Conscience is a particularly confusing emotion, being personal and societal in cause, alternately deeply and mildly painful in effect. To illustrate, we all feel mild collective qualms when generalized activities lead to some very specific consequences to unfortunates, for example when vehicular speeding leads to the injury or death of wholly innocent bystanders, including a group sensory awareness of how the laxness of stipulations and their inability to curb and negate bad behavior in humanity. However, this feeling of somewhat detached emotion is entirely changed when the root cause of any incident is first party action rather than third, for then a wholly separate emotion rears is very ugly head, namely that of guilt.
Human systems of dealing with personal guilt are entirely variant than those combating mass conscience. Strangely, the ability to skate over the first is much easier because we have a fingerprint in the crime scene, as opposed to some theoretical liability. Personal, self-protecting falsehoods about culpability spill easily from human imaginations and mouths, where collective ills are conclusively harder to distance.
Undoubtedly the fear of singular accusation and admonishment have much to do with this, for homo sapiens is a particularly cowardly beast when singular and cornered, without escape or excuse, whom in a crowd tends to show pugnaciousness far beyond reality, both verbally and on occasion physically when truly mob handed.
Like many another facet of the interrelationship betwixt purely natural emotion and the evolutionary adapted protectionism of personal survival, the ability to lie, misdirect, to show behavioral falsehood with flagrant ease, is a purely human capacity. Seemingly an extension of expanded intellect, inclusive of the less attractive arts of craft, duplicity, treacherousness, perfidiousness, blatant untrustworthiness.
As ever when delving into the psyche of humanity we uncover unsavory, but wholly predictable flaws, the very discrepancies that have permitted our species to survive and scale to be the effective ruler of all beasts.
Daily Abstract Thoughts 