On violence and the human instinct to kill

As Egypt lives these critical events and shocking moments, I thought it would be good to think about the endogenous human love of violence and the human instinct to kill.

“As far back as we can tell, people have devoted some of the best of their minds and bodies to the problems of killing their fellows. Humans are the only animals which take the business of killing other members of their species with such seriousness. Other primates kill members of other species, usually for food. Members of the same species fight amongst themselves for mates, territory and so on, but they rarely fight to death. Killing amongst the non-human primates is equivalent to murder rather than to war. War is predominantly human activity. Despite its frequency, it is an activity which conflicts with the aims of most other human activities, such as the quest for wealth, knowledge, a happy family life and so on, all of which are better pursued under conditions of peace. The paradox is apparent. As Thomas Hobbes remarked, 'Avoid the "state of warre" in order to pursue the "Arts of Peace".

War is not universally abhorred. People’s attitudes towards violence culminating in death and suffering are ambivalent, combining horror for its obvious miseries with fascination for its splendour and the opportunities for gallantry and even for a nobles death which war provides.

Attitudes to war during the twentieth century seems to have altered somewhat, and common belief seems to regard it as a regrettable necessity rather than as something desirable in itself.

War appears as the supreme example of irrationality. It is the wanton destruction of life and the general conditions of human happiness. War may well destroy the human race in its entirety; it will almost certainly still cause much misery and suffering in the future as it has in the past. To link, it with rationality would seem unusually absurd.”

MICHAEL NICHOLSON in Rationality & the analysis of international conflict