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I think you guys are approaching it from the wrong angle. Ustwo alluded to the following earlier.
Force (violence is a loaded term) is universal. Any creature on the planet will at some point use force to defend itself. Society has grown up to protect us from the indiscriminate use of force, the "State of Nature" if you will, which benefitted the strong and ruthless. Now the strong and ruthless hold positions of power, (which as stated before is backed with the threat of force) rather than just big clubs. "Violence" is just under the surface, and it is the reason for society itself, nevermind societies constructs.
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Force is universal, so much so that it is mundane. The fact that at some point a person might be required to use certain specific forms of it to defend themselves does not make those specific forms of force the be-all end-all of forces. In fact, as far as forces go, the role the force of violence plays in anybody's life ever is minuscule compared to other, more fundamental forces. That doesn't mean that we're ever going to have a thread about the profundity of electromagnetism, or that all decisions occur under the implied threat of gravitational acceleration.
All you're doing is taking hobbes a step further. It's a particularly cynical viewpoint and completely speculative. Nobody knows what the "state of nature" is. I don't. It's like speculating about the culture of dinosaurs- none of them took the time to write it down, so now all we have are bones.
Nobody knows what humanity was like before culture or social structure, because none of the folks who were around for it left any kind of substantial clue about how things were, beyond the rare artifact. A person's opinion on humanity's state of nature is more reflective of the person than the state of nature. It's useless as support for the idea that all human behavior has roots in violence or the avoidance thereof.
My point is that violence isn't the sole motivator because there are a whole lot of other reasons to do or not do things. My motivation for going to school right now is not that deep down i know that if i don't violence will befall me.
Now, maybe you're thinking, "But if someone shot you to death, you wouldn't be going to school anymore." So what? There is probably an infinite number of different things that could happen that would result in me not going to school anymore. Singling violence out and creaming your jeans over its awesome power is something i don't really feel justified in doing. Though it is certainly a possibility that someone might shoot me, i tend to think that a more likely reason for me to drop out of school would be the fact that there are only 24 hours in a day- that's just playing the odds though. This gets back to the subject of scarcity, which i still think is much more important than violence when it comes to controlling the behavior of humans.
I would also argue that civilization can only come about when a good portion of its potential members realize that violence is often completely useless and counterproductive, but again, that's just how i see it.