Re: Aggression, human nature and paleopsychology

From: Michael Ragland (ragland66_at_webtv.net)
Date: 10/20/04 

Date: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 17:05:25 +0000 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful response.

Michael Ragland

Instincts are not good or bad in themselves but more or less appropriate
to the environment in which they are activated. In this respect Freud's
word "id," with its negative connotations, is unfortunate. Our instincts
cause problems for us in today's world due to our no longer living in
the environment in which they evolved. Human beings share with other
animals instinctual inhibitions against killing members of our own
species. Even Nazis spoke of the "special kind of courage" it took to
murder unresisting men, women and children. More than other animals we
may ignore or override instinctual inhibitions, but nature takes its
toll. Iraqis and others have vomited at the sight of recent beheadings.
Feelings of horror at killing takes its toll in Posttraumatic Stress
Disorder among soldiers. Living in a stressed environment our instincts
are also often not just regressed but disorganized and not developed.
Fighting instincts which originally evolved to protect us from predators
may emerge against members of our own species and effectively cancel our
inhibitions against fighting. This is because when we are attacked we
see the enemy as predators. It does not make sense to feel pity for
those who want to kill us or kill our children. When we are attacked, or
imagine we are attacked, or imagine we are threatened, an entirely
different set of instincts is activated. Only later does horror and
remorse set in when we realize that we have actually killed another
human being. One soldier said he died a bit inside when he killed
another person. (Psychopaths don't feel this way, but they possess a
disorganized instinct structure. I'm talking about someone with normal
emotional development who can still kill because at the time the "enemy"
is not sensed as being human.) What we call "civilization" involves a
reaction against warfare that is also, in part, instinctual. Remarkably
Freud made this point in his article "Why War?" Why, then, do people
fight and kill each other so much? We have powerful fighting instincts
going back to a time when our ancestors were prey and our best (or only)
defense against predation was to fight. Then there were more than a
million years of a hunting adaptation in which old fighting impulses
were brought into the service of hunting and never fully neutralized.
When hunting large animals was no longer possible, and free movement
across large territories was restricted, the old fighting impulses
started to be expressed in war. "Civilization" represents an attempt now
to neutralize or override these strong tendencies, but it is uncertain
whether this can happen fast enough to save us from ourselves.

Rebecca Moise

"It's uncertain whether intelligence has any long term survival value.
Bacteria do quite well with it."

Stephen Hawking

Relevant Pages

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  • Re: Modern Humans Retain Cavemans Survival Instincts
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  • Re: Aggression, human nature and paleopsychology
    ... Our instincts cause problems for us in today's world due ... More than other animals we may ignore or override ... >> inhibitions against fighting. ... War, when it started, ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)
  • Re: Aggression, human nature and paleopsychology
    ... Our instincts cause problems for us in today's world due ... > inhibitions against fighting. ... > see the enemy as predators. ... Then there were more than a million years of a hunting ...
    (sci.bio.evolution)