Few want to cause harm. But....

Link: Today's substack post re: last time I almost died / wanted to.

From Morgan Housel (although in his full post, he repeats the homeownership line, which seems to be a myth):

Most harm done to others is unintentional. I think the vast majority of people are good and well-meaning, but in a competitive and stressful world it’s easy to ignore how your actions affect others. 

One consequence of this is that it’s easy to underestimate bad things happening in the world. If I ask myself, “How many people want to cause harm?” I’d answer “very few.” If I ask, “How many people can do mental gymnastics to convince themselves that their actions are either not harmful or justified?” I’d answer … almost everybody. [Post on this scheduled.]

...

An iron rule of math is that 50% of the population has to be below average. [A point someone else has made, p. 357.] It’s true for income, intelligence, health, wealth, everything. And it’s a brutal reality in a world where social media stuffs the top 1% of moments of the top 1% of people in your face.

You can raise the quality of life for those below average, or set a floor on how low they can go. But when a majority of people expect a top 5% outcome [because of social media] the result is guaranteed mass disappointment.

...

I have a theory about nostalgia: It happens because the best survival strategy in an uncertain world is to overworry. When you look back, you forget about all the things you worried about that never came true. So life appears better in the past because in hindsight there wasn’t as much to worry about as you were actually worrying about at the time.