Does humanity have a predisposition for abuse?

There’s been a lot of instances where ‘silent’ victims have been subjected to abuse. These include women who have been drugged and children who can’t fight back – as well as the usual gamut of victims such as those who encounter domestic violence or are sexually attacked. Evidently the spectrum is very wide and its quite hard to discern any outstanding factors that come into play. These things even include war where the power of the military forces women and children into submission, but it can also apply to men too, who are captured and forced to undertake acts of bestiality. Evidently the main, overbearing, factor is one of having power. That power can come in terms of communication, of knowledge, of superiority, of having weaponry, and even by way of hiding behind legislation.

Evidently most victims are silent. If they can communicate well and have a good command of speech, then they have been enslaved, kidnapped, or other means of being forced into submission. With such things, its difficult to see if there are factors that link each and every act of insidious submission.

I had thought there was a possibility that both domestic violence and sexual abuse contained some defining factor which could easily describe many other acts of abuse or violence. The most common factor evidently is those others (these being assailants, perverts, whatever) who are obtuse and violent, and employ means such as shouting, slapping, hitting, shaking, threatening with a weapon, shouting orders to stop and ‘comply’, tethering, manacling, strangling and so on. These are clearly measures intended to make the vulnerable submissive. Doubtless these things are pervasive in domestic violence and other abuses too and means there’s more or less a common set of factors whatever the situation happens to be.

Out of curiosity, I asked Google Gemini a question: Are silent victims such as young children or adults easy to abuse? The following is Gemini’s reply:

AI Overview:

Yes, from a psychological and sociological perspective, predatory individuals and abusers actively target “silent” or vulnerable victims because they present a lower risk of exposure and resistance. In behavioral psychology, this is driven by a desire for power, control, and a calculation of accountability.

Abusers routinely evaluate potential targets based on specific vulnerabilities:

Why Silent and Vulnerable Victims Are Targeted:

Low Risk of Disclosure: Young children often lack the verbal capacity, conceptual understanding, or vocabulary to articulate that they are being abused. Similarly, vulnerable adults (such as those with cognitive disabilities, language barriers, or severe isolation) may find it difficult or impossible to report the behavior. ¹, ²
Perceived Credibility Gaps: Perpetrators rely on the fact that if a young child or a marginalized adult does speak up, society or authorities may dismiss their claims as confusion, fabrication, or a misunderstanding. ³
Dependency and Power Imbalances: Children and dependent adults rely entirely on caretakers for survival, housing, and basic needs. Abusers exploit this structural dependency to enforce compliance without needing to use overt physical force. (^{1, 2, 3})
Easier Isolation: A key tactic of abuse is isolating the victim from external support networks. Individuals who are naturally quiet, socially isolated, or inherently reliant on a single caregiver are already structurally isolated, making it easier for a perpetrator to control them without drawing outside attention. (^{1, 2})

The Psychology of the Abuser:

Psychological profiles indicate that abusers are often highly skilled manipulators who act like “con artists”. They deliberately look for traits such as high empathy, compliance, or an inability to enforce boundaries, and then weaponize those traits to establish complete psychological captivity. (^{1, 2, 3})

Clearly it does not matter whether its domestic violence, victims of rape, child sexual abuse, kidnapped women or children, or any number of other infractions against vulnerable people, there is every indication an overall modus is practised across the board in order to subvert the victims.

When Gemini said ‘Abusers routinely evaluate potential targets based on specific vulnerabilities’ that is basically what the commonality happens to be. Regardless of the situation, its all about who are the potential targets plus specific vulnerabilities or weaknesses the victims may have.

This insidious power the aggressors have is because their victims have ‘a lower risk of exposure and resistance.’ The mere presence of another who is weaker or vulnerable basically sets the scene for abuse and violence. In a sense it also rises from what can be deemed a form of appeasement. Conceding to others’ insidious and violent demands might initially achieve some form of mitigation, but the inevitable outcome is the aggressor gets more control and becomes far more violent.

One could ask what does idiocy or stupidity have to do with this topic? Well not a lot really. Its perhaps more about what the insidious human mind is capable of. In many ways, the whole thing is about cleverness and having an ability to exploit others – which seems to be a common enough human trait. In that, it can be said there’s a perversity involved. Even consumerism and other things rely on similar parameters – for that is how goods are made, sold and profits made. There’s subliminal advertising and suggestion which helps, as well as packaging that proves attractive and campaigns that are designed to trap willing purchasers hook, line and sinker. Humanity’s money system too entails a means of affording a maximization of return from others and its achieved through various forms of subtlety and exploitation too. Its why the rich get richer and the poor get poorer – and that is because there is a huge power imbalance.

The idiocy of it all perhaps comes in the form of humans subscribing to what appears to be the done thing. Exploitation, extortion, war, criminalising and penalising sections of society etc – these are just some of the various means that can be undertaken by way of subtlety, coercion and oppression. Perhaps its that humanity is blithely insidious on every conceivable level it exists and operates in?

Having said that, in a sense, what it might be is humanity has a more deeply insidious form of targeting and manipulation compared to the natural world. Humanity has regularly forged ahead without questioning the effects of what its doing. Often things have gone so far there’s basically no point of return – and this becomes another veneer situated within the abject realities that humanity lives in.

In a nutshell it seems that humanity can’t change its ways because it can’t see the totality of its effects. Abuses of every kind will continue to persist because that is unfortunately is what the human world is. Conclusively, a significant paradigm shift in cognizance and understanding may be the only means which humanity might somehow absolve itself from such erroneous ways.