To give credit where it's due, I kind of took this and ran with it:
> It should be noted that no ethically-trained software engineer would ever consent to write a DestroyBaghdad procedure. Basic professional ethics would instead require him to write a DestroyCity procedure, to which Baghdad could be given as a parameter.
-- Nathaniel Borenstein
> Why are we like this and how do we change us?
Don't take this the wrong way, because I totally "feel you", to put it briefly, but my first thought is, there is no "us":
> When all are guilty, no one is; confessions of collective guilt are the best possible safeguard against the discovery of culprits, and the very magnitude of the crime the best excuse for doing nothing.
-- Hannah Arendt
For me it's important to not forget that sociopaths are weak rather than strong, and bluffing rather than laughing. Outside of forms of communications they can dictate and manipulate, that is, without some form of violence or dishonesty, on their own and as themselves, they have nothing, and can be made to implode rather easily. A murdering SS officer is not what sums up this phenomenon, Hitler, in his bunker, blowing his brains out, after blaming everyone with words that are obviously garbage once the claqueurs are gone, is.
No, I'm not saying I'm innocent and others are the sole source of evil. But we're still not all the same, it's a spectrum and we're not all in the same spot, and I reject that it's some "average human" doing everything. That's an abstraction, only the actually existing individuals are real, and the worst thing that can happen is not resisting and realizing it was "in vain" (and it never is when it comes to what it makes you as a person), the worst thing that can happen is that we realize we fell for rather mediocre people who faked it until they made it, and that we could have resisted easily (in comparison to the titanium steel gravity well humanity would be in then).