Asher.
The 1% you mention is not significant...it is just a medical issue.
50 years ago, Gonorrhoea was cured with a singe shot of pennicilin. Now, common strains are resistant to multiple antibiotics. That is the damage to the human ecosystem that, in the end, gets to innocent people.
But 100% take their conscience with them. They cannot leave it behind. And everyone sleeps alone; sharing a bed is not the same as living with one's conscience day in and day out..every single day into the future.
Each of us sleeps with ourself.
What you say is intuitively wise, Fahim. I wish it were so. I feel that a lot of folk have managed to suppress the good advice of the direction the conscience strives to lead us.
Tom Dinning took a delight in telling me he lacked empathy and a conscience, yet as I understood him more, I found it was more complex. I believe he suppressed empathy as he got satisfaction in exposing other folk's aparrent shortcomings and failings. But all his rulers to measure behavior, required a value system from a conscience. His anger at people we knew, likely as not, stemmed from insustices he saw around him,painful beyond belief, which he coudnt not resolve himself. So, instead he'd to constantly berate others for perceived pverty of thought, exploitation, indifference and infamy. In the end, on a macro level, Tom turns out to have very good values, but wrapped up in a complex patina of anti-social behaviors that obscure real hurt and justifiable anger.
The people who vote for racist leaders, do so without stress as they have been brain-infected with a memic idea that suppresses their Chirsitian, Muslim, Jewish or other enlightened Conscience. Most folk in
any house of worship are kind and considerate and would give their shirt to a stranger in times of need.
But put them in a football stadium, and they may riot against opposing fans! Put them in a political rally, and they lose empathy for those exlcuded and uncompetiive.
Conscience is universal, but it is under the thumb of diversions from cradeled grudges, politics, passion and demagogery.
Consicence works best on an individual level, when an exhausted German Soldier doesnt shoot the vanquished British force becuae of some essence of humanity managed to survive the brutality of war.
For a lot of folk, conscience is mostly asleep as self-interest has the corner office in the management suite!
Asher