I recently read "The Organized Mind". I didn't expect it to be a book on ethics, but it certainly did impact me that way, and caused me to alter an enormous number of faulty mental behaviors, and allowed me to see abuse in language.
> "Oh look at those rednecks who voted for Trump, why can't they get a college education."
This right here is an example of why it's so easy. Part of what I'm reading there is fundamental attribution error. A person, anywhere right now, that can't get a college education in the US is dealing with a lot of headwind. Our education system is punitive, starting with an A and stripping you of points all the way through, causing undue stress, knowing that if you fail, you probably won't have the money to move forward, and will have great difficulty. Rich people get a free pass on this. Put a system like this together and the reason that people can't get educations is situational, not dispositional. We as a society must do better.
I mentioned miscategorization already, which is something that our brains naturally do when seeing people different from us, and requires intentional mental unbundling to see all humans as the same category. This is why racism is so common as well; without intentional work, humans will find categories by which to judge outsiders.
Our social media breaks human relationships because far too many interactions are decided publicly, through shame, rather than through communication. An enormous emotional abuse crisis in the US has now reached the highest levels of society, both private and public, and I certainly put enormous amounts of blame not on the companies that make social media sites, but because our brains are simply not well-tasked to deal with it. Further, the end of comprehensive mental health, particularly CBT and emotional withholding and the damages that they cause so many people and relationships.
I have a strong feeling that in the coming decade, there will be studies in cognitive psychology demonstrating the connection between stock markets and wealth and the base level fear/reward circuitry of the brain, delaying and reducing ethical and social cognition. Causing a focus on economic power rather than social conformity, and thus damaging society.
Regardless, I apologize for blathering, I think about this stuff a lot.