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Originally Posted by Ninja Kl0wn Just spouting out thoughts here to keep the conversation running. Rereading my own post, I can't tell if it's an arguement or an agreement here, or if it's even relevant to anythign that's been said so far lol.
At our core, humans are predatory pack animals. I'll draw my parallels here to wolves since they are the animal I'm most familiar with, though it applies to pretty much all pack predators.
That said, I would assume that violence would be something that we are very much inclined to. In the end, we all want to be the alpha male. That means ascending through the ranks by mental and physical superiority, displayed via acts of violence against your fellows. I do somewhat agree with your statement that we don't want cause serious harm, however I believe that applies specifically to one's own pack. Outside your pack is fair game. That's why the average soldier hesitates before shooting his own man under any circumstance, but doesn't even think twice about unloading a full clip into the enemy.
Your above mentioned safety regulations in sports echo this. We see our opponents in the ring as our fellows, our pack mates if you will. I don't think the hard-nosed military system is so much for not wishing to cause undo suffering, but for self-preservation. It's an entirely selfish reason. It's a go for the throat attitude because we don't want them to have time to injure us. |
This gets sticky. I am of the belief that an extent of our behavior that is greater than we would want to admit is dictated by evolved, instinctual drives. For instance, we all like sex, not because it is a novel thing and we intellectually declared that sex was keen, but because liking sex was once upon a time beneficial to the survival of our genes. That being said, we are much more complex than we think. Humans don't see a dog and think, "Hunting partner," especially because modern domestic dogs typically suck for hunting. Nor do we immediately look at every person outside of our 'pack' or family as an opponent. This is generalized of course, I'm sure some do think that way.
What is really striking, especially when one examines human evolution is that we weren't primarily predators. For the majority of human history, hunting has been secondary to other practices. Prehistoric humans were more likely to forage for fruits, nuts and berries and scavange meat left after some other critter's kill. Hunting only really came to the forefront with the Ice Age when foraging and scavenging weren't getting the results we needed. Of course, after the last Ice Age ended, we started seeing the first steps towards agricultural societies forming, so examining human life as a whole, predation is not really that popular.
But, we do also have the will to power, we all do want to be the alpha male. However, this applies ONLY to our own pack. As people in our day to day lives, we don't care who the king of Brunei is, just so long as he doesn't try to dick with us. The dominance we seek is over our family and friends, in fact, because these are the people that impact our lives. We want the choice of food, the choice of breeding stock, the ability to enjoy leisure, etc. Thus, we have conflicts: brothers fighting over toys, friends fighting over a girl, internet trolls whipping their dicks out to try to prove who is the better human being by asserting their own intelligence, fighting ability, penis size, whatever. That being said, though, there is much evidence that man hates serious harm befalling other men. In studies involving World War Two and Vietnam veterans, more people developed Shell Shock or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder because they had to kill another person than from being wounded or seeing people they cared for die. In fact, being forced to do harm to another person even a person you don't know, is a really good way to fuck yourself up for the rest of your life. We can punch and kick all we like and call it sport, but we all know that if the UFC involved pikes and dismemberment, we'd vomit our lunch watching it, if we brought ourselves to watching it at all.