The Roots of Violence and Aggression

“Men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbor is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who attempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him, to exploit his capacity for work without compensation, to use him sexually without his consent, to seize his possessions, to humiliate him, to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him. Homo homini lupus. Who, in the face of all this experience of life and of history, will have the courage to dispute this assertion?” ~Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents

Throughout history and across cultures, the most common form of violence is that between family members and neighbors or kindred communities — in civil wars writ large and small. From assault to genocide, from assassination to massacre, violence usually emerges from inside the fold. You have more to fear from a spouse, an ex-spouse, or a coworker than you do from someone you don’t know.

Violence erupts most often, and most savagely, between those of us most closely related. An Indian nationalist assassinated Mohandas Gandhi, “the father” of India. An Egyptian Muslim assassinated Anwar Sadat, the president of Egypt and a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. An Israeli Jew assassinated Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli prime minister and similarly a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Genocide most often involves kindred groups. The German Christians of the 1930s were so closely intertwined with German Jews that a yellow star was required to tell the groups apart. Serbs and Muslims in Bosnia, like the Hutu and Tutsi in Rwanda, are often indistinguishable even to one another.

This idea contradicts both common sense and the collective wisdom of teachers and preachers, who declaim that we fear, and sometimes should fear, the “other,” the dangerous stranger. Citizens and scholars alike believe that enemies lurk in the street and beyond, where we confront a “clash of civilizations” with foreigners who challenge our way of life. Russell Jacoby in his book “Bloodlust” offers a more unsettling truth: it is not so much the unknown that threatens us, but the known. We attack our brothers, our kin, our acquaintances, our neighbors, with far greater regularity and venom than we attack outsiders. We know their faults, their beliefs, their desires, and we distrust them because of that.

One of the first supposed acts of genocide originated in the bible. The biblical story of Cain and Abel, where Cain raises up and takes the life of Abel and kills off half of the population. Half of mankind kills the other half. Freud’s “narcissism of minor differences” gives insights on anti-Semitism and misogyny, as well as the “civil” bloodbaths of St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in the sixteenth century to genocide and terrorism in our time today.

To give an example, in 1941 excellent relations between the Jews and the Poles had existed in Jedwabne, a small town in northeastern Poland. Everybody was on a first-name basis with each other. But then one day in the summer of 1941 half of the population killed the other half, the entire Jewish population of approximately 1,600 people; the Jews were mainly herded into a barn, which was set afire. A book that investigated and detailed this historical account was entitled “Neighbors” written by Jan T. Gross. Gross is a Polish-born professor of history at Princeton University, one of whose specialties has been the study of Polish anti-Semitism. He concluded in his book that it was local residents who rounded up the Jews under the encouragement of the German gendarmes and a mobile SS or Gestapo unit. Further evidence uncovered determined that only 340 Jews were killed and not half the population. Forty Poles actively participated in the killings and it was determined that related tortures were also carried out by the Poles, while the remainder of the non-Jewish population displayed utter passivity in the face of the crime. What made those forty individuals want to participate in the violence of Nazi killing and torture? They could of just as easily objected to the participation and forced the German SS Gestapo unit to commit the acts. What drives someone to act so callously against his or her neighbor?

Violence has confronted man over the centuries. Successful navigation of minor difference is rooted in empathy and tolerance. Negotiating difference requires kindness, wisdom, and mindfulness which can all be cultivated through practice. Even those who lack a gross deficient in social finesse can build upon what he has, if he wants to. When we understand human nature, we can begin to see that the real enemy may lie within each one of us when we fail to manage our own aggressive tendencies adequately.

We obsess about strangers piloting airplanes into our building, but in the United States in 2005 six times the number killed in the World Trade Center attacks were murdered on he streets or inside our own homes and offices. The majority of criminal violence takes place between people who know each other. Domestic violence speaks for itself. Cautious citizens my push for better street lighting, but they are much more likely to be assaulted, even killed, in the light of the kitchen by someone familiar to them than in the parking garage by a complete stranger. For rape and assault, the numbers tilt even more toward the familiar. Like subjects prompt violence from other like subjects. Not unlike subjects. Like subjectivity form our development of attachment and the recognition of difference between “I” and “Other.” This attachment is rooted in the early childhood developmental bonds of love.

References:
Benjamin, Jessica. Bonds of Love; Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and The Problem of Domination. New York, Pantheon Books (1988)

Benjamin, Jessica. Like Subjects, Love Objects; Essays on Recognition and Sexual Difference. New Haven, Yale University Press (1995)

Jacoby, Russell. Bloodlust: On the Roots of Violence from Cain and Abel to the Present. New York, Free Press (2011)

Green, David B., This Day in Jewish History//1941: Polish Neighbors Slaughter the Jews of Jedwabne. Polish Neighbors Slaughter the Jews in Jedwabne

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Published June 5, 2018

Originally published at proclivitiesprinciplewisdom.wordpress.com on June 5, 2018.