Throughout most of human history – and during all of human pre-history – being stupid was an effective way of removing yourself from the gene pool. But over the last century or so, western civilization has been substantially covered in nerf so that stupid people stand a damn good chance of living not only long enough to reproduce, but reproduce a *lot.* However, the rst of the world is not necessarily so safe for the invincibly stupid. Gentlemen, behold:

Millennial Couple Bikes Through ISIS Territory to Prove ‘Humans Are Kind’ and Gets Killed

“Humans” are not kind. *Some* humans are kind. Some humans are monsters. Most humans are just sorta okay. Similarly, some human cultures are kind, some suck. And if you go into a culture that sucks, the monsters are much more likely to put their monsterism on display. THIS IS NOT A SECRET. This is common knowledge. To believe this…

“Evil is a make-believe concept we’ve invented to deal with the complexities of fellow humans holding values and beliefs and perspectives different than our own… By and large, humans are kind. Self-interested sometimes, myopic sometimes, but kind. Generous and wonderful and kind.”

… is to believe utter nonsense. “Evil” may or may not be an objectively determinable thing, but it is *certainly* something that, by the western understanding of “evil,” exists in the world. And some places are *loaded* with evil, whether or not you believe it to be. And if you choose to disbelieve in the existence of evil and human malevolence, you are courting just the sort of disaster that befell these people. It’s not so much a matter of saying that they “deserved” to be run over with a car and repeatedly stabbed… but then, someone who throws himself off a cliff in the belief that the rocks below love him and wouldn’t hurt him doesn’t “deserve” to die either.