Humans are yet still animals, often ruled by weird desires and instincts -- no matter how we try to avoid conflict and be nice, our passions will flare and heads butt and people will get hurt. This is the spice of life, the unavoidable, the animal delights and depths.

On the other hand, isn't *purposefully*, *intellectually* deciding to bring hurt to another human being one of the lowest of all evils? Not when blind passion or inept selfishness makes us hurt each other, but when humans decide to hurt another, and research and devise methods to cause pain, to manufacture a torture device, to set another living being on fire, to drop a bomb?

The greatest failure of empathy seems to me to be when humans use our great intellect and ingenuity to devise and create pain. Luckily, there is art.