Earlier quoted context omitted.
> normal people motivated by money… strangle car owners and steal their cars… Those are not in any way normal people. If someone makes it to 16-17 y/o without acquiring that fundamental moral lesson, I would not characterize them as normal, whatever the cause of that failure.
"Normal" means common here, and the fact that common people happily commit heinous acts is nothing new. E.g. the holocaust was comitted by "normal" people. Moral grandstanding won't change the fact that civilization is rather thinly veiling the violent ape in most of us
I don’t think civilization is a panacea here.
To my mind, civilization is not exactly a strict synonym of peaceful generous enlightened humanism. Of course as a phenomenon it can encompass this kind of behavior, but just as well as it can help foster genocides, war and torture.
Holocaust didn’t happen despite civilized minds, it happened specifically through a civilizational scheme.