An age-old phenomenon, violence has plagued humanity since the dawn of time. Where does this instinct for it come from? And why do humans indulge in violent acts so excessively? Firstly, let’s talk about the anthropology of violence. What benefit does violence actually bring? Richard Wrangham, a biological anthropologist at Harvard concurred in his book, “Demonic Males” that certain males have been specially selected for violence as it confers advantages onto them. Wrangham argues that murderous attacks can help to increase one’s dominance over other communities, thereby improving one’s access to resources and female mates. The theory is that ancestral men could have fought to establish dominance by killing rivals from other groups and therefore securing more tremendous reproductive success for themselves. Like natural selection, the weak would eventually die out and evolutionary-wise the humans who do survive would be more innately aggressive and violent.
Perhaps violence is an evolutionary trait that we have grown to possess. Does it mean that humans have violence genetically programmed? Are we inherently sadistic and prone to committing acts of violence to get ahead of the evolutionary curve? Anthropologists have been divided on whether humans are destined and programmed for violence, and more cynically, if it’s something that can be encoded in our genes.
Can Violence Be Evolutionary?
Biological anthropologists like David Carrier, head of the Evolutionary Biomechanics Lab at the University of Utah, contended with the viewpoint that the instinct for violence is indeed embedded in our species. Sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists have later argued that human behaviours can be shaped by natural selection, essentially entailing that behaviours like violence could possibly be genetically determined. A prime example that supported this theory of theirs is the published study by Napoleon Chagnon which showed that Yanomami men who kill have more wives and therefore father more children, showing clear evidence of selection for violence in action.
As opposed to such theories is that of the Seville Statement on violence for a more biologically optimistic view. It was created and then declared that it was scientifically inaccurate to say that violent behaviour was a genetic predisposition, entailing that peace is possible in human societies, with war not being a biological necessity. However, it was then criticised by Steven Pinker, a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, as an example of the moralistic fallacy.
Violence in Human History
Though it might be terrifying and cynical to conceive the notion that violent behaviour might be embedded in our DNA, it is not such a far-fetched theory as violent behaviour has been shaping our civilisations and institutions since the dawn of time. Humans have used violence as a tool historically to achieve their goals, be it from as large of a scope as state violence or collective violence, to violence in family units, and ultimately interpersonal violence.
Humanity has had a long history of violence manifested in punishment, with especially sadistic and creative examples ranging from boiling people alive to impalement in mediaeval times. Broadly, humans have utilised violence to deter unwanted behaviour. This can predominantly be seen in the usage of state violence. State violence often encompasses the usage of capital punishment which consists of the usage of the death penalty. Other examples of state violence could include punishments like caning, which is used in Singapore as a form of judicial punishment. In Singapore’s case, capital punishment is used in hopes of deterring unwanted behaviours like drug trafficking, murders, terrorism and kidnapping. In Thomas Hobbes’ classic philosophical treatise Leviathan, the state has a monopoly on violence as the role of the sovereign. The state could also encourage the act of violence through the rhetoric that it sends out. This can be seen in Duterte’s war on drugs in the Philippines, which in his admission, has authorised extrajudicial killings as part of his campaign in which human rights organisations have claimed that more than 20,000 individuals have been killed since 2016.
Violence as corporal punishment is also often used in familial units to deter unwanted behaviour from children. Religious texts in Abrahamic religions like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism have condoned this. In the Bible, verse Proverbs states that “Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child, but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.” Corporal punishment is also something that is strongly recommended in Hebrew scriptures. “He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes (diligently)” from Proverbs 13:24, recommends that corporal punishment is administered for the child’s own good. In Islam, the Hadith also states to “Command your children to pray when they become seven years old, and beat them for it [prayer] when they become ten years old.”
All of the above shows how corporal punishment for children is condoned in religious texts and how violence has been embedded into our culture, even in our religion and our religious texts. Violence used in religious texts could also potentially work as part of a social control theory to deter unwanted behaviour amongst religious communities, such as condoning the use of corporal punishment for children to incentivise prayer and forbid unwanted behaviour. Social control theory proposes that an individual’s relationships, commitments and values that are socialised by the community that they are in can limit their propensity to commit violent acts, and in this case, it entails negative behaviours that the religious community abhors.
On a societal scale, in many countries, caning is used as a form of punishment for boys for serious offences like smoking, gang-related offences or truancy. From the above, it seems that violence has deep roots in our societies, often backed by a form of moral legitimacy derived from a Hobbesian view of human nature, that morality is created in the construction of the social order, and societal unwanted behaviour is met with deterrence.
Other forms of violence like interpersonal violence or collective violence have other reasons for their existence. Collective violence like world wars, civil wars and nuclear arms races committed by larger groups like states, militia groups and terrorist organisations can often stem from competition for scarce resources or any ideological conflicts. Interpersonal violence, on the other hand, can range from domestic violence to sexual assault, and bullying. The consequences of violence can often be dire, even when non-fatal. The lasting effects of non-lethal violence are hard to quantify, but cause a variety of consequences ranging from resultant disabilities as well as long-term physical, psychological, economic as well as social consequences.
Poverty has also been studied as a factor that can drive violence, with economic hardship being linked to higher levels of intimate partner violence, as well as a strong inverse relationship between homicide rates and both economic development and economic equality. Poorer countries with larger gaps between the wealthy and the non-wealthy tend to have higher rates of homicide and interpersonal violence as well. At other times, interpersonal and state violence can even be intertwined with combat-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from state violence in veterans linked with intimate partner violence. In this sense, violence seems to pass on.
Violence and Religion
Nowhere is the association between humanity and violence clearest than from our religious texts: The Bible, the Koran; the worship of the God of War in Buddhism and Shintoism; as well as Hindu mythology.
Violence in the bible can be seen from God’s test for Abraham to slaughter his son, as well as Romans 13:1-4 where it mentioned that the nations have the right to bear the sword against evildoers, and many other instances. “But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason”: this proverb echoes Thomas Hobbes’ rhetoric and seems to condone the use of state violence.
Violence has also been sanctioned in the name of religion, for better or for worse, with the Inquisition and the Crusades, the latter with a death toll of over a million. With violence being etched in the corners of human culture, it seems unavoidable that it would seep into and be reinforced by religion as well.
Can Violence be Effective?
Is violence as powerful of a deterrent as it seems? Whether it’s used as a deterrence tool, as an intimidation tacticm, or to achieve your own goals, we find ourselves asking this key question.
In the context of crime deterrence, research has been proving that state punishment or state violence does not actually deter crime or unwanted behaviour. According to Professor Brown, “the severity of punishment, known as marginal deterrence, has no real deterrent effect, or the effect of reducing recidivism. The only minor deterrent effect is the likelihood of apprehension. So if people think they’re more likely to be caught, that will certainly operate to some extent as a deterrent.”
Audrey Gaughran, Director of Global Affairs from Amnesty International has also mentioned that there is also no particular evidence that the death penalty is a particular deterrence to violent crime. Studies in Canada have even shown that the murder rate had fallen after the country had abolished the death penalty, from 44 per cent since 1975 when capital punishment was still enforced.
In fact, the cost of executions, priced at $308 million, is much higher than the cost of life imprisonment. The choice of many governments to select violent judicial punishments with very little effectiveness does make it seem like we have a penchant for violence and fear as a deterrence policy as a whole.
Evolution Of Violence
In a society with breakthrough technological innovations, modernization and development have also broadened the range and capability that we have for violence. Evolving from spears and arrows to nuclear weapons and biological warfare, the range of capabilities that we have now is far larger than we could have ever dreamt of in the past. With mutually assured destruction (MAD) in mind, diplomacy and strategic moves by political leaders become all the more crucial in terms of negotiating international relations so as to avoid complete annihilation. In this case, violence seems to have shed its skin and taken on a completely different form than before in the wake of modernisation.
As violence evolves through the centuries, it’s worth nothing and looking at how it will transform or perhaps even regress in time to come. Is the way society structured specifically set up for violence? Wealth and economic inequality in societies can also contribute to an increase in violent crime. Studies have shown that inequality breeds social tensions as the less well-off feel dispossessed when compared to wealthier people. The feeling of being disadvantaged and unfair can lead the poor to seek compensation and satisfaction by all means, increasing the probability for violent crime. Whether violence is an unavoidable factor of life or simply a phenomenon that we could stamp out as a society, is still no doubt in question.
