Global Dialogues

The adoration of brute force is no longer a foreign phenomenon seen from afar. It is embedded in how we talk, dress, and scroll. Cruelty is being normalized through policies and public performance that praise the narrative of “strength” as defined in a patriarchal system. Social media feeds of violence and suffering have made horror feel ordinary. An endless loop of images and videos of war, genocide, displacement, or a starving child in Sudan, Palestine, Ukraine, DRC, and so many other countries, makes outrage tired.It lowers the alarm.

This numbness is dangerous. If a starving child becomes just another post, urgency dies, and cruelty quietly gains permission.

Social-Darwinist language helps this happen. “Survival-of-the-fittest” talk or meritocratic gospel—when policy makers, pundits, public debate, and economic market narratives frame inequality as natural, cruelty gets a clean conscience. Austerity, harsh immigration rules, and “tough love” rhetoric are dressed up as realism, easily accepted as facts rather than choices. Structural violence becomes “fine”—the answer to the question “how are you?”—which is one of the easiest processes of normalization.

Performance then comes into the equation. Strength and power are made to fit into the narrow definition that the hyper-masculine culture has given them. Powerful women are often legible only when they adopt masculine signals. For example, Kamala Harris’s suits are made to be square-shouldered on purpose—almost to communicate a masculine figure in posture. Such power-dressing shows how femininity must be hidden to be taken seriously. Such policing of appearance shrinks the evolving idea of leadership and blocks the chance that feminine styles can be seen as strength in political spaces.If cruelty is socially produced, we can undo it where it is produced.

Structurally, shifting evaluations from raw GDP to wellbeing indicators and investing in restorative justice and community-led healing programs that repair harm could allow for a more livable society that accommodates social progress for every individual. In other words, progress should be measured by the welfare of people and not numbers or ammunition.

This can happen by making compassion measurable and rewarded. An example of this institutionalization is New Zealand’s decision to adopt a “Wellbeing Budget,” which shifts national priorities away from GDP growth alone toward mental health, child welfare, and environmental protection. Rather than treating compassion as rhetoric, it measures progress by how people actually live and whether communities thrive. This model shows that empathy can be written into policy design, not just expressed in speeches. Governments can hold themselves accountable to values of care and solidarity. With compassion being institutionalized, it stops being a luxury and becomes a source of legitimacy. Governing becomes less about proving dominance and more about keeping us all alive.

Society has to unlearn the assumption that brute force and crude performance are the only ways to exercise power. That logic not only narrows our imagination of governance but also runs against the Georgetown values of people for others, cura personalis and social justice. Leadership is about community and service, not dominance.

Jemimah Hyelazira Golo (SFS'26) is a senior in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.