I understand why there is social stratification. I see how those at the top of the socioeconomic pyramid tacitly protect the positions they occupy. Why settle for less when you can have more? While it is open for me to distribute my resources with others, I do not. They are mine.

What I cannot understand is why there is so much interpersonal cruelty. Is it a consequence of the stratification which subsists now and forever between us? Perhaps.

I am reminded here of a group of Nietzschean aphorisms. But none of them seem to illuminate the question from a new direction.