Well, duh, violence is effective. You want that money behind the counter? Shoot the clerk. Get the money. You want that country? Bomb the shit out of them. It's yours. I would say that is a pretty effective tactic.
Because frankly, no one particularly wants to be killed or injured by someone else. Pain is usually better if avoided, as well as massive losses of your population. So if you're threatened, you're usually going to do what they say--and more so than if someone walked into your store and said "Excuse me, yes hi, you see, I would really like to have some of that money behind the counter, so do you think you could maybe give it to me, please?"
Violence equals power. It always has, and it does for every species. We've evolved into a weird exception, where in everyday life it's frowned upon, but if you zoom out into a world view you'll see it's still the same. But obviously even in everyday life there's still evidence that violence trumps all, particularly in robbing, kidnapping, hijacking, and the like. The reason for this it simple: If you use violence, either everyone's going to die and you get what you want because you killed them all, or, they give you what you want and they stay alive. Violence is selfish, but it's the only way someone can get everything they want without compromise, except for maybe blackmail.
The thing that stops the average person from implementing violence to get anything and everything they want is because we have grown up with the morals and understanding that this is wrong. Remember when you were a kid and your mom yelled at you for pushing that other kid when he wouldn't give you a turn on the swing? It's in our nature to fight for what we want. It's in our culture to fight for it without violence.
Obviously I don't condone violence. I can't even kill a ladybug, though there are plenty in my dorm room. But I do believe that the idea of violence can be looked at in two very different ways. One is that every life is valued, every life should be respected, and therefore violence is an incredibly immoral act. And the other is that we are fighting to survive as a species--and not individually--and for this reason single lives are expendable, so violence is a necessary and natural way of going about doing things. Isn't that how we view other animals? When the big scary lion kills the scrawny lion so he can steal his food, we call it natural selection, not sociopathic murder.
The difference is our industrialization, which sort of removed any sort of natural selection that takes place in humans. I think it's this transition from living as a species to living as a person that changed our view about dying and using violence to get what we want. But it is still in all of us. (ie Lord Of The Flies). And the fact that we look down upon violence doesn't mean it's any less effective.
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I notice that you refer to use "fighting to survive as species" ... so do you think that it's right to kill someone if they are a threat to us?
ReplyDeletePersonally I don't think it's right to kill anyone. But if one were to step back and look at us as humans trying to survive as a species, then killing another person who is a threat would be justified. I don't believe it is right in our society and culture today, but it is and always be in our nature as animals to *want* to kill someone who is a threat.
ReplyDeleteI think that almost every blogger this week has admitted that violence has been used more often than not to solve conflict. However, I have to disagree with you over the cause of violence, whether individually or in war. You say that violence is a hereditary trait; human beings instinctively will fight, even as children, to obtain what they want. I believe that violence is a social construct; someone long ago learned that they could use violence to achieve their goals, and this system became so instilled in our societies that even young children seem to inherently adopt it.
ReplyDeleteThe children of non-violent societies, whether they are the traditional non-violent Judeo-Christian communities we think of in the U.S. or tribes like the Mbuti in Zaire, do not instinctively resort to violence because they are raised communally are any aggression they show is actively ignored. These societies exist in this way because their progenitors learned long ago that peaceful negotiation is the most effective tool for conflict resolution.
"...the Mbuti in Zaire, do not instinctively resort to violence because they are raised communally are any aggression they show is actively ignored."
ReplyDeleteThis is the same reason as why we are raised knowing that violence is bad. We're raised that way. I'm sure there are communities out there where all children are taught that violence is the way to get everything you want.
I never said it wasn't possible to be raised with the belief that nonviolence is the most effective tool for solving problems. I just said that violence is also effective, if not more (not that it's right or moral or the like), and I still maintain it is in every human instinct to be violent or aggressive in some form. We're animals, it's what animals do to survive.
Plus, like you said, any aggression the Mbuti show is ignored. Which means they do still exhibit it, it is just discouraged. I think it would be very unlikely to raise a child from birth without him naturally and instinctively exhibiting any aggression in some way.