Thoughts on Sin by Ted Peters (1994) Cruelty 7A
Step 6 on Peters seven steps to Radical Evil is titled Cruelty: Enjoying My Neighbor’s Suffering.
Cruelty is one level above Pride. Cruelty takes place on a plane that puts the situational plane of “doing” of “justificationself(concupiscence())” into context.
At the moment, I do not name this plane.
The words “willful” “inflicting” “causing anguish and fear” describe a situation of willful “ignorance” or “blindness” of “the victim” while, at the same time, a “knowledge” or “agency” of a “higher force of righteousness”.
Cruelty is like concupiscence. It is pleasurable. It is addicting. But unlike concupiscence, which is all about “me”, cruelty is all about “my treatment of you”. Cruelty is inherently relational.
Peters said that cruelty is a “perverse pleasure”. In saying this, he inadvertently uses a term that figures in the writing of the Slovene Postmodernist Slavoj Zizek, whose foundational works were written between 1989 and 2000.
A “pervert” is “a person who becomes an instrument of a Power”.