All it takes

There's an island or whatever with 100 people as I have ten fingers. They're all good people. No one gets a kick out of hurting others. Each cares about each others pain. Nobody wants to be thought of as the most important person. Each person values the contribution made by each other.

One day a person gets killed by a freak accident while alone. Unfortunately the circumstances really really make it appear it was murder. Now, evil has been introduced (yes, this story has been done a few times before). Each person must view each other with the understanding that this might be the murderer. So they aren't as open with each other. They view each other with some suspicion and are apt to possibly think quite negative of one another.

In response to this less positive attitude people just naturally aren't as positive in return. And things go downhill.

A small bit of distrust results in feeling offended and returning that distrust twice as much. Just the possibility that one isn't liked makes people cold to one another.

Everyone is still trying to be good. But people have learned to suspect very negative things of each other. And misinterpret actions very, very negatively.

They begin responding with hate to what they perceive are just nonsensically harmful actions. Actions which couldn't possibly be performed just out of stupidity/ignorance (of the harmful consequences), that instead must be evil and thus deserve hate.

All it really took was just recognizing the possibility of evil. And communication that wasn't perfect.

And so I rail against indifference. I've been thinking it's the real problem. But even without it, maybe we're still lost.