Abandonment as the best kindness imagined
A hardened person, even while doubting himself, may be unable to picture any better treatment of others than leaving them alone. His sense of what care looks like has shrunk until withdrawal seems generous.
Business
Power erodes empathy for dependents
As an owner gains control over land and people, he loses the ability to feel for those who depend on him. The more people come under his care, the less he treats them as people.
Fear can overrule fellow feeling
A man driven by fear lets it decide how he treats others, crushing the empathy he might otherwise act on. His harshness comes from fear more than from cruelty.
Accumulation ends in lonely abundance
Single-minded acquisition can deliver everything a person wanted and leave no one to share it with. The relationships sacrificed along the way were the thing the possessions could not replace.
A way of life drives people apart
People who started out together can be split apart by the demands of how they live and work, not just by their own choices. The grinding logic of ownership pulls even close bonds into separation.
Wealth is not the whole motive
A relentless accumulator may be driven by something other than money itself, such as control or security. Reading him as merely greedy misses what actually moves him.
Brutal childhood labor shapes the striver
Years of backbreaking work for almost nothing in youth can produce an adult who values gain above all and has contempt for softness. Early deprivation becomes the template for how he later treats others.
A villain can stay understandable
A ruthless man can remain likeable and comprehensible even in his betrayals, which makes him more unsettling than a cartoon villain. Readers cannot simply disown him, because they can follow his reasons.