Are humans naturally violent? Science answers

According to eyewitnesses from Palestinian Gaza, an Israeli tank ran over a pregnant woman, Israeli soldiers booby-trapped an infant and threw him on top of his family, and a young teenager was tied up and the soldier told him in a sarcastic language, “Don’t worry, you will get warm soon,” referring to the fire that would reach him after they set the house on fire. In Kamal Adwan Hospital, we saw on screens the occupation bulldozers running over the wounded and wounded and burying them alive, in addition to digging up graves, kidnapping bodies, and stealing organs. The list of cruelty and unlimited violence continues, making some observers wonder about the extent of violence that humans are capable of.

Dr. Wafa Abu Musa, a psychological consultant from Gaza, says to Al Jazeera Net that humans are neither inherently bad nor inherently good. We are born with a pure, natural nature that is a dye in us, and what is better than God’s dye is a dye. The Almighty said: “And the soul and all other than it (7) So he inspired her with her immorality and her piety. (8) He who purifies it has succeeded. (9) He who trampled upon it has failed.”

The noble verse explains the possibility of a person choosing good or evil, and this indicates that the violent behaviors that emerge from people are the result of education in hostility and violence. Violence is an acquired behavior that indicates the single-mindedness of a group that imposes its identity and laws through violent methods, such as domination, control, abuse, and oppression. This category does not demand, but rather commands, does not manage, but dominates. A group that does not know the language of justice, but it knows the language of healing. It does not know the language of peace, but rather it knows the language of conflicts.

Wafaa says, “It is easy for a person to be raised with violence and become violent, or for a person to be raised with mercy and become merciful. It is easy for people to turn to the opposite as well.”

This is what Brad Evans, a professor of political violence at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, points out in an article published on the scientific website Live Science, where he says that even people in the most progressive and peaceful societies are capable of practicing violence. Ordinary, lawful people can quickly turn into monsters once circumstances change, and likewise, some hated people can end up showing remarkable acts of kindness. There is no clear formula for why a person behaves in a violent manner.

According to the Sapiens website, anthropological research shows that we are very complex creatures. We may have an innate tendency toward aggression and war, but we also have a tendency toward empathy. It is true that culture can help reduce violence, but it has also helped in the development of collective violence. The same forces that pushed the evolution of empathy may also be responsible for violence. Even the most modern cultural structures aimed at suppressing violence do not always work as intended, and what is happening in Gaza is an example.

History of violence

Studies confirm that violence has been prevalent for as long as humans have existed, and nearly a billion people have died as a direct result of wars, according to the 2003 book What Everyone Should Know About War. Of course, all ancient empires were built through fear and violence.

Historically, rates of violence vary greatly across cultures and societies, and violence can rise or fall dramatically within our species. Nomadic peoples, for example, tend to have lower levels of lethal interpersonal violence, while eras full of societies bent on plunder and conquest had higher levels of violence. Contemporary American culture is also more violent than most of that in Europe, as stated in the scientific website Live Science.

There is also wide variation in rates of violence in terms of magnitude, with up to half of men dying violently at the hands of other men in some societies, while in others physical violence is very rare, as in modern Japan.

Why do people become violent?

Violence begets violence, which means that cultures in which conflict is common are more likely to experience violence, generation after generation. In this way, violence is transmitted as a contagious disease.

Wafaa Abu Musa says that the Israeli enemy, in its brutal war on Gaza, instills cruelty in the heart of an entire generation that will one day become the most violent, against those who committed these violations against them, taking lives, demolishing homes, and terrorizing people in their safe homes.

Violence at a distance. It is much easier to carry out acts of violence if the individual committing the violence is far away from his victims. It is easier to press the button to launch a nuclear missile than to directly deliver a fatal physical blow.

Stanley Milgram's classic studies on obedience confirm that when participants were asked to deliver electric shocks of increasing intensity to other people, the participants were more reluctant to shock the victims if they were physically closer to them.

Dehumanizing victims: Historically, acts of genocide have been found to occur after their perpetrators dehumanize their victims, or create psychological distance between them and those who belong to a different race or ethnicity.

At the beginning of the current war on Gaza, some Israeli officials described the Palestinians as “human animals ,” and the South African team at the International Court of Justice relied on these statements to convict Israel of committing genocide against the Palestinians.

Violence is associated with conquest, when one group is determined to seize the resources or territory of another group. A type of reactive violence occurs, which is a direct response to such aggression. Here, international law stipulates the right of occupied peoples to defend themselves by armed means.