Life & Wisdom Quote by J. M. Coetzee

Coetzee’s line lands like a hand on the wrist: not a sermon, not a slogan, a quiet interruption in the middle of our favorite alibi. “We are not by nature cruel” sounds reassuring until you notice how carefully it’s phrased. Not “we are kind.” Not “we are innocent.” Just not innately cruel. It’s a minimalist claim that refuses to let anyone off the hook. If cruelty isn’t hardwired, then it’s learned, chosen, rehearsed, institutionalized. Someone had to teach it. Someone has to keep it running.

The subtext is pure Coetzee: suspicion of grand stories about “human nature” that conveniently flatter the powerful. In colonial and postcolonial settings especially, cruelty is rarely random; it’s procedural. It shows up as paperwork, policing, borders, prisons, animal slaughter - systems that let ordinary people participate while telling themselves they’re merely following rules. Coetzee’s work keeps returning to that moral gray zone where the self wants to stay decent but also wants comfort, safety, belonging. Cruelty thrives there, not as monstrous impulse but as a series of small permissions.

The intent isn’t to deny atrocity; it’s to reassign responsibility. If cruelty isn’t our essence, then it’s a social practice we can refuse. The sentence offers a thin hope, but it’s a bracing kind: change is possible, and that means complicity is, too.