In an attempt to explain the violence of the human being, societies have believed in the possible existence of the murderous instinct. Navigating through the study of human behavior, various theories try to reveal the cause that leads human beings to hatred, destruction and death.
Various psychological and neuroscientific stories (and we say stories because they have been based on common experience, without going beyond the narrative arc) have proposed that aggression stems from a human instinct.
This instinct theory claims that aggression is an ancestral heredity, a kind of inherent tendency that is shared with many other species. Fortunately, this theory states that human violence is not totally destructive; it can have a positive and even constructive side, since human ingenuity begins with violence.
This statement comes from raymond dart, discoverer of a 2-million-year-old fossilized skull that lay in the ground along with its fighting weapons. What could be more terrifying than the remains of a man, the hot-tempered ape, with weapons far more powerful than antelope bones? Dart discovered this evidence of human violence and shared it with Robert Ardrey, a Hollywood screenwriter.
Ardrey took the vestiges of human evolution to translate them into an iconic movie scene in the movie A Space Odyssey (1968). In it, the leader of a band of ape-men crushes the remains of his enemies with a weapon made of bone. But what does this tell us about the killer instinct?
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The killer instinct takes over the culture
Up to this point the instinct remains simply violent, and there is no trace of the wit it sows, according to Dart. However, in another investigation, the ornithologist Konrad Lorenz decided to analyze violence between animals and found a positive aspect.
When an animal directs aggression against members of its own species, it rarely ends in death.. The explanation is that this violence is far from being an impulse to cause death. Actually, aggression (when handled properly) strengthens the bonds of affection and love in the group. Thus, and while violence is rooted in nature, it is better to channel it than to try to eliminate it. In this sense, we can affirm that the killer instinct exists in every being, but the difference lies in channeling the aggression and channeling it before it is too late.
At first, everything fits perfectly to assume that human beings live under the effect of the murderous instinct. But these theories are built on speculation about prehistoric times and we must be careful what we believe about human nature. The narrative about the murderous instinct of human beings becomes fascinating when science defends it. Even, we do not question the constant comparison between the behavior and emotions of animals and human beings.
We believe ourselves to a certain extent equal to them, but it is not so. Evolution is different for each species and, although science tries to fill the space with cultural theories, the truth is that what we think we are determines how we act. What is your theory?
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