For months I've been wrestling with a topic which is, as a matter of fact, philosophical (perhaps). The question that has been captivating me is this: Are human beings inherently violent, and will violence and war always be a part of our lives, or is peace untenable and unrealistic? Observing what is happening in the world today seems to imply that war is here to stay. I don't need to bring up current events to make this point, and a brief look at human history shows that we've been repeating today's events for thousands of years. When I was growing up, in what I thought was a peaceful world, my own government was performing massive amounts of actions, other countries were invading one another, and violent power plays of small scale were ever prevalent. Unfortunately, the United States seems to be no more violent than any other group or region.

I remember watching "The Fog of War," in which the secretary of defense (1961-68), Robert McNamara, recounts his role in the Vietnam incident. The movie is split up into 11 main lessons that McNamara's has had the chance to learn and can now relate to us. These lessons include advice like, "Empathize with your enemy," "Rationality will not save us," "Belief and seeing are both wrong," and "In order to do good, you may have to engage in evil." These all seem precautionary ideas to try and keep us from war. But, the movie ended on a different note. "Lesson 11: You can't change human nature." The words were backdropped by video of a manned machine gun scattering bullets into the dense jungle—firing, firing, and firing, endless rat-a-tatting, seemingly forever—until the sound melted out and the picture faded. Is this all we are programmed to do?

Another movie, "City of God," is a perfect example of how society, and eventually peace, is built out of incredible amounts of violence. The story tells how the city of Rio de Janeiro is only what it is today as a result of escalating battles between a few power hungry people. The movie illustrates how they started as trouble makers as kids, but grown up and ruthless, they saw any other trouble as competition: A band of 10 year old shoplifters and hooligans were chased down and given the choice to be shot in either the hand or the foot. Another child was punished to pick between two of his friends to execute. He chose the older, and was congratulated for his choice as he stood there in shock. Rival drug-dealers were killed systematically and efficiently in order to increase territory and dominate the industry. In the ensuing peace, everyone became hooked on the drugs that the emerging leaders peddled, while those leaders stockpiled weapons and got more and more powerful, finally fighting it out in a huge bloody battle, mostly by armed teenagers. As long as there is only one group in power, peace can be.

These people are still in power in Rio de Janeiro today. It's how cities are built, it's how civilizations manifest, concrete themselves, and continue. Look at our own history. It is paralleled everywhere in the world. Take China: In "Hero," a recent martial arts movie that uses Chinese history as the context for the story, the emperor of a pre-China has to "unite" the seven lands of Asia. This means conquering the minor empires by force and destroying any opposition. This story is in the history of every society that exists today.

What really solidified for me the notion of our "innate violent human disposition" is the book, "War is the Force that Gives us Meaning," by Chris Hedges. Hedges has been a war reporter for most of his life, and he's seen it all. The back cover states that he "has survived ambushes in Central America, imprisonment in Sudan, and a beating by Saudi military police. He has seen children murdered for sport in Gaza and petty thugs elevated into war heroes in the Balkans." You might find interesting this passage, which details the above-mentioned "children murdered for sport in Gaza."

"Come on dogs," the voice boomed in Arabic. "Where are all the dogs of Khan Younis? Come! Come!"
I stood up and walked outside the hut. The invective spewed out in a bitter torrent. "Son of a bitch!" "Son of a whore!" "Your mother's cunt!"
The boys darted in small packs up the sloping dunes to the electric fence that separated the camp from the Jewish settlement abutting it.
They lobbed rocks toward a jeep, mounted with a loudspeaker and protected by bulletproof armor plates and metal gratings, that sat parked on the top of a hill known as Gani Tal. The soldier inside the jeep ridiculed and derided them. Three ambulances—which had pulled up in anticipation of what was to come—lined the roads below the dunes.
There was the boom of a percussion grenade. The boys, most no more than ten or eleven years old, scattered, running clumsily through the heavy sand. They descended out of sight, behind the dune in front of me. There were no sounds of gunfire. The soldiers shot with silencers. The bullets from M-16 rifles, unseen by me, tumbled end-over-end through their slight bodies. I would see the destruction, the way their stomachs were ripped out, the gaping holes in their limbs and torsos, later in the hospital. (93-4)

Now, a question could be, why is this sort of writing so interesting and compelling? Wasn't it kind of exhilarating to read? We all love to hear action, and we have emotional responses to it. Hearing that story gives myself, in a small way, more meaning. Even if it makes you sad, even if it pisses you off, you know you are alive! We are drawn to violence in the same way, in the same cliché, as the moth to the flame. It seems to be this enthralling feeling that leads us again and again into conflict. How can we act any differently if aggression is so inevitable and fused in our genes? The urge to better oneself is more powerful than the urge to reproduce, and when we are all struggling for a better life, isn't conflict the only possible outcome? Population growth, like cancer, cannot be sustained forever. Something has to give. There's a quote in the book from another book, (I hate quoting quotes of quotes.) Life in the Tomb, by Stratis Myrivilis, who writes of his experiences in the Balkans in WWI.

A few years from now, I told him, perhaps others would be killing each other for anti-nationalist ideals. Then they would laugh at our own killings just as we had laughed at those of the Byzantines. These others would indulge in mutual slaughter with the same enthusiasm, though their ideals were new. Warfare under the entirely fresh banners would be just as disgraceful as always. They might even rip out each other's guts then with religious zeal, claiming that they were "fighting to end all fighting." But they too would be followed by still others who would laugh at them with the same gusto. (31-2)

This has all pretty much convinced me that our future will be filled only by an endless series of bloody wars. However, recently I've read something with a different view; Riane Eisler has thankfully given my grim conclusion some doubt. Eisler is a cultural historian who sees the cycle of violence as only escalating toward our own destruction. To probe the question of our violent innateness, she has tried to uncover if it stands the test of time. If it's only a myth that we are violent by nature, maybe we can become more peaceful by uncovering it. She looks backwards.

Despite the fierceness of today's world, we all hold in the backs of our minds the idea of more peaceful era: the garden of Eden. For the future, we hold the idea of heaven as another distant place of peace. Could the story of the garden really be a representation of an actual truth, might it be a blurred distorted memory of a more peaceful time? Archaeology supports it. Eisler talks about new discoveries which "reveal a long period of peace and prosperity when our social, technological, and cultural evolution moved upward: many thousands of years when all the basic technologies on which civilization is built were developed in societies that were not male dominant, violent, and hierarchic." To support this, Eisler quotes Marija Gimbutas on an archaeological find that gives evidence for a more peaceful society.

"Old Europeans never tried to live in inconvenient places such as high, steep hills, as did the later Indo-Europeans who built hill forts in inaccessible places and frequently surrounded their hill sites with cyclopean stone walls," reports Gimbutas. "Old European locations were chosen for their beautiful setting, good water and soil, and availability of animal pastures. …The characteristic absence of heavy fortifications and of thrusting weapons speaks for the peaceful character of most of these art-loving peoples. (Eisler, 14)

Just as finding a society with no locks on their doors would indicate an absence of crime, the absence of fortification indicates a lack of outside aggression. Another scientist and historian, Jared Diamond concludes similarly that ancient times were more peaceful. In his book, "Guns, Germs, and Steel," Diamond looks to examine not why we war, but why certain societies have advantages as they engage in each other. In seeing where these advantages arose from, he had to look back to the past as well. He wanted to find a time when all people were the same, when there was no apparent superiority. The time was around 11,000 B.C., when all the human beings on the earth were hunter gatherers. A few people began planting seeds around them, and became the first farmers. Farming led to food surplus, food surplus allowed societies to feed specialists, who could become soldiers (to fight the wars), scientists (to increase the power of the soldiers), politicians (to organize society and wage wars), and clergy (to justify the wars). Before agriculture, we were a peaceful people. This may have been simply because it would require too much energy to enslave your neighbor when your day's schedule was filled with simple food-gathering, but we were peaceful none-the-less.

Going back to Eisler. She is focusing on a time period which is post-agrarian, yet before mass violence. This time-period is critical to study because it would have been advantageous to be aggressive, yet we remained peaceful. Who we were then may hint at illuminating the existence or lack of aggressive intrinsic tendencies. Today, all the peaceful cultures have been butchered, but even warlike civilizations die under more advanced warlike civilizations. Was it only the distraction of constant hunger, the escape of starvation, that kept us in line? Were we too naïve in those times to think that others might kill us to get the food and technologies we possessed? And when we were peaceful, was it only because we struggling with all our effort to survive? Is it the boredom, the leisure time we possess that affords us minutes and months to murder, conquer, and kill?


Works Cited:

"City of God." Dir. Fernando Meirelles, Katia Lund. DVD. Miramax, 2002.
Diamond, Jared. "Guns, Germs, and Steel." New York, London: W. W. Norton, 1999.
Eisler, Riane. "The Chalice & the Blade." San Fransisco, CA: HarperSanFransisco, 1988.
"Fog of War, The." Dir. Errol Morris. Perf. Robert S. McNamara. DVD. Sony Pictures, 2003
Hedges, Chris. "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning." New York: Anchor, 2003.
"Hero." Dir. Zhang Yimou. Perf. Jet Li. Buena Vista, 2002.