“
Wherever human beings are thrown together, one of them at once becomes a laughing stock, a source of malicious mirth, whether the mirth is uproarious or restrained, surreptitious, soundless. Society never rests content until one of the many - or of the few - has been selected as its victim and has become the target of every pointing finger. The community always seeks out its weakest member and exposes him to its pitiless laughter, to repeated and ever more exquisite torture by ridicule and mockery; and it always shows itself supremely inventive in constantly devising fresh refinements. We need only look at what goes on in families: there is always one member of a family who is mocked and ridiculed. Wherever three are gathered together, there is always one in the midsts who is mocked and ridiculed. Society cannot exist without one or more such victims. It always derives its amusement from one individual or a small number of individuals in its midst. We see this happening all our lives. And the victims go on being exploited until they are destroyed. In the cases of the crippled schoolboy and Pittioni I was able to observe the degree of viciousness which society or the community can reach in the process of mocking, destroying, and annihilating its victims. It always reaches the very highest degree and then often goes one better, casually killing the victim in the process. Any sympathy felt for the victim is sympathy only in name; it is really no more than bad consience on the part of the individual at the cruel behaviour indulged in by the others, behaviour in which he is in fact just as keenly involved by behaving cruelly himself. No extenuation can be pleaded. Examples of cruelty, viciousness, and ruthlessness practised by the community against its victims to provide itself with entertaiment run into hundreds and thousands, as we know, and the victims are invariably driven to the extremity of despair. Society tries out every variety of cruelty and viciousness on its victims and goes on experimenting until it has killed them. As invariably happens in nature, the weakened elements in the organism, the weakened substances, are the first to be attacked, exploited, killed off, and eliminated. And of all the organisms there are humann society is the basest, being the most cunning. And the passing of centuries has brought not the slightest change: on the contrary, methods have become more refined and hence more appalling and more infamous. Morality is a lie. Inwardly the so-called healthy person gloats over the sick or the crippled.
”
”