Effects and Ramifications

Political and social effects
The impact of cruelty and violence either within families or across nations interferes with all other efforts to produce healthy, just, and compassionate societies. Following the “cycle of damage” on the individual, family, and societal levels, we can trace the path from neglect, trauma, repression, brain damage, and group pressure toward hate, extremism, and acts of terror or collective violence. 

Nations or societies in denial or projection 
In this section, we examine how nations as a whole, as well as individuals, tend to deny the destructive things they have done, and ignore or dismiss the effects of their deeds. 

During the 20th century, many examples of unimaginable brutality were committed on a mass scale. After the wreckage, entire societies struggled to face the fact that both officials and citizens participated in committing atrocities against neighbors, families, children, and each other. 
 
Human history is a long study in how to make excuses for horror and injustice. And, in each case when we step back and examine the professed reasons behind why certain atrocities were committed, or unjust policies institutionalized, we find fallacies of reasoning, and distorted beliefs that had somehow infiltrated into the system, and became a rationale for these actions. The official line usually places blame onto scapegoats within a society or presumed enemies outside of it.

War as an excuse
A group responding to a real or perceived threat to its security or status calls its actions “acts of war” or “acts of defense.” In this way, those in authority, whether be they state officials, rebel leaders, or terrorists, can rationalize abuses of power. Thus, authorities can act with impunity and commit acts of torture, mass murder, and other atrocities; all is excused automatically and they can avoid having to make reparations. 

The World Court must be given the authority to address war crimes committed by all nations. And all nations must be pressed to sign and enforce covenants, charters and manifestos that protect human rights.
When hate becomes destructive

Massacres and mass hysteria
Through intensive campaigns of hate-mongering and media frenzy, a populace can be rapidly transformed from a civilized society into a killing force, and willingly participate in genocide of former neighbors and friends as if in a mass fugue state, as seen in the Rwandan Genocide.

The bystander society
Far more common is the more cold, detached, and malignant neglect that is the mark of the bystander society, a citizenry that allow horrors to be committed in its name.

What happens when there is a lack of empathic imagination?
At a distance, the suffering of masses of people becomes too abstract to engender personal empathy. It is easy for authorities to ignore the collateral damage of their policies when no one is personally accountable for the decisions made.

Concerned with pursuing mere profits, corporate executives often ignore the vast devastation their actions engender (e.g., BP oil spill, Bhopal, Exxon Valdez, Enron, etc.). A lack of empathic imagination allows military leaders to drop bombs almost casually, in the name of expedients such as national security, national interest, or the balance of power.