Why Some People Never Take Accountability: The Strange Absence of Remorse and Empathy

When I was in grade one, there was a girl in my class was bullied by other classmates, including a few girls and boys. They’d pull her hair, slap her, and she’d cry while running faster. They would then chase her. Nobody else noticed. She never complained either. They insisted me to join them, and I did for a few days and then final exams arrived, followed by summer vacations.

While the holidays of two-and-a-half months were still going on, I self-reflected as a six-and-a-half-year old child and concluded that it was wrong behaviour. I decided to apologise to her once the school was about to start. To my surprise, when the school reopened and we all sat together as newly-promoted students in grade two, that girl had already left the school. So, the formal apology never happened.

Looking back at this snippet, it feels like I naturally had a stronger moral compass than many other students my age. Not that I was always well-behaved post that event, but there was always a chance to look back whenever I felt something wasn’t right on my part.

Bullying, Power, and the Lack of Taking Responsibility

Bullying is a low-frequency tendency of people who grew up in surroundings where people in authority dominated in a certain way. They learned early that making other people feel threatened is a way to reinforce their sense of power.

In school, as the classes got promoted to higher levels, there would be subtleties like not talking to the target victim, smear campaigning against a particular person, cornering them, triangulation, and so on. People believe in built-in narratives all the time, so it’s not uncommon to scapegoat a person for higher agenda. The targeted person can’t do anything because the system actively works against them.

I remember in grade ten, there was this girl who wasn’t intelligent, who’d secure the lowest possible grades, and who didn’t represent the typical beauty standards most people approved of. There were multiple instances of her being cornered by a group of girls who would relentlessly make fun of her on her face, call her names, and laugh together to uplift their fragile ego. I wasn’t participating in that group, but I was a bystander who couldn’t call them out. Nobody else would either because they were loud, and other individuals didn’t want to poke their noses into their business. They were probably scared of being the bullies’ next target, maybe. People who are not at the receiving end don’t really care.

Now, I am not into toxic positivity, believing that all bodies are beautiful. I know for a fact that everyone is biased, and they have set their own rules for beauty standards in their minds. Nobody is perfect, and we all look different. Some people might admire our physical appearance, and others might not. But what I firmly agree with is that absolutely nobody deserves to be bullied at all, regardless. No matter whether they fall under your idea of beauty, you are not supposed to mock them.

Regarding that targeted girl, she never left the school until high school was over, and there is a fascinating psychological reason behind it. People who get bullied often remain in the same situation for years since it’s a familiar environment. They know who is what kind of person, their possible behaviours, and the probable treatment they receive from many others. A new school environment strips that familiarity. If they get admission to a new school, they don’t know whether it has bullies or not, or what their limit or threshold is for acting badly. They need to discover that, which takes time. It’s about the comfort zone.

If such people are given an entirely new environment, the likelihood of them getting the abusive behavior reduces to almost zero. This is because people don’t know their history and won’t pull them back to put them in their place, forcing them to remain behind. A person who was the victim in the past also tends to gain momentum once they escape from that situation because they literally are not facing such difficulties anymore. No groupism, pitting them against others, or mockery of any kind. New people would see them via new lens like a fresh slate. This is not a survey but anecdotal experience and observation.

To support my stance on what I have just mentioned, I can confirm by going back to the one who was actively being bullied by peers in junior high school who I met years later as a chance encounter. During undergrad days, outside an exam centre I saw something different, which was, her personality apparently modified. She was no longer that lame teen who was being mocked. She was actively involved in exam discussions, the thing she wouldn’t typically do before.

This was the type of bullying that happened to a person who wouldn’t conform to the expected norms of the school grading system and her physical appearance. There would be other kinds in which the pattern of cornering someone would be the same but for different reasons.

When Bullying Becomes Gendered

Now regarding subtle bullying in high school brings me to the next point about teenage couples where we would often hear gossips about them doing something together. Someone would catch them red-handed and spread the news like wildfire.

In the case of any teenage couple, perceived or otherwise, it would be the girl who’d have devastating consequences for being involved. The smear campaigns would almost always tear her character down and the guy would be unaffected, left scot free. This pattern had been consistent across various schools I had changed. Even the subject teachers would advise other ‘good’ girls to stay away from such girls. No such advice were given in case the guy was involved too.

Nobody can understand how it negatively influences her mindset for years, and the decisions she takes about herself, or how she would need to learn how to love herself despite the world actively trying to put her down.

You’d be surprised to discover that it’s more often women in their late thirties or forties who no longer care what people think of them because they have been heavily policed since they were 12. They are expected to look, talk, laugh, sit, cook, study, marry, and make careers in a certain way. That's freaking too much!

Men probably still care about their image because they weren’t judged as harshly as their female counterparts. Definitely, I am not surprised by knowing that female students are more likely to be the target-victim of cyberbullying compared to their male counterparts. Even if you pick the poorest of backgrounds, women and girl children are more at risk of witch-hunting, or worse, being trafficked. Men of these backgrounds may be digging filth from underground and die because of it, but they aren’t being judged for whatever they do as long as they earn - the only thing they’re expected to do. The other tasks are just bonus points, and his spouse is lucky to have him.

Why Some People Never Feel Guilty or Take Responsibility

It has always been hard to comprehend why remorse is something reserved for specific people, while others have no ounce of guilt at all. As a six-year-old girl, if I had the capacity to feel bad about my own conduct, why does the rest of the world remain oblivious?

Sometimes it feels like so many characters we see and experience firsthand are like NPCs, as in a typical video game scenario. Such people simply exist in our lives with practically no motivation to evolve. All kinds of criminals, sociopaths/psychopaths you see or read about in the news fall under that. They disrupt others’ life, generate chaos, lack remorse for their actions, and leave because we are supposed to learn some sort of lessons. They are simply not programmed that way. They just exist.

If I look back in hindsight, the school system appears to be a mini political playground to make us get ready for an adult environment, which could turn worse. But since as children we were already preparing for that, the adult world didn’t surprise us. It rather developed a thick skin in us over the years.

But I truly believe that humans should, at some point, be accountable for their actions, whatever that is. If someone at the age of, say, 60 years, still has a lack of guilt and feels that they have done nothing wrong in their life, they sort of failed in living it. An ego-driven mindset makes a person stubborn, which brings nothing of substance to the table.

I have seen plenty of people lacking empathy whatsoever, regardless of what age they reach. They continue to hate some people and feel good about that despite it being them who were the active oppressor. Speaking of those school scenarios, I don’t think any of those pupils ever felt remorse for mocking their fellow peers, and I always wonder why.

Why do some people never take responsibility for their actions? On the contrary, why are some people feel too much about something they didn’t experience firsthand, and yet they empathise with it just as deeply?

Although it’s necessary to show them the mirror by staying away in case they did something seriously wrong. Responding out of past nostalgia gives them the impression that the matter wasn’t that serious. Even if they are humanly incapable of conscience, making permanent boundaries would force them to sit with their own toxicity.