Is selfishness the fundamental engine of destructiveness?

Right, there is an ignorance of unawareness, and an ignorance of refusing to investigate.  Yet, paths with a potential negative backlash are still chosen by people who DO attend to the consequences for themselves and others.

In fact, it's probably non-ignorance that allows people to get away with their destructive behaviors for so long.

Ever see the movie "Suspect Zero?"  In it there's a serial killer who is very successful because he understands that police catch serial killers by analyzing their patterns.  So the killer kills randomly on purpose and doesn't do anything ritually.

Heh.

I think most people do wrong because they believe they can get away with it, and because they haven't trained themselves to be restrained by their compassion. I think it's amusing to consider what these people would think if someone told them that their entire life was not only recorded down to the most intimate personal thoughts, and that the purpose was to create a test to see what they'd do if they're given the love and responsibility of a REAL life, especially considering that there is nothing you can do to someone else that is not merely an admission of what you'd have done to yourself under different circumstances.

Exactly.

Time is an illusion. There are spaces outside of time where your entire experienced reality is subject to the closest scrutiny by karmic energies. Not with judgement, but with the function of allowing you to understand the "energy and desire" behind your actions and experience them as they really are. Usually this is experienced at the moment of death, but sommetimes "stuff" just happens and one can get a peek. IMO, it is a clear understanding of consequences (both intentional and otherwise) which governs many interactions at higher levels, since there they intuitively understand this simple construct: that the ability to do a thing does not mean the need to do a thing, and sometimes things just need to play out before a desired result becomes achievable.

Then again, what is time to someone who has all of it? Think about it. 

I wasn't thinking of the Ben Kingsley character, but of the final serial killer who he hunts down--the trucker.  The trucker did follow a pattern because he killed mostly children (if I remember correctly), but he did it randomly, often, and was caught not because the pattern he followed but because Ben Kingsley's character was a good remote-viewer.

I believe that is often the case: that people choose poorly for the greater purpose of learning.  But it isn't the whole person choosing really, but a portion of them--their higher consciousness.  That idea is compelling to me, but right now I'm more interested in the psychology of motivations in the lower mind.  Is every choice prechosen by the Higher Self?  Or are there paths picked without the consulation, or prior input of, the Higher Self?  Is the principle of freewill applicable between a Higher Self and one of its incarnations?

Also, on selfishness: is it conjecture to suppose that if an individual fully recognizes and appreciates the oneness of all humans and all being, that that person would never do violence?  Would it be possible for a person to know their oneness, to fully feel the fact of oneness, and still cut on themselves?

Is a sense of separation really the root cause of illness and the final explanation for destructive behavior?  Or merely an important, general one?  What if, for some, illness has less to do with the degree of separation/connection one feels, but more to do with the quality of connection?  Or the perceived value of that connection?   

Again, though, I'm actually less interested in what's true, but more interested in what passes through the mind of an "awake" being who chooses an ultimately destructive way.