Humans: Violent by Nature?

With the passing of several recent, tragic events, I'm sure many of you have been questioning why/how someone could commit these things? On a general scope, these things I speak of are War, Murder, and Genocide, to mention a few.

These problems are world wide, not specific to any group of people, type of government, or religion. Why then, do humans seem to have a tendency for violence, and the ability to justify violence in the name of a cause.

I'd like to present you with a few things that most take as established fact as evidence that perhaps violence is part of our being. We're going to talk about the evolution and survival of humans as a species:

We all know the story of human evolution.

-After Homo erectus migrated out of Africa the different populations became reproductively isolated, evolving independently, and in some cases like the Neanderthals, into separate species

-Homo sapiens arose in one place, probably Africa (geographically this includes the Middle East)

-Homo sapiens ultimately migrated out of Africa and replaced all other human populations, without interbreeding modern human variation is a relatively recent phenomenom.

Take note of the bolded portion.

-Studies of contemporary DNA, especially mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) which occurs only in the cellular organelles called mitochondria, reveal that humans are astonishingly homogeneous, with relatively little genetic variation.

-The low amount of genetic variation in modern human populations suggests that our origins may reflect a relatively small founding population for Homo sapiens.

For the moment, the majority of anatomical, archaeological and genetic evidence gives credence to the view that fully modern humans are a relatively recent evolutionary phenomenon. The current best explanation for the beginning of modern humans is the Out of Africa Model that postulates a single, African origin for Homo sapiens. The major neurological and cultural innovations that characterized the appearance of fully modern humans has proven to be remarkably successful, culminating in our dominance of the planet at the expense of all earlier hominid populations.
-Donald Johannson (discoverer of Lucy)

If you don't know who Lucy is then shame on you! Now what does all of this babble mean? What I'm trying to show you, particularly with the bolded sections, is that violence seems to be engrained in human nature.

What can we do to combat this? I don't know really, I just thought it was an interesting take, and felt the need to share it with all of my ATS friends!

Would not exposing infants to violence and hate change things?


We are animals. In fact, I'm still in awe that we do things this well when no one person has been here more than a hundred and fifty years at most. I'm also almost certain that evolution is not complete yet my friend. Once cognition is the cage for our animalistic instincts their will be no need for violence. We just have to get society on the same page...


Figure that out.




Who am I kidding, as long as animate objects are stupid enough to not live and let live violence has a home.

Interesting, but you should look into the very subject of this thread: Humans: Violent BY Nature? Nature is violent. If you study the way organisms of all forms behave, from animals to amobeas, they all exhibit what may be called a violent trend. This is simply a part of nature. We as a specie must compete with others and ourselves for resources, such as food, a decent home, job, money, etc. Humans, because they are the most intelligent animal residing on earth, can actually be more percise in the manner in which they inflict damage to another living creature, or another human. I am not at all surprised by the atrocities that humans are capable of. It's something that they exploit because they can.

See Laiguana, that's where you and I differ. We aren't precise, hardly. We inflict violence and never take into account the side effects. All of the precision and cleanliness in the world can't diminish the impact the sight, smell, and prevailing presence of death has on those who experience it.

As a matter of fact, Id wager the lesser beings of this planet to be more precise when it comes to death because they often leave little left behind as evidence of their violence, aside from skeletal remains. We humans however leave plenty of evidence, in the form of bodies strewn in streets, pools of blood, and obliterated buildings.

Can the tendency for violence be hardcoded into DNA? I don't know, but the more we learn about DNA and the specificity of certain Loci and Genes to manipulate certain behaviors, I'm certainly considering it a strong possibility.

It's not that we have it in our nature to do that. Our nature teaches us to survive. So we have everyone at the start competing against eachother. They are competing because they all want to survive, but their intelligence dictates how much they get their hands on. So what we have here are elite's that are so intelligent that they can make the masses conclude that its part of human nature, but the truth is that we live in a capitalistic society. Those capitalistic ideals are not only dictating how you make your money, but also how you feel about your self. This is where sociopath's come into play and people with all different kind's of trait's. They feed on the narcissim that is the goal of capitalism that they feel it is they're obligation to get everything their way. So they're violence is just a result of the captialistic ideal that is embedded with their life's. Even though some instances may not be about violence for money, like just being inclined, angry, vengeful, you are employing these behaviors like narcissim and you look to capitalize on your enemy.

What if this was another system like something with more truthiness then communism? Would violence decrease a substanitial amount because people now follow a world where order is emphasized and people are less violent bringing the community together. Did I read the communist manifesto?... no I did not. But I know it's government control making equals of their citizens with jobs. But I'm saying add truthiness to it. Like being able to educate yourself on harder jobs so that you will perhaps be more handsomely rewarded. So there will be different levels of lifestyle available and it will require a certain amount of hours in a certain skill. Emphasis on science, technology, and business will be emphasized and the tax money will give startup cash regardless of success or fail to all the citizen who create something innovative. But you see since were taking care of everyone in this system and there are multiple levels of lifestyles awarded. Its like one of those one world government peace machines.

But what I'm saying is that our economy structure and our government policies and our government structures tottaly effect the outcome of whether men are born violent or non violent. See America is like the big hand of the elite squeezing a lemon into submission. Those little pebbles that make up the lemon itself are the millionaires, then theres the lemon juice itself and all the rest of us are swimming in there. So if the lemon juice wants to be a pulp or a giant hand hes going to have to beat up the pulp and the giant hand before he takes their place. So what are the chances of the lemon juice becoming a giant hand that squeezed the lemon into peices way slim because each lemon juice particle aka person is to small to compete with the giant force of the hand. So this is why violence is there because the lemon juice will die trying to kick the big hands buttockes but they will never succeed because the elite is too strong. Let's call it Exponentially larger in buying power then an average person. It's over. Only until we change the way the government's of the world work and how the money exchanging works is to create another system of monetary. Perhap's the one world government and a world currency isn't such a bad idea afterall.