Violence and Humanity
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Cultural differences inform ideologies, attitudes, and of course, social norms and practices. However, many would argue that in spite of cultural differences, there exists within every human being an element that is endemic to the human species, a core that comprises the essence of human nature. This core, it is widely believed, is universal, and all that are human are vested with its unique properties. The size, scope, and nature of this coreùthe content of the human characterùis the subject of all philosophy, and the matter is far from settled. Whether or not human beings are innately violent or war prone is a fundamental question in the pursuit of human nature. If so, then a biological determinism has already steered us down a path of destruction and mayhem. If not, then warfare and killing must be regarded as peculiar habits specific toùor more prevalent inùsome cultures over others, and that perhaps it is not in our nature to be the violent creatures that human history so readily describes. The fundamental question, then, concerns violence and what it may be attributed to. Are human beings a violent species, or are some cultures simply more violent than others are? The answer will not be easy to discern, as there is a paradox at play in the world of men and their wars. Killing, as Thomas Hobbes understood it, is natural for mankind; in fact, the state of nature is best described as a ôwar of every man against every man,ö in which there is no law and no justic
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ne biological trait in human beings, then our abilities and habits in this capacity would remain static over time. As any historian will attest, this has not been the case.
Others agree, citing specific cases throughout history in which human beings have had a notoriously difficult time killing one another. This idea represents another key component of the argument against the theory that violence is a function of human nature. If it were, would we not find killing to be easier than we do? This again represents something of a paradox. If, as Michael J. Farrell attests, humans killed ôsomewhere between 200 million and a billion other humans (1996, pp. 9)ö in the 20th century, then why is it that we have had such a traditionally difficult time coping with the act of killing itself? Even students of the Holocaust do, concludes Farrell, recognize that human beings possess ôa powerful, innate resistance toward killing their own speciesö; it is merely that psychological mechanisms have been ôdeployed by armiesàto overcome that resistanceö (1996, pp. 11). In many cases throughout history, the soldierÆs resistance to killing has been so strong that he has risked death himself to aviod doing it; this is well documented regarding
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Approximate Word count = 1754
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)
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