Perhaps one of my more unique qaulities is that I actually know what I’m capable of. And I mean that in the worst way. I don’t lie to myself. I don’t have pleasant illusions. Most people lie to themselves about themselves all the time. It makes it easier to lie to other people.

I believe that I could kill someone and live with it. I would love to be able to take what I want with impunity. I would love to take money, goods, position, and honor. I could easily ignore or not care about what happens to most other people. I would love to have sex with many women other than my wife. Lots of them. I would love it if I could impulsively have sex with whoever I wanted that I desired when I desired regardless of age, relationship status, or any other factor.

I would love to eat whatever I wanted, all the time. Every moment, of every day. Doritos and milkshakes. 24/7. I would love to be able to just destroy the people I see as problems and as threats to me and my interests. I would love to cripple, terrify, or kill them. Not only am I capable of theft, murder, rape, adultery, gluttony, deceit, and much much more, they’re positively attractive. They seem, in many ways, preferable, positively inviting. They seem easier, simpler. They seem like the most direct route to what I actually want, more than all the frittering about and worrying about what I should do and can get away with that I have to go through every day of my goddamned life.

I’m not a monster. I’m human. I’m average. I’m quite convinced of that. By psychology, by philosophy, by history. It’s not only me that wants these things, not only me that is capable. It’s humanity. I’m only unusual because I’m actually aware that I’m capable of all that. I’m in touch with that aspect of myself. It isn’t hidden from me. I can see it.

I’m always amused by people who put on a performance, acting as if they were disgusted by things they clearly desire. If people didn’t desire those things, if they weren’t inherently attractive, then we wouldn’t have forbiddings against them. You don’t need to bother forbidding things that people by nature don’t want. No one bothers making laws against eating pig droppings because there isn’t any general interest to merit a general effort against it. But theft, fraud, murder, rape, adultery? We actually want those.

And yes, there are plenty of things we wouldn’t want done to us, and so we reinforce the general social condemnation of things like theft and assault and infidelity. But we forbid them because we don’t want them to happen to us, not because we don’t want to do them. They happen to people because we do want to do them, and sometimes we can’t stop ourselves. We would love to be able to do them with impunity. We would just hate for anyone else to do them to us with impunity. We would love it if none of the rules applied to us, but we would hate it if the rules didn’t apply to other people.

Even people who seem harmless are terribly dangerous, deep down. They just need the right incentives. People who are deeply in thrall to social pressures can’t even admit that to themselves. They maintain the illusion of their own propriety so well they’ve fooled even themselves. But the capacity it there, deep down. That’s what it means to be human. We could. We may not. But we are capable. We have choice. And we may only await the opportunity, or the necessity.