I recognize it. The delight in crushing. In You. In me. It isn’t rage and it isn’t survival. It is pleasure.
This feeling is everywhere now. It’s the low hum beneath cancel threads, the energy in the group chat and the fuel for algorithmic pile-ons. It has become a cultural ritual to prove we belong not by who we are, but by who we can humiliate without consequences.
We have moved past simple correction. Today, we perform righteousness. We don’t just call out; we crush. And the part no one wants to admit out loud is that it feels good. There is a specific, intoxicating thrill in taking someone down a hierarchy of harm where we climb by collecting “moral wins” and curating our outrage.
But this “justice” is a house of cards. If your identity is built on what you can destroy, it will collapse the second you become the target.
You see, cruelty is never a loyal ally; it always comes full circle. It never stays on your side. When we indulge in the delight of domination, we aren’t practicing justice—we are practicing casual cruelty.
Not all harm shouts.
Some of it smiles.
Some of it wears the robes of “accountability.”
When cruelty becomes casual, we lose more than just kindness. We lose the ability to recognize ourselves. We trade our soul’s mirror for a weapon, forgetting that eventually, we all have to look in that mirror.
True justice requires a heart that breaks, not a heart that delights in the fall. If we want to find a truer life, we must reject the “delight in crushing” and return to the hard, quiet work of restoration.
Lets be careful with what delights us. If it looks like someone else’s destruction, it certainly isn’t from God.