For some reason, people nowadays have become hedonistic and have starting committing atrocities against man's best friend. Their abstruse argument in favour of their heinous acts is that they have full right to do anything to an animal as they own it. To buttress their argument, they use psychological data from dubious sources to prove that humans have a natural want to gain pleasure.
While their argument is far from incomprehensible, is it not insalubrious to have such hate for one's fellow beings?
This is not limited only to animals, this cruelty, far from receding and diminishing, has increased substantially. This argument is no longer used just to justify cruelty to animals but also to support cruelty to one's fellow human beings. It is now ubiquitous.
So what do you guys think, why are humans getting so evil. How has the decipherer of the genetic code, fallen so low into the abyss of hatred?

Forgive me for sounding preachy, but in my understanding, the advancement of science and knowledge, and the sheer amount legal freedom people have to do whatever they like to please themselves, of these days may contribute to this so-called crueler humanity.

You see, this "knowledge" a lot of people had learned give them a sense of confidence that they are in control of their lives; and as people understand more and more about the systems of the Universe, their faith in 'unscientific' things such as religion and karma wavers, thus dulling their sense of conscience. These kind of people develop the idea or concept that they can do whatever they like during their relatively short lifetime, and that their deeds (good or bad) doesn't have any effect on them, since they don't believe in the existence of afterlife. It's like, "Hey, we only live once, so let's enjoy them while we can. Why bother being a goody-goody and miss all the fun?"

Unfortunately, the law is becoming more and more lenient towards petty acts; and many people can do a lot of bad things they could get away with because what they did was technically "not breaking the law".

Sometimes,people who were tormented,(believe me,that happens)in their past in a way that affected their behavior.They just want revenge,and the rage in them continues to grow,thus they seek an outlet for it.Therefore, animal cruelty is born.Sometimes,this rage crosses its limits and leads to criminal activities which disgust other sane people.

Are we talking about animal rights or people being crueler in general?

I'm gonna go with the latter as I don't have enough time to get into animal rights:

Are humans cruel/mean still? Yes.

Are they worst than the past?
You're gonna have to give data that surpasses the Holocaust, Rampant legal 'justified' slavery, etc. in mass cruelty before I can get with the idea that humans are becoming more cruel.

Are they getting better? *looks over at gay rights slowly inching forward to acceptability, women getting rights, civil rights movement*
Yes. We take a long time to get progress (Heck, I probably won't be alive for some of the stuff I wish to see like full LGBT acceptance) but we're inching there.

I meant normal cruelty.
@KTC- I agree to an extent but while we have stopped discriminating against gays, new stuff has come up. We're now willing to nuke entire countries (Polls)

Willing to use nuke countries isn't a new thing. That has always been an option since the US destroyed Japan with two of them.

I'm not just taking the example of the US. Let's take Pakistan and India, 10 years ago, most people said that a normal war was more acceptable than nuking an entire country. Now the majority thinks, nuking is better

Well, in practical sense, nuking a country is more efficient than warring with them because you don't need to lose men and army. Of course, if the other country retaliates with another nuke, the damage is going to be much worse; but they can't really give such a response if they've been demolished, can they?

Maybe 10 years ago, those countries you mentioned just don't have enough technology to nuke entire populations, without having them doing the same as payback.

@Theone

I know you weren't just talking about the US.

And Adept makes a good point about the country needed to have the right technology. If they don't, then of course nukes aren't going to be an option.

Both countries had the right technology 10 years. 10 years ago, whoever nuked once would have won and hatred was high then too. Because at that time, neither had a secondary response system.
But now, both countries have up to 3 (I believe) responses. Meaning they can be annihilated but their nukes will survive and they can destroy the other population

I don't think so.

As others have pointed out, if anything, things are rather better than in the past.

In the past, if you were poor, you starved, had no access to health care, etc., and nobody really cared. In the past, if you couldn't take care of an animal, there was no such things as animal shelters or animal's rights, so the animal was pretty well sentenced to death. Discrimination and outright racism was seen as perfectly normal. Slavery was also considered the norm in the not too distant past. Women around the world were considered inferior to men. You could be thrown in jail and/or tortured and/or sentenced in death in some of the cruelest, most painful ways possible.

Of course, some of these things still occur in some parts of the world. However, at least there is awareness and some effort to make these issues better. We have recognized humans have basic rights. We generally acknowledge animal cruelty. We are aware of environmental concerns.

Just because there are some idiots who think nuking other countries is justified doesn't mean people have gotten crueler. Look at any sort of conflict. I'm sure, back then, you'd find people who wanted whole countries destroyed - they just didn't have nuclear weapons back then. For example, Hitler wanted to get rid of all the Jews. Propaganda here in North American made people fearful of the Japanese, which probably played a part in the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then also think of the war crimes committed by the Japanese army in WW2. Also remember the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, where hundreds of thousands of Tutsi and moderate Hutu people were massacred.

Read up on your history. You will see plenty of human cruelty towards others. It's not limited to just the last few years.

@theone:

Not necessarily so. Unless you have missiles to completely wipe out the enemies before they have chance to fire back at you, complete victory is not guaranteed. Instead, it will trigger a nuclear war that will cause devastating damage to both parties, and is not worth the risk.

Other than that, I agree with what Aeternus said. Present day people only seem crueler because they have more technology and means to perform their acts of cruelty.

I don't see how having nukes means people are getting more cruel.

Technology has always been a double edge sword. On one hand, it can be incredibly deadly, like the the nuke on hiroshima. On the other hand, it can be benevolent like creating artificial limbs for people.

Just because we have high tech doesn't mean people are linearly getting crueler.

Also, I do not think any country with nukes will actually use their nukes as they will doom their own nation too. It's more of a deterrent rather than an actual 'rawr, I bomb you now!'

Exactly, which is why I wrote that "present day people only seem crueler because they have more technology and means to perform their acts of cruelty". Let's say a terrorist committed a suicide bomb 50 years ago, and it managed to kill 20 people; in present day, another terrorist did the same thing, in the same situation, but with a more advanced bomb- killing 150. Now killing 150 seems worse than killing 20, but it's not so much because of the current-day terrorist is crueler, it's just that they have more advanced technology as means to conduct their so-called cruelty.

To clarify what would mean cruel for my points:

cruel - an attitude that is aggressive, malevolent, manifests through wish to see others suffer, or simply the wish of causing pain to any living creature;

To my mind, people are becoming crueler due to a set of reasons:

Media influence, children are exposed to violent acts from earlier ages which tend to develop into aggressivity problems, all because due to violent shows, or violent games which their parents allow them to play, or simply are exposed daily to violent scenes and start believing that that's the good way to go.
And of course, this leads to people at maturity being cruel, because they do not care if the other person is hurt.

Secondly, because the amount of hatred between individuals is growing. People started to become easily angered by small events, even if they are not frequently, and because of the stress, they tend to take revenge, and are pretty cruel by their methods, and wish to see pain if a person upsets them.

The lack of education also constitutes a reason why the people are crueler. They are not educated at home or in schools of good manners and a socially positive attitude, and tend to act however they like, regardless if it is wrong or right.

The last but not least, the simple fact that people are indifferent about everything constitutes a factor.
They do not care whether the others suffer or not, all they care about is themselves, and would not stop in their way to obtain whatever they want, despite hurting others in the process.

There is a long list to be made, but those tend to be the most important. At least from my point of view.

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On a side note, Theone, please, make your posts clear and easy to understand, and avoid using sophisticated vocabulary as not everyone on the forum is English literate enough to understand all of the words.
I am not speaking about myself, but there may as well be people which experience problems in comprehending your post.

I don't thinkn people have become crueller. I also don't think people today are less cruel than they were 100 or a 1000 years ago.
We are pretty cruel creatures throughout our history, until this day annd including.
It's usually young people who think things are different now than they were in the past, but it's not true. We didn't change that much.

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People in the past were exposed to violence, too. There is violence in the home (which is still an on-going problem), people attended public executions, war was right on their doorsteps...And playing violent video games does not necessarily make you a cruel person. I vividly remember getting my brother to show me how to do fatalities in Mortal Kombat, and I grew up to become a nurse and I'd like to think I care a lot for others.

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How does one measure the amount of hatred? And how does one measure if it's growing? Hatred has always been in the world, as has anger stemming from stress, revenge, etc.

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I think the world is more educated in general than in the past. Public education (as well as mandatory education) is now available in many places. In developed countries, millions of people go on to tertiary education institutions (i.e. college or university).

Also, being educated has nothing to do with cruelty. Some of the cruelest people are well educated.

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So, why do we have social services? Charities? Volunteers for nearly every cause out there?