This thread is stale enough I'm going to risk injecting some religion into it.
I've spent most of my life belonging to (some variant of) a faith with redemption at it's core. And yet, our adherents tend to dominate the part of society that 1) dedicates massive resources to thwart redemption and 2) broadly support the eradication of redemption. My analysis has slowly been shifting from our actions are indistinguishable from evil to - according to our own plain and reasonable definition, we're evil.
> Some people cannot live with actions they have done; others feel they cannot live with the limited options available in the future. I was the latter.
I have glimpsed the former and can say it is no metaphor. As to the latter, I'll say I was born at the end of a more reasonable time.
The actions of my youth didn't risk individuals or society in any meaningful way - yet would have imprisoned me for life today. This is entirely because we have become an unreasonable people who have lost our way. We no longer assess risk well because we have given up our sense of proportion.
I don't know how to make any of this better. Just learning how to fathom and elucidate the issue is taking time. Perhaps I'll come across people who can do something with that.