Kinga, thank you for taking the time to leave such a detailed comment. I appreciate your perspective. On the one hand, I fully agree with you that each one of us has an obligation to exercise personal responsibility and to act in thoughtful and careful ways, especially when it comes to our behaviour towards others. On the other, I want to make two points.

First, I want to reiterate something I state explicitly in this piece:

“[The thesis advocated herein] isn’t about excusing or justifying cruel behaviour or refusing to hold people accountable for their actions. It’s about acknowledging that: 1) every one of us wants to be accepted, appreciated, and valued by others; and 2) when we lack love and support from other people, we tend to engage in self-destructive and/or outwardly harmful behaviour.”

Second, and again as I assert in this essay, I want to suggest “it’s possible to understand and sympathize with the reasons why (some) people do crappy things (some of the time)” without thereby excusing their behaviour. Many people — I’m not necessarily suggesting you’re one of them — tend to conflate efforts to explain x with normative judgments about x. My position is that it’s entirely possible to explain some given phenomenon — such as why some people engage in self-destructive and/or outwardly harmful behaviour — without that explanation straightforwardly leading to or calling for one or more particular moral or ethical evaluations.

For example, social workers, addiction specialists, and harm reduction staff would, if asked, confirm that many people with problematic substance use issues struggle with addiction because of emotional trauma the latter have experienced throughout their lives. This explanation, however, is not the same as (nor does it automatically entail) the claim that the actions people with substance use issues sometimes take ought to be excused, forgotten about, or explained away. They’re different issues, as far as I see things.

Cheers :)