It occurs to me there are two kinds of pleasure: reducing tension, and amplifying spontaneous positive feelings.
Getting drunk and crazy at the end of a tough week is the former. Rising with the sun and taking a walk in the woods is a combination of the two, for most. And joy felt in meditation is primarily the latter.
Cruelty consists in lessening your own tension by increasing it in someone else.This root process is the core motivation of power lust, along with the paired desire to keep someone else from doing it to you