@mcjulie Y’know, I tend to suspect that Karl Marlantes is right with his explanation. Well, he doesn’t *quite* make the argument directly, but he does strongly imply it, in WHAT IT IS LIKE TO GO TO WAR, that sadism is an adaptive psychological coping tool. (Which can go wrong, obviously.) @mcjulie Like, precivilization humans in competing bands, during some major geological or climatic crisis, in a world with multiple human species? They had to do pretty horrific things to survive, and needed a tool for coping.