I think there's an underlying aspect of different natures and different experiences that leads to a failure in being able to empathize, basically the same idea as that phenomenon I was talking about the other day. He can't get empathy from them and he can't give empathy to them. He's all alone. They look the same on the outside but otherwise he was completely different from his foster families (while still within the realm of being a person), and from everyone else on Earth. He merely adapted to "their" rules and norms, which is what anyone would do under those circumstances. Especially as children, everyone wants to fit in and get along well with others, it's in our nature, we're a highly social species. He made great efforts to do everything right, only to discover that all he would get in reward were higher and higher standards for his behavior, more and more scrutiny and demands, until he inevitably made another mistake as an adult and it led to his downfall and to snapping. It was an honest mistake, though. I haven't finished the comic yet but I got the impression that he was a genuinely good man and all his wrongdoings before he snapped were only accidents. People still died in those accidents, though. In a way, it's a "Falling Down" sort of story, except with added nuance because unlike in that movie, after he snaps the protagonist of Irredeemable kills plenty of innocent people and does plainly evil things for the sake of evil. It's also obvious that he's going through a psychotic episode and has no control whatsoever, whereas the guy in Falling Down seemed more conscious throughout. So yeah basically those are my completely impromptu and unsanitized views