Chapotraphouse

“I have always understood the Nazis,” Golding confessed, “because I am of that sort by nature.” And it was “partly out of that sad self-knowledge” that he wrote Lord of the Flies.

People that allow themselves to become scum look outwards for justifications for it in order to not hate themselves. They seek to justify it as the natural state of humans because to do otherwise is to admit that it is a personal failure that they have become that way or that they continue to allow themselves to be that way. They wish not to change, so they pretend that it is impossible to change, that it is natural, that it is human nature and they are simply enlightened rather than hiding it.