Taneisha asked:

Are humans born with the tendency to be violent or are we born totally innocent of violent tendencies
and our environments cause us to violent?

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Unfortunately the truth is: we are born with a tendency to be violent. It is inscribed in our genes, for
the very good reason that once upon a time, when these genes were fashioned, violent behaviour of
a certain kind was a survival necessity and therefore part of our species profile. The conditions under
which that behaviour was appropriate have long since disappeared, but the instincts which cause it
remain as dormant triggers.

This is the evolutionary answer to your question. I happen to believe it is the only way to understand
the depth of the problem. Psychology is a great help too, of course, but it doesn't and can't tackle the
underlying aetiology, so no matter how much psychology you apply, you won't get to the bottom of it.
To explain:

1. Species profile: Simian, arboreal.

We are primates. As such, we are related to the group of animals called simians, which also includes
apes and monkeys. Arboreal means that our distant ancestors lived in the trees. Instincts generally
reflect the needs imposed by a habitat. Accordingly monkeys, as arboreal creatures, have instincts
formed to cope with that kind of life. For example, you might have also asked, why do we have
stereoscopic vision? It relates to the same question, because it relates to the same genes and
instincts. The answer is, that monkeys need such vision for the purpose of brachiation, swinging from
tree to tree, sometimes in a great hurry. You need to be able to judge the whereabouts of the next
branch very precisely or pay the penalty of a broken neck. This kind of vision is our legacy from the
arboreal days.

I assume you know that evolution only ever builds up, never down. Somatic remnants of our simian
days are too obvious to need stressing, including the stump of a monkey's tail we all retain at the
base of our spine. Whatever changes occurred to our species profile since then — genetic, instinctual
— is also additional. We are monkeys plus. Monkeys were Lemurs plus. And so on.

Monkeys live on the fruits of the trees. They live largely in trees and sleep there. Moreover they live
as small communities. As such they developed excellent communication skills, including devices such
as warning cries if a predator approached. Let me give you a characteristic vignette of what would be
observed if a leopard looked like wanting to climb a tree to get its dinner. The monkeys would gang
up and produce a lot of noise (crying, screeching, banging) hoping to frighten the aggressor away.
They also know how to grab hold of loose branches and fling them at the animal. This is an instance
of a well-developed instinct of 'pseudo violence'.

Monkeys do not have the 'tooth and claw' to defend themselves physically against predators (neither
do we!). Their skills are primarily of the kind I have just described, although in addition of course they
can hop quickly from one tree to another and scatter. But let's focus on the 'display, screeching and
flinging'. It is a good 'show' and with a bit of luck a leopard might thus be discouraged from pursuing
its prey, because being less intelligent than monkeys, it may not always 'see through' this harmless
exhibitionism.

2. Human evolution: the descent

It is a fairly well accepted version of human evolution that we descended from the trees. In general,
animals don't change their habitat voluntary; hence there must have been a strong compulsion on
that group of monkeys whose lineage we still represent. We suppose the forested savannahs in
Africa might have shrunk at some stage, and suddenly these groups found themselves having to
adjust to a life in flatland, with many wrong instincts.

Let me leap over a lot of intervening eras; but roughly 2 million years ago, there were hominids still
almost indistinguishable from monkeys and apes, and these would, as I said, still circulate the same
or nearly the same genes as their distant arboreal cousins. As mentioned, any changes would have
been plus. Thus hominids were distinguished by a larger and more complex brain.

One outcome of this, eventually, was a much greater resource of intelligence, in particular the skill to
make implements, and among these (most noteworthy) weapons. Planned hunting is another benefit
of complex brains, and the two go together. You can't hunt without weapons.

But you can also turn a lance at your neighbour. And thereby hangs the tale of real, lethal violence.

3. Instincts plus

One can easily live with the idea that a simian in high alarm, about to launch a noisy
display-and-aggression show, would do so in a state of high emotion and amid a rush of adrenalin.
Exactly how our bodies react to danger and unexpected situations. Hence there is no qualitative
difference to this when it occurs intraspecifically. Monkeys fight among each other as we do. But we
often do it with weapons (or we use our intelligence for even more insidious schemes for harming
others such as economic deprivation). The difference to monkey behaviour is that weapons kill.

So there you have an answer, not complete, but enough to explain the basis of violence and why it is
correct to identify it as innate. It boils down to an argument that our instincts to aggression were
originally the self-protection mechanisms of an inadequately endowed species having to cope with
dangerous predators; but the form this defence took is distinguishable from violent aggression only
because monkey do not on the whole have the means of inflicting lethal violence. Whereas we, with
our brains and still the same instincts, when 'turned on' to behave violently, have those means and
use them, often directly contravening our own interests. But with animals, and hence with us, the
body always has first priority. It takes more than just intelligence to avert a person bent on violent
behaviour. In fact, if you consider how much of our thought and teaching and science we expend on
containing our tendency to do violence, you can hardly doubt that it arises from instincts plus, of
which the plus part did very little.

One last comment: Someone else asked recently about pollution, why we produce so much and
seem so poorly equipped to dispose of it. Same reason. Arboreal creatures drop their garbage on the
ground. There's plenty of fauna on site to recycle it. But we let our imaginations and invention
dominate; we don't remember that the rubbish involved in our billions-of-tonnes worth of unwanted
goods exceeds the capacity of the cartage firms on the ground and in the sea. So we have to take
care of it ourselves. I think you might agree that so far we've shown ourselves pretty inept at the job.

Jürgen Lawrenz

Sydney