It's a commonplace wisdom, one often associated with the treatment of children, that if you let people know you expect the worst of them, the worst is what you're likely to get, and so it's better to show more confidence in their character and their moral sense than to expect the worst. Yet how often do we read, from those waxing 'realistic' about the nature of human beings, that everyone is so flawed as to be no better than a killer? Here is Slavenka Drakulić, writing about the trial of Radovan Karadzic:
We like to believe that poets and academics – that is, educated people – are too fine, too noble, to commit horrible crimes, crimes against humanity. But it has been proven thousands of times that educated people have no higher moral standards than ordinary people. There is no mystique in their mutation: every human being has the potential for acting in good or bad ways, even if we fondly prefer to distance ourselves from that insight by labelling people like Karadzic or Plavsic "monsters".
In reality, such people are only our own reflection in a mirror.
I don't know who it is that likes to believe educated people are too good to commit horrible crimes, but they should stop believing it; the counter-evidence is overwhelming. On the other hand, not everyone should accept that a monster (and without scare-quotes) like Karadzic is their own 'reflection in a mirror'. In advance of practical confirmation, it is a calumny upon them. I've noted and opposed this cynical theme several times before here. One has to wonder why it's so popular. If human beings are capable of both good and evil, then why the decision in advance that they will all succumb to evil when circumstances turn difficult? It is true that anyone might do that, and so the advice to be on one's guard against crossing the line is sound. But it isn't true that everyone will; therefore the cynical counsel is wrong. It is also counterproductive, adding to the volume of those influences that encourage people to behave badly when it is hard to behave well. What we see in the mirror, in this sense, is somewhat up to us.