by Daniel Gauss
Metaphorically, if hippo ethics is the impulse to respond to suffering with compassion, hyena ethics is the impulse to enjoy, justify or morally authorize suffering.
Harm toward another person has been morally justified when it is an act of deterrence and this is, in fact, a rationale for legal punishment. By punishing individual wrong doers, we feel we can reduce the degree of harmful behavior in our society as others may be restrained from similar behavior if they know punishment will follow. We feel that limited harm may prevent greater harm, and it is harm inflicted out of necessity, not out of glee.
There is, however, another type of harm which is much darker and more sinister. It is harm we inflict because it gives us a sense of personal satisfaction and even pleasure, and it is often confused with moral action. This type of harm is so commonplace that it is often not questioned or challenged. It is at the core of much unnecessary human suffering on a personal, societal and international scale.
It is the harm we cause because we feel the other “deserves” it purely because the person is different from us, has upset us and/or we simply enjoy the idea of harming them because we no longer see that person as a human being deserving of our respect or kindness.
What makes this act of harm so insidious is that many of us do not even recognize the irrational impulse behind it, because, in part, it is couched in neuro-chemicals that “hide” it from our moral investigation and make it seem unquestioningly right. It is harm which is morally wrong but which feels right to us. We harm others thinking we have every right to, when, upon closer inspection, we do not. We want to hurt the person we consider to be a bad guy, but it turns out that we are the bad guy.
Hippo vs. Hyena Ethics
In an earlier essay, I got creative and described “hippo ethics” as the moral response we experience when we observe another being suffering: the feeling of “pain for pain.” Locke, Hume and Adam Smith all wrote about this “moral sentiment” – that when we see another in pain, we often feel a type of pain ourselves…not the same pain, but pain nonetheless and often strong enough pain to push us to take action to help others.
Before ethics became a system of principles, laws or philosophical arguments, it may have begun as something more emotional and immediate. We see another being in distress, and the distress engages us so that we are moved to help.
The hippo became my humorous metaphor for this response due to videos showing that when a crocodile attacks a baby gazelle, a hippo will often charge into the scene and drive the predator away. We cannot really know whether the hippo is acting from this pain-for-pain compassion, territorial aggression, parental instinct or sensitivity to distress signals, still, I felt the image was suggestive enough for at least a metaphor.
The hippo appears to see suffering and responds to it without reflection, ideology or calculation. I felt it could symbolically represent a type of moral reflex. Symbols for processes of our inner world are important as they can bring these processes into greater conscious focus.
Yet, the person who might ordinarily recoil from causing suffering, or who might be moved to take action to help someone who is suffering, can also quite easily choose to initiate suffering, rationalize it as “right” or even take pleasure in it and this is what I mean by my metaphor of hyena ethics. This is much more common than we think, many of us do it without being aware of it and it is a root cause of evil in the world. Some of us may have suffered from people who felt they had the right to hurt us due to personal animosity born of difference or because we were not in their “in group.”
A metaphor for this impulse may help us recognize it more easily and resist its temptation. Anyone interested in rising morally has to be able to recognize this impulse and address it. It is an impulse toward harming others which (biochemically) hides itself behind a smile, in-group approval and a feeling of moral accomplishment.
Harm and Its Justifications
Hyena ethics, as a metaphor, is a type of harm that does not aim to deter. In fact, it happens for selfish and self-gratifying reasons as it seeks the satisfaction of another person we don’t like suffering. I chose the hyena as a metaphor for this impulse because it often seems, in popular culture, to take glee in the suffering of another animal it attacks, so I chose the hyena not for biological accuracy but for its cultural symbolism.
In the human imagination it seems to laugh and delight at the scene of a kill, enjoying a cruelty that has become emotionally self-rewarding. In my metaphor the hyena represents a type of moral self-deception that goads people on to hurting others instead of understanding, embracing or forgiving others. It means choosing hate and causing harm, when we don’t have to and then calling it “right.”
It is the “You don’t like him, so you have the right to hurt him!” response. It is the “Good idea! He deserves it!” response. Our neurochemistry almost makes it seem as if a god, itself, is speaking to us directly and telling us, “Go ahead, hurt that person, it’s OK, really.”
By falling into this moral trap, a person is literally following an inner command without questioning it, and one is no longer in control, but being controlled. Anyone who aims for personal freedom should be concerned about this emotional state. It feels so good to harm a person this way, but one is merely following something, because one does not understand or will not resist it.
The impulse feels external, authoritative and righteous, so ancient humans may have even (just speculating out loud here), interpreted it as divine instruction…neurochemistry masquerading as revelation. One has to wonder whether, in ancient times, they really, literally thought this impulse was the voice of something divine when gods told humans to hurt each other. “They are not like you, so you may take their land! Wipe this group from the face of the earth!”
Perhaps throughout history we repeatedly followed this impulse instead of wondering why an impulse or god would encourage us toward killing and theft. Some cultures have believed that gods commanded or endorsed violence, but we may have been listening to neurochemistry and attributing it to a god.
The Moral Disguise
So, for now, the distinction I want to make in regard to harming another is between harm understood as an unfortunate means of social protection pursued out of necessity and harm desired as a self-gratifying end in itself. There is harm to deter and there is harm for glee. One is right, one only feels right. We regularly engage in harm for glee, personally and as a society, and do not even realize how wrong it is.
Hyena ethics is particularly dangerous because it rarely presents itself as malicious pettiness. The person who wishes harm upon another does not say, “I am being petty and malicious.” Instead, he says, “That person deserves it. I am right to hurt that person merely because I do not like him.”
They feel they have a moral right to harm which is reinforced by the joy they feel upon harming which is a moral disguise of cruelty. The desire for another’s suffering is converted into a judgment about the other’s worthiness. The target is no longer someone who is being harmed, they are someone to whom harm is supposedly owed.
The pleasure and self‑deception become difficult to detect because they hide inside the language of justice and the neurochemistry that rewards aggression and makes it feel “right”. A person may delight in humiliation while calling it accountability or enjoy exclusion while calling it protection or celebrate collective punishment while calling it security.
Antonio Lorenzana Bermejo
One may feel exhilaration at the destruction of a private enemy who offended the aggressor or maliciously attack an out-group enemy while insisting they are merely defending a culture or civilization. It works on a micro and macro level.
The crucial question is not whether the target has done something wrong, because this is not about deterrence. The question is why the moral aggressor is doing this, cannot recognize they are doing this and why we do not denounce this self-deceptive motivation toward evil action under the guise of morality more often.
Moral judgment no longer asks, “What response is necessary, proportionate and humane?” It asks, “How much suffering can we inflict before others call us reprehensible?”
The Collapse of Empathy
In the earlier essay, I described “demonization” as the kryptonite of the ethical superpower I called hippo ethics. Empathy is often activated when we perceive another being’s pain, but it is fragile. It can be over-ridden by a distinction of race, nationality, religion, political affiliation, class, gender, ideology, appearance, behavior…even a rival sports team. Yes, there is research specifically involving sports rivals, showing reduced empathy-related brain activity and increased reward-related activity when sports rivals suffer.
Recently a baseball fan in Chicago verbally attacked a player from “the other” team. She felt she had the right to dehumanize him, spew hatred at him and enjoy this. The player then retaliated using much more vulgar language, following the common trend of hyena ethics as a mutually escalating cycle of dehumanization. Later, during an interview, she stated that she came to the ball park specifically to spew hate at this player…a guy she had never even met.
A person who looks like “one of us” remains emotionally understandable and their suffering can be imagined. Once they are recategorized as “one of them,” the emotional response begins to fail. The inner monologue may be as simple as: “He is not one of us. Let’s hurt him.” At this moment, metaphorically, the hippo inside us becomes a hyena.
The aggressor might think, “He is an idiot. He is wrong. He is arrogant. He does not like me. He wants to hurt me. He thinks he’s better than I am. He isn’t cool like the rest of us.” It takes, in fact, very little for us to begin the demonization process of making a person a target. Demonization kills empathy and welcomes malice. Most importantly, it makes the hatred and the malice feel good and right, even righteous. The most frightening feature of this process is how ordinary it is.
The Hidden Impulse
Hyena ethics is difficult to resist because the impulse often feels like the right thing to do. If I am acting from greed, jealousy or resentment, I may be able to recognize this. These emotions are socially categorized as wrong. But what if I experience the impulse to harm as righteous and most people in my society feel the same way? What if cruelty feels like self-protection, courage, justice or moral truth? This is the big problem, in fact.
This is the trickiest ethical problem: how do we resist an impulse toward harm that assures us it is right and makes us feel good to indulge in it? Perhaps we can think, “Do I want accountability, or do I want humiliation? Am I avoiding an opportunity for communication and resolution for the easy act of harm? Would I accept the same treatment if identities were reversed? Do I still recognize this person as a person?”
A useful warning sign is the disappearance of limits. Hyena ethics has no natural stopping point because the suffering is rewarding and leads to reinforcing loops. It can move from punishment to degradation, from degradation to dehumanization and from dehumanization to severe, gleeful harm.
Another warning sign is the inability to imagine the target’s pain. When the suffering of others, even in minor social situations, becomes funny, deserved, invisible or irrelevant, the moral faculty has gone silent.
Biology Without Ethics
Why does this impulse exist? Biology is interested in survival, not ethics and does not care whether an impulse is fair, it cares whether the impulse increases the likelihood of survival.
Perhaps evolution rewarded organisms that could distinguish between “us” and “them,” and could mobilize aggression when facing a perceived threat, thus the nervous system became geared to protect the organism and its group. The unfamiliar could trigger defensive hostility which became tied to reward circuits in our brains. What began as a survival mechanism gradually may have become a source of pleasure and a distorted form of ethics which can be misused.
There is research which shows that when someone is categorized as an outsider, empathy decreases and aggression increases. Studies show reduced medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) activity toward “dehumanized” outgroups, meaning less mentalizing, less social cognition. At the same time, amygdala and insula responses increase, reflecting heightened threat and disgust.
So the amygdala becomes more reactive, the prefrontal cortex less engaged, and the reward system lights up when the outsider is harmed. The suffering of the other becomes neurologically coded as a victory, not something pitiable. This is apparently why cruelty can feel righteous even when it is not.
The pleasure generated becomes a counterfeit form of ethical confidence. The person feels certain he is right because his body rewards him for harming someone he has already categorized as “other” or “unlikeable”. This is why hyena ethics is so difficult to detect, it feels like virtue, but it is simply biology without ethics. Perhaps ethical development really begins when we notice this reflex and question it.
Micro and Macro Hyenas
Hyena ethics operates both interpersonally and historically. At the micro level, it can appear in an individual’s causing or delight at a co-worker’s embarrassment, failure, punishment or social exclusion. It appears in the celebration of another’s misfortune and in the transformation of disagreement into a desire to harm.
At the macro level, the same impulse can be seen in political leaders, media outlets, militaries and mass movements which teach people to regard an entire population as despicable and worthy of abuse. At this level individuals no longer need to experience themselves as cruel as they falsely feel they are doing the right thing.
The attempted extermination and dispossession of indigenous groups in North America, the system of chattel slavery and the deliberate targeting of civilian populations in wartime all demonstrate how hyena ethics can convert human beings into permitted objects of horrific suffering. The statement “They are not like us, thus inferior to us…” is often the precondition for “…therefore anything may be done to them.”
Resisting the License
Because hyena ethics can feel joyful and righteous, we might need outside eyes to help establish restraint. We need to identify when this impulse is at work and apply social pressure denouncing it.
Society should insist on proportionality, due process, individual responsibility, civilian protection and the preservation of human dignity even when a person has committed wrongdoing. These can be external safeguards against the pleasure of cruelty. Laws and norms must protect people when ordinary sympathy fails. If someone else’s pain feels gratifying, we should distrust the moral explanation we have for that pleasure.
The Highest Moral Accomplishment
The highest moral accomplishment may be recognizing that which is inside of us that tries to make itself unrecognizable, and which rewards us to harm others for glee and not deterrence. We should be able to say: “I feel the desire to hurt this person, but the desire itself does not give me the right to hurt him.”
Hippo ethics begins with the perception of suffering. Hyena ethics begins when that perception is interrupted by demonization and transformed into delight. The first says, “Someone is in pain, and I must respond.” The second says, “Someone is in pain, and I am glad.”
We should be suspicious whenever cruelty arrives disguised as righteousness, whenever punishment becomes entertainment and whenever a person’s identity is treated as a reason to hurt them. The next time something inside you tells you it is ok to “…harm another, he is a rotten guy and he deserves it,” you might question that. The next time a politician demonizes an entire population and says we must deport or attack or destroy them, please question where that sentiment comes from.
We have a choice and it affects others and leads to whether our lives will have dignity, meaning and value or whether we will wallow in hate and pettiness without even recognizing how harmful we are. Examine, resist, love…even your enemy.
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