Over on the hangout, Francis3422, I assume a younger person, is asking about what to do in a confrontation he expects to have. It made me remember the combination dread and exhileration I felt in High School headed to a showdown in which I usually got an extremely painfull ass-kicking. Violence is such an integeral element in human history that it would seem to be a basic part of the human personality but the average person would say they abhor violence. Maybe I watch too much History Channel but it seems that most ethnic groups that have inhabited the Earth have been exposed to kill or be killed confrontations that have drafted the average citizens into the protection of their way of life or the attempt to wipe out another groups way of life. Had I been alive in any of the past era's I don't think I could have faced the hacking and bludgeoning types of warfare for fear of being hacked and not summoning the will to bludgeon. How are common people driven to direct physical violence? The mutilation of the american soldiers bodies, the 911 highjackers sliting throats. Guns and explosives remove some of the intimacy of the act so I can see how they can be used in support of ideals, but, hand to hand violence seems to require some degree of psychosis where the body loses touch with it's humaness. I started this thread because I don't understand how human beings summon the will to maim another. Maybe, maybe in an act of revenge I would have that ability but all the aggressors in human history weren't psychotic.
I think people adapt to their surroundings. If you are born and raised in an area, or a household, with violence you are more apt to commit violence. Horrible atrocities that we see on TV are common for some people. While I am a very a moral person, I don’t think my morality is 100% innate. If half my family were killed during various wars, I would probably be doing things that I really don’t want to think about.
If you agree with evolution and how similar we are to primates, then you could say that we've always lived in fear from powerful animals lurking below the tree. If we were already powerful, we wouldn't have the need for tools or intelligence. Religiously, civilization has always had this innate fear that they'd be wiped out by an act of Nature too devastating to recover. Maybe that caused people to have this group mentality on what's morally acceptable in order to increase their chances of survival. Either one, we've always had a gnawing fear that an unseen force would come and threaten our way of life. It could be Mongolians, anarchists, Communists, etc... Or on another level it could be another religion, homosexuals, minorities, immigrants, or another political party. Also, it's mentally easier to beat down and mutilate other people in mobs, than one on one. That's a disturbing insight on our brains work. Think about how the Nazi soldiers who followed orders slaughtering the members of the concentration camps. And the towns who rounded up the undesirables while knowing their fate. Think about normal policemen marching down the streets beating the fleeing civil rights protestors in the 60s. We usually blame the genocidal leaders like Stalin, Hitler, and Pol Pot, but it was the soldiers who carried out the orders. Some weren't neccesarily bloodthirsty and primal, but those who disagreed didn't band themselves together to hedge against reprisals. They could also comfort themselves to the fact of preserving their home or retaliating for their home. So one point is that most of us take our homes and lifestyles for granted because it is so integrated with our perception of survival. On the other hand, we are instinctively open to threats, real or perceived. No matter how great or perfect our upbringing could be, survival will trump that in most people. If they have a group mentality to work with, then bar to do humanly unimaginable things is lowered. Maybe a school fight is sharpening the edge for that kind of survival, and/or it's another circumstance in group hierarchy. But the situation is similar to that in some inner cities or war torn countries where lives have been taken. Not as serious, but it's worth noticing for that other half of us who abhors violence.
Clues for my own question....the thread in the hangout about the kid maybe going to fight is up to 97 posts. Violence is an epidemic among young males of the species. It's a right of passage, a measure of manhood driven by testosterone and adrenlin. Throw in a little jingoism and righteous indignation and you got yourself a fighting force capable of inflicting mass violence. Monkeys with with guns.
I agree with invisible fan's points and do feel that violence (or at least the capacity) is hardwired into us. Survival is largely determinate on competitive advantage and since we are primarily social creatures we mainly seek competitive advantage through social interactions. At the same time though we're not far removed from using violence for competitive advantage, literally fight for survival. In the past few years I've wondering a lot about violence, why we are violent and why we even need to be violent. When Columbine happened like nearly everyone I was initially shocked about it but as I thought it about it more I realized that I could relate to how the killers thought. When I was a teenager in highschool I would often feel angry and violent and that me and many of my friends would celebrate violence by talking about ways to kill and torture and people we knew. We never acted on any of it but in light of Columbine it really unsettled me that I could've have even thought that way then and that even now I have violent fantasies about fighting. On the other hand as a martial artists and someone who teaches self-defense classes I've both committed violence and encouraged violence. In the martial arts competitions and sparring that I've been in I've broken other people's bones, dislocated joints, choked people out and given people concussions and have the same done to me. When coaching my students I've encouraged them, especially women, to be more aggressive to overcome innate squeamishness (maybe civilization) to inflicting pain on others. Even though these are inherently violent acts I've rarely felt that they are because they've been bounded by the rules of competition and the rituals and comraderie of organized sport. In a way that I can't fully explain I feel that hard violent competition actually makes me feel more goodwill to my opponent. Its the sort of thing you see when at the end of a long hard fight two boxers will embrace. In teaching self-defense I also emphasize the need for violence. I try to point out that while we live in a civilized society that when you are fighting for your safety or the safety of others civilization and even innate morality becomes a hindrance. For example as civilized moral people its hard for most of us, especially women, to think about taking your keys and jamming them into someone's eyes but if you were attacked and you had your keys in your hand that is one of the things that you might have to do to survive. So I'm not sure if we can ever get rid of violence or that we should. I think we just need to figure out ways to express and contain our capacity for violence while preserving our civilization and morality.
