No, Men Are Not Naturally Violent
By: Elle Beau
Tags: Humanity, Men, Equality, Life, Essay

And all humans are hardwired for connection

Photo by Mike Scheid on Unsplash

Many people, it seems, are deeply attached to the idea that to a large extent, violence cannot be helped because men are just naturally violent. Men seem to believe in this the most and I hear it from them time and again when I write about our long history as human beings of living in peace and equality. I hear it even in the face of the many quotes and data that I’ve presented from a wide variety of anthropologists.

The earlier Stone Age seems to have been a time of peace and not war, says an anthropologist specializing in war who has studied the published work of dozens of researchers. Unfortunately for many millions of victims of death, wounding, displacement, hunger and loss, humanity began to make war compulsively, some groups as early as 13,000 years ago. There was mostly peace in Europe and the Near East during a large part of the Stone Age, but war swept Europe and the Near East by the time of the late Neolithic (the most recent period of the Stone Age), and the Copper and Bronze ages beginning about the sixth to fifth millennium BC. Scant Evidence That Early Prehistoric People Were Warlike, Anthropologist Claims

The social Darwinism and inherent stratification of the patriarchal society that we live in has some men believing that it’s never been any different, and so there is little hope of anything else even being possible. Violence is just a part of who men are, they believe, even though the Paleolithic age began approximately 2.6 million years ago and pervasive violence and war only became common about 12,000 years ago. I wonder if perhaps some of them aren’t entirely sure that they want it to be different. After all, violence or the potential of violence is one of the main ways that our current society asks men to prove their masculinity. Just look at every Hollywood action movie ever made.

It’s no doubt that we live in a violent time, although in many ways it’s more peaceful than some other periods of human history. And it’s true that the overwhelming majority of that violence is perpetrated by men, against each other and against women and children. But that still doesn’t make it natural or inevitable.

Humans are hardwired for cooperation and connection. By hardwired, I mean that it is encoded into our genetics. Because it’s such a useful trait we see it pervasively in humans unless natural resources are scarce. Organisms that work well in groups tend to have an evolutionary advantage. We have evolved as a highly social species, in part, because it kept us alive. Paleolithic hunter-gather tribes shared their resources amongst the members of their clan. In addition, they also traded members with clans nearby in order to prevent inbreeding.

“Small family bands are likely to have interconnected with larger networks, facilitating the exchange of people between groups in order to maintain diversity,” said Professor Martin Sikora, from the Centre for GeoGenetics at the University of Copenhagen. This appears to have been done purposely and with the understanding that genetic diversity was desirable. It was a cooperative strategy undertaken by a highly social species. Science shows us that working together feels good and strife or disconnection feels bad in the same ways that physical pain does.

As it turns out it is more than a metaphor — social pain is real pain. With respect to understanding human nature, I think this finding is pretty significant. The things that cause us to feel pain are things that are evolutionary recognized as threats to our survival and the existence of social pain is a sign that evolution has treated social connection like a necessity, not a luxury. It also alters our motivational landscape. We tend to assume that people’s behavior is narrowly self-interested, focused on getting more material benefits for themselves and avoiding physical threats and the exertion of effort. But because of how social pain and pleasure are wired into our operating system, these are motivational ends in and of themselves. We don’t focus on being connected solely in order to extract money and other resources from people — being connected needs no ulterior motive. Scientific American

So, pervasive violence and warfare are relatively recent parts of human history, showing up only in about the past 12,000 years or so. Twentieth-century hunter-gatherer societies are still peaceful, egalitarian, and cooperative. Science shows that humans are hardwired for connection and social interaction. But what about testosterone? Everyone knows that testosterone is linked to aggression and there are some indications that very high levels of testosterone can be linked to violence and criminality.

“Like most things in life, testosterone levels vary in men (and women). Our average testosterone level is inherited from our parents, but physical and social conditions produce changes around this average level.” Higher levels of testosterone may be linked with a propensity for violence but having typical levels of male testosterone does not make you someone who is inherently violent.

Contrary to what Fox News and faulty science would say, it takes a huge effort to turn boys and men into killers. From primatologists to evolutionary anthropologists, we know that neither women nor men are killers by nature. Extreme trauma, humiliation, shaming, social isolation and intense indoctrination are nearly always part of the making of men who kill. Other researchers have shown how the effects of toxic childhoods and damaging relationships distort our human nature and turn us into killers. The anger that some young men feel in the face of poverty and discrimination may be natural or normal; using lethal violence is not. Turning young men into lethal combatants, whether in standing militaries, insurgency groups, police forces or violent gangs, or as lone killers, is extremely time- and resource-intensive. It takes months if not years of constant breaking and rupturing of basic human connections; it often requires systematic cruelty and brutality; it requires intense indoctrination; it requires rupturing relationships or having family members or peers who encourage killing rather than discourage it; and it requires the systematic “othering” of the “enemy.” None of these things are hard-wired into us as human beings. Indeed, the research, from Darwin onwards, is overwhelming that we survived and thrived as a species because our biological and social propensity to live in connection and close cooperation with others is vastly stronger than any propensity to kill or harm each other. (emphasis mine) Violence Does Not Come Naturally To Men And Boys

If we live in a time of violence, it is because we have a patriarchal social structure that values it as a way to maintain the social hierarchy. It’s what we demand of boys and men to demonstrate their masculinity, even as it drives male loneliness and disconnection, something that I have already indicated causes real pain.

Male rage is rooted in the collective self-alienation and isolation that is part and parcel of our culture of manhood. In her book “When Boys Become Boys,” Dr. Judy Chu of Stanford University documents how our sons are taught to hide their early capacity for being emotionally perceptive, articulate, and responsive. Starting in preschool, our young boys learn to align their behaviors with “the emotionally disconnected stereotype our culture projects onto them.” Human beings heal in the back and forth of relating and connecting. We don’t heal in isolation, we don’t heal others; we heal in relationship. It can seem cruelly ironic for men to be asked to learn to connect after being brutally trained, all our lives, to disconnect, but the benefits of doing so are very real. Men’s Anger And The Brutal Contradictions Of Masculinity

I’m not saying that human beings, and men, in particular, have no innate capacity for violence. I’m simply saying that it is not their human set-point and that cooperation and connection are much more deeply ingrained in all of us. When we foster a social system that is based in coercion, stratification, bullying, and violence; when we demand stoicism and social isolation from males; when we encourage violence and the threat of violence as a display of true masculinity — that is when we have a culture where violence appears to be natural for men, simply because it is so pervasive. But both history and science show us that isn’t the truth. Understanding this creates a pathway for us to move in a more peaceful, egalitarian, and partnership-based direction.