Tomas Bella

“The predators may respond to the defensive reprisals of their prey as if they were the ones under attack, and experience a moralized wrath and a thirst for revenge. Thanks to the Moralization Gap, they will minimize their own first strike as necessary and trivial while magnifying the reprisal as unprovoked and devastating. Each side will count the wrongs differently—the perpetrator tallying an even number of strikes and the victim an odd number— and the difference in arithmetic can stoke a spiral of revenge,”
― Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature: A History of Violence and Humanity