others, only the tormented become the tormenters. Or W. H. Auden, those to whom evil is done do evil in return (with the caveat that you're supposed to break the cycle and that's the whole purpose of Christianity.) But I'm sure different kinds of bad experiences lead to someone becoming a Citizen Kane compared to a skinhead and that's important, so maybe I oversimplified somewhat in my description.

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