A troubling change in humanity

By David Ellis

Over the past four years, as I have travelled extensively, I have become increasingly troubled by what I perceive as a change in human behaviour.

I have witnessed extraordinary levels of entitlement, arrogance and disrespect. Not from everyone, of course, but frequently enough to leave me questioning what is happening to us.

There appears to be a growing disregard not only for governments and institutions, but for one another. Empathy seems increasingly absent from our everyday interactions, while anger, fear and the desire for control have become disturbingly familiar.

At the same time, we live in a world where images of warfare, murder, persecution and human suffering are delivered to our screens almost continuously.

A school is bombed. Children are killed. Families are displaced. Entire communities are destroyed. As we watch. We react. Then we scroll, and tomorrow, another atrocity takes its place.

I worry that repeated exposure to suffering, particularly when presented without sufficient human context, risks making the unacceptable appear ordinary. Yet none of this is new.

Humanity has inflicted extraordinary suffering upon itself for thousands of years. What has changed is our technological capacity to destroy, and the speed with which that destruction can be communicated.

Today, a person operating sophisticated military technology may participate in an attack thousands of miles away, never witnessing directly the human consequences of their actions.

We have developed extraordinary technologies, yet I wonder whether our emotional and moral development has kept pace, and this brings me to a question that has occupied my consciousness for some time.

What drives human beings towards such extraordinary cruelty?

The mind, the Heart and our formative years

Throughout my career as a counsellor, I have seldom encountered someone whom I would describe as inherently evil.

I have encountered deeply traumatised people. People carrying emotional wounds, unresolved fear, anger and shame. People whose behaviour has caused considerable suffering, both to themselves and to others.

My work has led me to place particular importance on our formative childhood years, especially the period from birth to approximately seven years of age.

These early experiences help establish the foundations of emotional security, attachment, self-worth and our developing understanding of relationships.

They do not determine everything that follows. Human development continues throughout life, and childhood trauma does not inevitably produce harmful behaviour.

Nevertheless, our earliest relationships can influence how we respond to fear, rejection, humiliation, conflict and emotional pain. A child who learns that love is conditional may grow into an adult who constantly seeks approval.

The child who experiences humiliation may develop an overwhelming need to avoid vulnerability. And a child who grows up surrounded by fear may come to interpret the world as threatening.

These are possibilities, not inevitable outcomes. But they raise an important question. What happens when unresolved emotional wounds become intertwined with enormous political, financial or military power?

What happens when the need for control becomes more important than compassion?

And what happens when a person’s capacity for empathy is overwhelmed by their ambition, resentment or fear?

My spiritual understanding of darkness

My work as a spiritual therapist has taken me into another area of understanding. I believe that human existence extends beyond the physical and psychological dimensions we ordinarily recognise.

Within my spiritual framework, I believe in Light and darkness, in spiritual guides, angels and other forms of consciousness. I also believe in the existence of dark entities and forces that seek to influence human behaviour.

I recognise that these beliefs are not established scientific facts, and that many readers will understand such experiences differently. Nevertheless, they form an important part of how I interpret the world.

I believe there is a spiritual struggle taking place, one that humanity may be participating in without fully recognising it. But I do not imagine this struggle only as a confrontation between supernatural beings. I see its expression in human consciousness itself.

Portrayed in fear and courage. In hatred and compassion. Portrayed in domination and freedom, and in the ego and the Heart.

I believe we are born with a profound capacity for love, connection and empathy. Yet as we develop, our experiences can encourage us to construct psychological defences against emotional pain.

The ego, as I understand it, develops a protective identity through which we attempt to navigate the world. Protection, however, can become control.

The desire for recognition can become an obsession with superiority. The need for security can become a fear of losing power. The wish to protect ourselves can become an inability to recognise the needs of others, and when fear dominates our thinking, we may become increasingly vulnerable to manipulation.

Within my spiritual understanding, this is where darkness finds an opening. Not necessarily through dramatic possession or supernatural spectacle, but through the exploitation of human vulnerability. Fear. Humiliation. Resentment. Envy. Greed. Hatred. Vengeance, and perhaps most dangerously, the willingness to surrender our personal moral responsibility.

Escaping emotional pain

Human beings have always sought ways to escape suffering. Alcohol, drugs, gambling, compulsive sexual behaviour and other forms of addiction can provide temporary relief from emotional distress. Yet that relief may become increasingly difficult to sustain.

Addiction is a complex condition involving biological, psychological and social factors. It cannot be explained by a single cause, and people experiencing addiction deserve compassion and effective support rather than condemnation.

From my spiritual perspective, however, I also understand some compulsive patterns as expressions of disconnection from the deeper self. The individual may become increasingly focused on obtaining temporary relief while losing touch with their emotional needs, relationships and sense of purpose.

For me, this represents a movement away from the Heart. I believe the Heart and mind are intended to work together. The mind offers analysis, reasoning and practical understanding.

The Heart offers compassion, empathy, conscience and an awareness of our connection to others. Neither should operate without the other. Intelligence without compassion can become dangerous. But compassion without discernment can also leave us vulnerable.

Our greatest potential lies in bringing wisdom and empathy together.

In February 2025, Elon Musk, one of the world’s wealthiest and most influential businessmen, made an extraordinary statement during an interview with Joe Rogan:

“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.”

Although Musk subsequently qualified his remarks by arguing that empathy could be manipulated or weaponised, I find the suggestion that empathy represents a fundamental weakness deeply troubling.

For me, empathy is not humanity’s weakness. It is one of our greatest strengths. It is what allows us to recognise another person’s suffering, to question injustice and to resist the temptation to dehumanise those who are different from ourselves. Empathy is Heart-based and therefore cannot be manipulated as suggested by Musk.

What does it say about our direction as a civilisation when one of the world’s most powerful individuals identifies empathy as a fundamental vulnerability?

And what might happen to humanity if such thinking becomes increasingly influential among those who control our political, economic and technological future?

When ordinary people participate in extraordinary cruelty

One of the most disturbing lessons of history is that enormous cruelty does not necessarily require millions of inherently monstrous people. It can emerge when ordinary people gradually accept behaviour they would once have considered unthinkable.

A political leader identifies an enemy. Propaganda encourages fear. Differences are exaggerated. Human beings are reduced to categories. Cruelty becomes justified as necessary for security, national survival or some supposedly greater purpose. Eventually, actions that would once have provoked outrage become accepted.

This is not simply a spiritual hypothesis. The roles of propaganda, obedience, conformity, dehumanisation and institutional power have been extensively examined in historical and psychological research.

But my spiritual interpretation asks a further question.

What if these human vulnerabilities are precisely the means through which darkness gains influence?

And What if the struggle between Light and darkness is not confined to religious teachings or ancient mythology?

What if it is expressed through the decisions we make every day?

The lessons of history

As I researched the historical records, it became overwhelming and almost unbearable to contemplate. For centuries, human beings have enslaved, persecuted, tortured, displaced and murdered one another.

The transatlantic slave trade subjected millions of Africans to forced transportation, exploitation and hereditary enslavement. European colonial expansion brought conquest, dispossession and devastating violence to Indigenous populations across the world.

The nineteenth century witnessed the Napoleonic Wars, the destruction associated with the Taiping Rebellion in China, the forced removal of Native American peoples and atrocities committed during colonial campaigns.

The twentieth century brought the Armenian genocide, Stalinist repression, Imperial Japan’s atrocities across Asia, the Holocaust and two world wars.

And still the suffering continued.

The partition of India, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, the Rwandan genocide, ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and successive conflicts across Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

The twenty-first century has brought further wars, persecution, mass displacement and atrocities against civilian populations.

These events arose from different historical circumstances. Their causes cannot be reduced to a single explanation, nor should their victims and perpetrators be treated as interchangeable.

Yet certain patterns recur. The pursuit of power. The exploitation of fear. The creation of enemies. The dehumanisation of populations, and the willingness of individuals and institutions to place ideology, territory or political ambition above human life.

The full chronology of these atrocities deserves examination in its own right. But one episode, in particular, illustrates the frightening relationship between individual decisions and collective responsibility.

Auschwitz: When humanity surrendered its conscience

The Second World War was driven in Europe by Adolf Hitler’s expansionist ambitions, Nazi ideology and the systematic persecution of those the regime regarded as enemies.

Hitler’s leadership was central to the catastrophe, but the Holocaust could not have been carried out by one individual acting alone.

In January 1942, fifteen senior Nazi Party and German government officials met at Wannsee to coordinate the implementation of the already-established policy of murdering Europe’s Jewish population.

The machinery of government became an instrument of genocide. Administrators organised deportations. Transport systems carried victims to killing centres. Police and military personnel enforced orders. Officials processed documents. Neighbours identified neighbours. Others remained silent, and some resisted.

The Wannsee meeting is particularly revealing because it demonstrates how mass murder could become an administrative process. The officials present discussed its implementation without objecting to the policy itself. Holocaust Encyclopedia

Somebody wrote the orders.

Someone typed them.

Somebody organised the trains.

Someone guarded the doors.

Somebody llooked away.

And someone refused.

I have explored Hitler’s formative experiences and psychological development separately in Adolf Hitler — The Making of the Man.

But what troubles me most is not simply the psychology of one dictator. It is the willingness of so many others to participate.

A journey through China

As I write this article, I am travelling through China.

Surrounded by crowds of people beyond my experience of crowds, moving through busy railway stations, I have found myself unexpectedly haunted by images of another time, another railway and another destination.

Auschwitz.

I recognise that the people around me are travelling freely, going about their ordinary lives. Their circumstances bear no comparison to those of the people forcibly transported to Nazi extermination camps.

Yet something about the movement, the noise and the sheer number of human beings has stirred an overwhelming emotional response within me. Suddenly, history’s millions are no longer simply numbers.

They have faces. Every one of them was a human being. Someone’s child. Or someone’s parent. Someone’s partner. People with hopes, dreams, fears, and an unquestionable right to live.

And I find myself asking, with profound sadness, how humanity could have inflicted such suffering upon itself. More disturbing still, why do we continue to do so?

Have we learned anything?

We would like to believe that the atrocities of the past taught humanity lessons it would never forget. Yet the world continues to witness warfare, persecution and the destruction of civilian lives.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has brought immense suffering. During the first six months of 2026 alone, United Nations monitors recorded 1,396 civilians killed and 7,978 injured in Ukraine. The United Nations in Ukraine

In Gaza, the suffering of civilians has been catastrophic. A military offensive spearheaded by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In September 2025, a United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israeli authorities and security forces had committed genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. Israel rejects that conclusion. The Commission reiterated its findings in June 2026. United Nations

I have explored Netanyahu’s formative experiences and psychological development separately in Benjamin Netanyahu — The Making of the Man.

On 28 February 2026, the United States and Israel launched military operations against Iran under the leadership of President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The conflict brought further deaths, displacement and regional instability. Axios

I have explored Trump’s formative experiences and psychological development separately in Donald Trump — The Making of the Man.

My purpose here is not to suggest that childhood experiences alone explain the decisions of political leaders. Rather, I want to ask why the fears, beliefs, ambitions and personal convictions of powerful individuals can so readily become matters of life and death for millions of others.

What happens when political authority is exercised without sufficient empathy?

What happens when military objectives become more important than the lives of civilians?

And what happens when populations are persuaded that the suffering of strangers is an acceptable price for national security?

No government, nation or political leader should be beyond moral scrutiny or international law. Nor should the suffering of civilians become acceptable merely because it occurs beyond our own borders.

If we value human life, we must value it consistently.

Those who chose Light

Yet history tells another story.

Alongside perpetrators and bystanders were extraordinary people who refused to accept cruelty. People who resisted slavery. Those who opposed colonial oppression. People who sheltered persecuted families. Human Beings who forged documents, smuggled children to safety and risked imprisonment or death to protect strangers.

There were resistance movements, humanitarians, dissidents and ordinary individuals whose courage saved lives.

They remind us that humanity’s history is not simply a history of darkness. It is also a history of those who refused to surrender their humanity, and that distinction matters enormously.

We would like to believe that good always triumphs over evil. But history offers no such guarantee. Wars are not necessarily won by those who are morally right. Military victory may depend upon resources, strategy, alliances and overwhelming force.

Sometimes justice prevails.

Sometimes tyranny triumphs.

And sometimes the victors become the very oppressors they once opposed.

Perhaps, however, we have been looking for victory in the wrong place. The triumph of Light is not measured solely by the defeat of an enemy.

It is also found in the courage to resist injustice, to protect the vulnerable and to retain compassion when fear encourages us to abandon it.

The danger of silence

The German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller understood something about the consequences of remaining silent.

Initially sympathetic to aspects of Nazism, he later opposed Nazi interference in the churches and was imprisoned by the regime. After the war, he reflected upon his own failure to speak out against the persecution of others.

His famous poem, “First They Came”, ends with “And then they came for me” the warning that when persecution finally reached him, nobody remained to speak in his defence.

The statement survives in several versions, but its essential meaning is clear: silence and indifference can enable injustice. Holocaust Encyclopedia

And so I ask:

Are we becoming easier to divide?

Are we increasingly encouraged to regard other human beings as enemies?

Has humiliation replaced disagreement?

Do algorithms reward outrage?

Are fear and anger becoming commodities?

Are we losing our capacity to recognise humanity in people whose beliefs differ profoundly from our own?

And when someone tells us whom to hate, do we still ask why?

The battle within

From my spiritual perspective, darkness does not need to transform every human being into a monster. It needs only to exploit enough fear, resentment, insecurity and hatred to influence the choices people make.

It needs enough people to obey without questioning. Enough people to surrender responsibility. Enough people to remain silent, and enough people to convince themselves that another person’s suffering is none of their concern.

But Light does not require saints. It does require ordinary human beings willing to remain conscious of their choices.

People are prepared to question authority.

Those who recognise manipulation.

People who refuse to dehumanise others.

Those who understand that compassion is not weakness.

People should be kind.

For me, the spiritual battle is not simply Hitler against the Allies, or Trump and Netanyahu against their political and military adversaries.

It is much closer to home. It is present in the choices each of us makes.

Do I

Obey without questioning?

Remain silent?

Protect myself at the expense of another?

Hate?

Help?

Choose fear?

Or do I choose compassion?

I believe the struggle between Light and darkness is being expressed through humanity today. Others may understand this struggle entirely through psychology, politics, history or human nature. But whatever language we use, the consequences of our choices are real.

Every act of dehumanisation gives cruelty permission.

Acts of indifference allow suffering to continue.

Every act of hatred deepens division.

But the opposite is equally true.

Acts of compassion give Light expression.

Every refusal to hate weakens the power of prejudice.

Everyone who protects someone vulnerable becomes an instrument of something greater than personal self-interest.

And every individual who chooses conscience over conformity reminds us that humanity is capable of something extraordinary.

The choice before us

We have learned to cross oceans, explore space, manipulate matter and communicate instantly across continents.

Yet we continue to struggle with the most fundamental challenge of human existence: learning to live together without destroying one another.

Perhaps our greatest failure is that we have spent centuries attempting to defeat darkness in others without sufficiently confronting the fear, prejudice and desire for domination within ourselves.

I do not believe humanity is beyond redemption. I believe we retain an extraordinary capacity for love, courage, compassion and change. But that potential means very little unless we are prepared to express it through our actions.

The battle between Light and darkness will not be decided by technology, political power or military superiority alone. It will also be shaped by the choices ordinary human beings make when confronted with fear, injustice and suffering.

And perhaps the most important question we can ask is not whether darkness exists, nor even whether it is attempting to influence humanity. But whether we have become sufficiently conscious to recognise the moment when fear begins to replace compassion, when obedience begins to replace conscience, and when another human being becomes an enemy rather than a fellow traveller through life.

Because the battle we cannot see may ultimately be the battle we must first recognise within ourselves.