Why are people so cruel?

Oppressive governments. Bashar Al Assad has been promising democratic reforms for like 12 years or something like that. He's been promising it and not delivering for years and years. So now when the people finally got sick of it and started protesting he started slaughtering them. And so they started fighting back. And so now it's pretty much all out war, the government against the people.

As for other places, there are various different reasons why there is violence. One part of it is they have a culture based on Islam and a Holy Book with lots of violent and aggressive instructions to the believers. So that shapes the people and the culture and leads to violence. They don't have a tradition of non-violent protest so a lot of violence goes on over there.

A wrong religion that instructs followers to hate and/or kill or forcefully convert others is a religion that easily warrants what Christopher Hitchens said "religion poisons everything". I'm a Buddhist so obviously I don't hate all religion but i do recognize that religion can definitely be a very destructive force in the world.

This world is a cruel place. Kids are mean to eachother to be "cool". Adults kill for money, land, power, etc. Michael Jacksons song "heal the world" was a song with good meaning. Its almost impossible for us humans to live in harmony. We are too gready, mean and selfish. Its just human nature. We can always try and hope though.

Dude people are not cruel, Politicians are disgusting.

some people just want to watch the world burn

if u wanna live there, then you gotta kill.