Are humans violent by nature Essay
Are humans violent by nature? It looks like this question is one of the most relevant for philosophy and psychology sciences. Obviously, answer to it may display different points of view. First of all, we have to determine what is violence in fact. In this order, violence should defined as abusive or unjust exercise of power. This definition is totally permissible to modern society, which is fully adjusted by regulative norms, such laws, religion, rules of social behavior, tradition etc. Appropriate attributes are specific to civilized society, but what about tribes and folks who are far from such condition? It seems that manifestations of violence, according to announced definition, also can be found among primitive folks. We’ll explain this point further.
Unfortunately, it should be stated that violence is natural feature of both civilized and primitive people. “Chicago’s last hope” by Kevin Fedarko and “A train hop to tragedy” by Ron Stodghill articles useful to confirm the fact that civilized people are violent by the nature. These two articles tell us about 13-year-old boy, who became the victim of four young men intended to “take care” about “niggers” in their neighborhood, and two teenagers, who were brutally violated and then killed by bastards. We all are encouraged to claim that these two cases are horrible derivation of normal behavior. Unfortunately, this opinion is wrong due to amount of similar tragedies, which happen every day all around the world. People who commit these crimes are often fully mentally healthy. Mostly, their behavior should be explained by the wish to break restricting rules. The point here that violence is inherent to all of us, but not everyone has the strength to stay inside the norms. Moreover, it should be considered that noted cases are extreme displays of unjust power exercising. Seemingly, some much more lighter types of appropriate behavior were conducted by each of us.
What about primitive people who are not restricted with strict rules of behavior? If there is nothing to break, probably there are no cases of injustice power exercising there? From the first glance, it really looks so, as every case of bloodletting could be explained in terms of wild environment and process of natural selection. However, the “Keep the river on your right” by Tobias Scheenbaum and “The Huron: Farmers of the North” should be used to take some analysis. Both these products tells readers about foundations of humans’ life, who are far form civilian values. If the “The Huron: Farmers of the North” is essentially an overview of all anthropolgical information known about the Huron Indians, who at the time of contact with Europeans in the early 1600’s were settled in a relatively small tract of land between Lake Simcoe and Georgian Bay, the “Keep the river on your right” is the personal story of 34 year old gay form Brooklyn, who once decided to take the experience of downshifting. In the aspect of provided analysis, both of these works are helpful to get the displays of natural humans’ violence. For example, here is the background of Tobias history: “For it was in a remote part of the Amazon, in Peru’s Madre de Dios region, that Tobias Schneebaum lived with the cannibalistic Amarakaire Indians. He formed an intimate bond with the members of one tribe whose males were physically intimate but also attacked another village, killed most of its inhabitants, and cooked and ate parts of them”. This story is helpful to get clear that even primitive people are violent by the nature. This point is based on the fact that the cases of cannibalism are extremely rare among all known animal species. Killing own kind creations cannot be perceived as the mandatory need of survival. It is the direct manifestation of humans’ natural violence.
There is the assumption that our craving for unjust exercise of strength is determined by subconscious wish of own power expending. Philosopher Shehzad Ghias has rather interesting idea about analyzed topic: “Human beings have rationality and a free will to make their own decisions. If they choose to act violently, it is a conscious decision on their parts and they should be held responsible for it rather than seeking to find explanations in biology and psychology, which end up sounding mythological rather than simply logical”. This idea is extremely valuable in the aspect of provided research. Yes, all people are violent by the nature. However, it should not be treated as the excuse for committed unjust. Talking about violence in civilized society, it was noticed that bigger part of humanity is fully capable to follow determined rules of behavior. In this regard, all of us are not only inherently violent, but also potentially able to control own power expressing. Moreover, it should be considered that society established all premises to deal with this task. To sum up, humans’ natural violence is the price for our special place among all nature creations. However, this fact cannot be used as the defend argument to those, who neglected widely adopted norms and rules.
