According to a LessWrong essay by Yulia on moral psychology, there's a troubling paradox: deeply kind and thoughtful people can harbor capacity for cruelty. She opens with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's observation that the line between good and evil doesn't divide nations or classes, but runs through every human heart, shifting across time. Yulia reflects on her own moral blind spots. She describes deliberately ignoring a friend's rape allegation because she wanted to date him—consciously looking away from a warning sign she noticed. She also recalls cutting off a close friend over political disagreements, discovering she'd enjoyed the sense of moral superiority and power that came from judging him. The essay's central insight: understanding evil in others requires first recognizing our own capacity for it. True moral growth means examining not just our actions, but the self-deception and darker impulses that drive them. Without that inward reckoning, Yulia argues, we remain trapped in hypocrisy—seeing ourselves as judges rather than fellow sinners.

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