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Violence & Evolution 
Survival
Violence is a tool that allows survival.
Love-Wisdom is a better tool for most situations.
But rarely we may need violence.
Evolutionarily,
we are wired to be
particularly interested in bad guys and horror, because it helps guide
us to survive and/or defeat such a threat.
Usually we can find social solutions to such scenarios.
But, as a human and an
animal, we may need
violence as a tool for survival.
When faced with asocial violent scenarios,
the types where people run from rather than gather around to see who
wins, violence may be the only intelligent response.
This is not
about ego-threats, insults or pub brawls.
This is about life or body threatening situations, where there is no
escape.
Learn more about this practical tool here
and here.
Neuroscience
Here are some
insights from an interview with neuroscientist Dr Doug
Fields (BBC, posted 23 February 2016, accessed 26
February 2016):-
- Humans
are all wired for violence, we need it as a species, to protect ourself
and our
young.
- What
makes us snap is not a sense of immorality or any mental defect, but an
evolutionary neurological process.
- The
area of the brain involved is called the attack region of the brain. It
is in
an unconscious/subconscious area: the hypothalamus. The hypothalamus
also
controls things like sexual behaviour, hunger and thirst.
- Stimulating
neurons in the attack region will cause a caged animal to launch an
attack and
kill another animal.
- We
have a threat detection part in our brain. It can cause us to risk our
life in
an instant. It is not conscious or deliberate. 99% of the time it works
well,
but the modern world can confuse it, causing misfires. When it works
right, it
is called quick thinking or heroism. Men and women have it, but women
are less
likely to use it because of their smaller size. This makes a difference
to
threat detection brain circuitry and responses. Women are much better
at
detecting intentions from facial expressions, and so avoiding danger.
Men
are more likely to snap.
Tribal People
His [Dr Luke Kemp at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge, author of Goliath’s Curse]
first step [to how a global collapse could be avoided] was to ditch the
word civilisation, a term he argues is really propaganda by rulers.
“When you look at the near east, China, Mesoamerica or the Andes,
where the first kingdoms and empires arose, you don’t see
civilised conduct, you see war, patriarchy and human sacrifice,”
he says. This was a form of evolutionary backsliding from the
egalitarian and mobile hunter-gatherer societies which shared tools and
culture widely and survived for hundreds of thousands of years.
“Instead, we started to resemble the hierarchies of chimpanzees
and the harems of gorillas.”
Instead Kemp uses the term Goliaths to describe kingdoms and empires,
meaning a society built on domination, such as the Roman empire: state
over citizen, rich over poor, master over slave and men over women. He
says that, like the biblical warrior slain by David’s slingshot,
Goliaths began in the bronze age [3300-1200 BCE], were steeped in violence and often surprisingly fragile.
(The Guardian, posted and accessed 2 August 2025)
Excerpts
from article The Return of the Brutal Savage and the Science
for War by Stephen
Corry of Survival International
(posted 8 April 2016, accessed 17 April 2016):-
- The
last few years have seen an alarming increase in claims that tribal
peoples
have been shown to be more violent than we are. This is supposed to
prove that
our ancestors were also brutal savages. Such a message has profound
implications for how we view human nature – whether or not we
see war as innate
to the human condition and so, by extension, broadly unavoidable. It
also
underpins how industrialized society treats those it sees as
“backward.” In
reality though it’s nothing more than an old colonialist
belief, masquerading
once again as “science.” There’s no
evidence to support it.
- The
truth is that there are some tribal peoples who have a belligerent
reputation,
others known for avoiding violence as much as possible, and lots in
between.
That’s nothing to do with any grasping at mythic noble
savages, it’s what
anthropologists have actually found.
- Despite
the growing mythology, the archeological
record reveals very little evidence of past violence
either (until the growth of big settlements, starting around 10,000
years ago).
- Much
of the other “proof” for the brutal savage advanced
by Steven Pinker, Jared
Diamond, and other champions of Chagnon, is rife with the selection and
manipulation of facts to fit a desired conclusion. To call this
“science” is
both laughable and dangerous. These men are desperate to persuade us
that
they’ve got “proof” for their opinions,
which isn’t surprising as they’re
nothing more – opinions based on a narrow and essentially
self-serving
political point of view. They have proved nothing, except to those who
want to
believe them. Does it matter? Yes, very much. How we think of tribal
peoples
dictates how we treat them. Proponents of Chagnon seek to reestablish
the myth
of the brutal savage which once underpinned colonialism and its land
theft.
It’s an essentially racist fiction which belongs in the
19th century and,
like a flat earth, should have been discarded generations ago.
It’s the myth at
the heart of the destruction of tribal peoples and it must be
challenged. It’s
not just deadly for tribal peoples: It’s dangerous for all of
us. False claims
that killing is a proven key factor in our evolution are used to
justify, even
ennoble, the savagery inherent in today’s world. The brutal
savage may be a
largely invented creature among tribal peoples, but he is certainly
dangerously
and visibly real much closer to home.
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Also see:-
Violence & The Truth
about Killing
Violence articles
Evolutionary Psychology
articles
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Violence & Evolution
