Xerxys

Why is man considered violent? In the thread about the theory of religion, it is said that if we were to last as long as the universe, we would actually evolve past violence.

What is violence to you? To me, violence is malice. Acted out hatred spurred out of spite, jealousy and ultimately a lack of understanding that these feelings serve no purpose toward completion. It is because of this definition ...er .... perception, that I believe I am not violent at all. I do not posses or act out of irrational nuances.

Acts of war ... well not violent, no .... not so much. In war, we have become like minded, united even despite all cultural differences. War is about territory and survival. Survival for the fittest of the most sovereign. Animals are not violent otherwise lions have waged a never ending war on the antelopes. War is made in order to bring a peoples in control, to fashion society into what is generally perceived as right then to evolve it from within it to create an elite.

What do you think about violence?

Manic_Skafe

However good you may be, I find that extremely hard to believe.

I don't think we'll ever evolve to a point in which we'll be beyond violence. As a species, thinking and reasoning constitutes very little of what we do. We are animals with a long list of motivations - many of which are inexplicable. Violence and coercion are simply tools of the trade.

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levite

In contrast to your definition of violence, which seems to presume the word being loaded with a context of malice and controlled intent, I tend to think that "violence" is a comparatively neutral term. In other words, it implies an act of injury or aggression against someone else-- which can be negative-- but leaves unspoken and unclear the motivation for said action, whether it was ongoing or singular, and the results thereof.

Violence can be justified, though quite often it isn't. It can be defensible, even as a first option. For example, there is, IMO, a difference between my beheading someone in an open fight, with a sword, in order to stop them from killing a bunch of defenseless, innocent children; or beheading someone who is tied up, with a machete, because I don't like their skin color, or religion, or the country that issued their passport.

But whatever the cause or motivation, violence is a choice. It is most often an instinctive choice. Humans are omnivorous, and our ancestors hunted as well as gathered. Animals are not violent with malicious intent, but they are violent. They stalk, they hunt, they kill. They rend and tear and eat. They fight each other over territory and dominance. They fight to survive. We have predator within us, and thus deep down, violence is a part of our nature. But the fundamental premise of every lasting higher social ordering, whether secular philosophy or religion, is that human beings are capable of rising above their primal identities by using force of will backed by knowledge-- whether scientific/rational or mystical/arational or both-- and in doing so can transcend the limits of where they came from.

There is still plenty of violence in the world. Far too much of it, for my taste, and I think many would agree with me. But in the scope of human history, violence is slowly beginning to be controlled, if we look at the past couple of hundred years. Yes, there has been quite a lot of violence-- a horrid amount of it, to be honest-- but it has almost exclusively been in the context of war. Even Hitler, whose worst violence was reserved for those not currently taking up arms against him-- cloaked his genocides in the mask of war, knowing that without that garb, such mass-scale violence would be impossible to achieve in modern Europe.

Slowly, violence is being reduced by means of the requirement that it be justified. Right now, this reduction is hard to see-- indeed, it may be statistically so minor as to be meaningless-- so far. But I think it is there, and it is growing. Wars are protested now, where before in history they never have been. Terrorism has a name, and is condemned, whereas before it was simply another martial tactic, and a fact of life. Even the terrorists these days refuse to acknowledge that they are terrorists: it's "bad PR." These kinds of semantics are depressingly minor details, I know, but they are something! The fact that there is a United Nations, with most of the nations of the world belonging, which admits that it ought to be doing something about bringing about world peace-- to my mind, from the historical perspective, almost completely outweighs its actual ineffectiveness. All of this represents a beginning. The whisper of a coming motion forward. The murmur before the groundswell.

I think that there will come a day when the bulk of the human race learns to master our impulse to violence, and most human quarrels and confrontations will be settled with reasonable debate and negotiation. Depending on the natures of the other beings we encounter once we move out into the universe, perhaps one day in our very far future, the entire human race will be so, and violence amongst humans will be the subject of visits to museums and libraries alone. Human beings may always have that primal impulse to violence, but I think that for the most part, this can be rechanneled and sublimated.

None of this will happen in any of our lifetimes. That, I am sure of. But the beginning will continue. Maybe, just maybe, in our grandchildren's lifetimes, or those of our great-grandchildren, this will begin to become perceptible to the majority of people.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

Plan9

Man, I started this goofy thread on violence a while back that I can't seem to find using the Search feature.

It was totally one-sided and completely over the top. Got a lot of heated responses, if I recall correctly.

Somebody with half a brain more than I should link it.

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Zeraph

I think violence is natural. Part of our competitive nature, old instincts useful for survival. Might still be one day. Don't give me that, violence is malice, humans are evil...look at un-edited nature, animals show the same behaviors just as sadistic as ours.

Dammitall

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/tilted-...-violence.html

Hi, I'm here to help.

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Plan9

Hah! I always said you were smarter than me.

Yeah, I totally searched for that for like 5 minutes yesterday. I even knew the title and still couldn't find it.

I'm buying you a beer later.

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Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

Willravel

My personal conclusion about violence is that it is the wrong choice. Call me a consequentialist if you want, but I've noted that violence never truly resolves what it was initially called on to resolve. Even in situations where violence is called upon to protect the innocent, it is always feeding a system of perpetual violence.

The basis of the social contract is rational conclusion that members of a social species will generally treat you the way you treat them. If you are rude to a person in line at the supermarket, that person is more likely to be rude back to you. If you shout at your parent, they are more likely to shout back. If you cut someone off driving, they are more likely to cut you off. This is backed up not only by collective experiential evidence but also anthropological systems of ethics and morality dating back before humans were even humans. The use of violence is inherently destructive and begets more violence, making the initial act exponentially more destructive than the initial act. As such, violence is the wrong decision.

Call it pragmatic pacifism.

Xerxys

Thanks Willravel, Zeraph and levite now what do you think as far as evolution is concerned ... do you think we can become non violent.

I assume (correct me please) everyone views acts such as war as violence. Can we ...er... grow out of this? I dont think so. I think there will come a time there will be no more riots, or break ins, or stuff like that, but I dont think the same about war.

Zeraph

Yeah, I think we can grow out of it, but it could be a *long* time before that biologically happens. I see us spreading throughout the galaxy before that happens. Although socially, once we cure "old age" and most major illnesses I think violence will get a lot more attention because then when someone dies it'll be a much bigger deal.

Willravel

This is something that has to be done at the individual level. If pacifism can spread, war will become less common.

As for war, it's possible but there will always be ignorance and greed. Those are what you have to deal with.

Cynthetiq

Violence is a need to survive. Do large predators love their prey to death? No, there is a violent attack. It is part and parcel of the animal that is within.

While we may be able to curb it for some reasons or another, I think that it is only going to be dormant until it is required again.

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FelixP

People tend to think of violence as a detriment to productivity and advancement, but I think a lack of productivity is what causes violence. In order to 'evolve' past violence, things would have to be so perfect, so complete, that there would be nothing worth fighting over. And that would mean we would have no emotions, because everyone is jealous about something someone else has, or has experienced. If a man had ten wives, ten trillion dollars, ten sports cars, ten mansions, etc., he would still want something that someone else has. I think we'd have to live in vats, like in The Matrix; we would need to be physically incapable of harming other people.

Violence is also a way of life, a tool of survival. Even if we evolved past emotions, there would still be many logical reasons to kill someone, unless of course we lived in a utopia.

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Xerxys

Except me, I'm the exception that proves the rule ... not joking.

Well, that would definitely suck ... I thrive on emotions.

... I've had time to mule this over.

Can violence not exist at all? If we don't have the base animal instinct to fight, wont we recede into becoming docile? And then .. nothingness?

I think not. We call on those who we have broken down then mentally conditioned to shoot first ask questions later to police us. We do this because, in doing so, we are preparing for an enemy who is sadly always there. Your question is .. what if we were to spread peace to the other side, then there wouldn't be sides.... achieving this is hard, not impossible, but very, very hard. Lot's of other things come into play ... irrational emotions such as anger and jealousy. Essentially making society to implode from the inside. Then the cycle begins again.

No, violence cannot be absent for any reason. We do not exist hence we are violent, more like we are violent hence we exist. It's an inbuilt base that enables and supplements sustainability to develop.

Manic_Skafe

What?

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Xerxys

I mean, aside from meaningless greed and gluttony, what many consider to be violent, will still be present.

WillyPete

Violence, like many other acts we make, is simply a means to achiveve something.
Once there is nothing left to be "taken", or if the possibility of retribution far outweighs the results of a violent act then maybe violence will subside.
But I don't think it will disappear.

Left alone, some people even commit violent acts on themselves or inanimate objects.
In one of the senses of its use it is a natural expression of rage or frustration.

Scenario:
If left in a spacious room, where you could request all manner of food and drink and have access to vast libraries of information and entertainment, do you think you could spend the rest of your life alone without ever committing one violent act? Again, this also would depend on your definition of a violent act. For this scenario consider it to be verbal or physical - an assault on anything animate or inanimate.

I don't think anyone could say that having everything will get rid of violence as a human trait.
The triggers for violent acts are as much a part of us as sadness, happiness, jealousy and other emotions.

levite

I actually did say as much, above:

So, you know, just to clarify: yes. I think we can, and probably will grow out of it. It will just take a very long time.

__________________
Dull sublunary lovers love,
Whose soul is sense, cannot admit
Absence, because it doth remove
That thing which elemented it.

(From "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" by John Donne)

roachboy

wait. while i like levite's post above, i'm not sure that i understand what violence is.

the op defines it as a matter of intent: is that adequate? is violence a subjective state of affairs? is it the same as "malice" which is more or less a synonym for "evil"?

then there's that confused and confusing paragraph which starts off mentioning war, then moves into some curious compression of arguments made by reactionaries like robert ardrey (the territorial imperative)--so social darwinism---and then onto some notion of natural selection....but that is to move from a legal state of affairs (War) to a questionable mapping of a cartoon version of darwinian evolutionary theory onto human motivations, to darwinian evolution in a cliff-notes form.

obviously the first subjective-oriented definition has little if anything to do with the others.

and then there's a question of the relation between, say, a predatory animal and it's prey---unless you anthropomorphize them---and so move what you're seeing through projections as to your own emotional responses, or what you'd imagine them to be were you the prey---how and in what way is this relation violent?

can't get started without knowing what we're talking about.
sorry.

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