Human beings have been sailing on the MediterraneanA sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean. It has the shores of Europe on one and the shores of north Africa on the other, as well as shoreline in Asia. for as much as half a million years.¹ In the ancient world vast battles were fought in its choppy waters. Tens of thousands of bodies of sailors, soldiers and merchants lie on its seabed.

They might have hoped a day would come when we were advanced enough in our technology and morals that the deaths on the Mediterranean would end.

But the deaths and the killing continue. On the seafloor, the bodies of merchants and marines are joined by those of migrants, mostly from Africa and the Middle East.

A BBC investigation has claimed that for the last three years the Greek coastguardAn organisation that monitors coastal waters to help ships in danger and prevent smuggling. has caused the deaths of more than 40 people by forcing them out of their national waters. Nine of them were allegedly thrown into the sea and drowned.

Forced returns of migrants to the sea, or "pushbacks", are illegal under international lawNon-refoulement is a fundamental principle of human rights law that forbids "pushback," returning refugees to warzones. Countries sometimes attempt to circumvent this by using private ships to return migrants.. But human rights groups have long accused Greece, as well as Italy, Spain and other European countries, of using them against migrants on the Mediterranean.²

It means sending them to travel hundreds of kilometres on flimsy dinghies or rickety rafts. Those who do it know their victims may not survive the journey.

So how can human beings commit such inhuman acts against each other?

Philosophers have long disagreed over whether cruelty is instinctive to human beings, or whether it has to be instilled in us.

Sigmund FreudAn Austrian psychoanalyst who was one of the world's foremost authorities on psychology in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries. Although his ideas have been discredited in the scientific community, he remains influential for literary scholars. thought inhumanity was baked into the human condition. He argued we all have instincts that make us want to kill and harm each other, which is why civilisation imposed laws to prevent us from doing so.³

This gives rise to a sense of resentment against society which causes us sometimes to break the moral rules that bind us and hurt others.

In contrast, Hannah ArendtA Jewish German political philosopher who escaped a concentration camp and fled to America. She wrote extensively about Nazism. thought it is society itself that makes people cruel to each other, based on the example of Adolf EichmannThe senior Nazi in charge of organising the deportation of Jews to extermination camps during World War Two. He was convicted of crimes against humanity and hanged in 1961., one of the architects of the HolocaustThe murder of six million Jewish people in Europe by Nazi Germany. Members of other minority groups were also killed. . 

Eichmann, she argued, was not a fanaticSomeone who fervently and enthusiastically believes in something. . He was just doing his job and obeying the rules, which in these circumstances dictated that he should murder millions of people. She called this the "banality of evil".⁴

But Arendt's work has long been criticised by historians who point out Eichmann was actually very ideological, and a vicious anti-SemiteSomeone who is hostile to or prejudiced against Jewish people. .

Which is why others have thought that it is really ideas that make people cruel. Friedrich NietzscheA German classical scholar, philosopher, and critic of culture (1844 - 1900), who became one of the most influential of all modern thinkers. argued that cruelty is a specific kind of violence.

He claimed that the strong had always used violence against the weak. But this was not motivated by cruelty.

The change came when the weak were able to take control. At this point, he argued, they produced political and religious ideas, like Christianity, that proclaimed victimhood as the highest value, since they had so long been victims.

The problem, he thought, is that victimhood gives us licence to do anything. If we think we are already victims of another person, we feel entitled to inflict the same suffering in return. If we have suffered, why should others not suffer?⁵

And that is how, for example, Greek coastguards might come to feel they are the true victims of a migrant "invasion", and send their "enemies" off to drown.

Can we ever stop inhuman acts?

Yes: Inhumanity is something we learn, or something produced in us by systems beyond our control. If we change the way our systems work, we can approach the world with more compassion.

No: We are ultimately slaves of our baser instincts. Whenever vulnerable people end up in the power of others, they will suffer at their hands - it is just the way of the world.

Or... Inhumanity is a product of nurture, not nature. But it is also deeply rooted in our psychology. If we want to see other people as truly human we must question our assumptions and reform ourselves.