Why aren't people nice, good and kind?

It sounds like a stupid question, and probably is. Still, you'd think that, having outgrown the feral competition of our "nasty, brutish and short" phase, we'd have evolved in a kinder, gentler direction — as we have, of course — but here's a statistic, courtesy of the 2007 Kandersteg (Switzerland) Declaration Against Bullying in Children and Youth, that challenges all complacency on that score: An estimated 200 million children and youths worldwide are bullied by their peers. The spread of cyber-bullying since then probably already makes that look like the good old days.

Japanese schools, responding to an education ministry survey in the wake of the October 2011 suicide of a 13-year-old bullying victim in Otsu, Shiga Prefecture, reported more than 140,000 cases of bullying during the six months from April to September 2012. The suicide this past July in Yahaba, Iwate Prefecture, of another 13-year-old boy who'd been bullied felt like him saying to us, in effect, "You've accomplished nothing; are you even trying?"