The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness
A study of man’s destructive nature that utilizes evidence from psychoanalysis, neurophysiology, animal psychology, paleontology, and anthropology and is documented with clinical examples.
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2recommend
6mentions
3people
2013–2019years
50% recommend33% neutral17% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I was looking for a fitting quote by Erich Fromm (whom I kinda should give credit for "my theory", I'm pretty sure I pieced it together from stuff he said), couldn't find one - but it seems that his book "The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness" might be worth a read :)
- I up-voted your comment, that comic strip is spot on, but I was trying to express my feelings more than stating some general statement about human nature.
I remember that when I was reading Zimbardo's book I was most touched when he was describing how he himself was under the influence of the experiment and his empathy to "subjects" deteriorated. Only after his girlfriend expressed her concerns he realized that something went horribly wrong. We are influenced by the context, behaviour of others, interpretation of the situation etc. way more than we would like to believe and I can easily imagine that if I were one of those TSA agents I could behave in a way that I now find despicable. That's why I think we really need to be aware of those things despite the fact that they might not be conclusively proven as a 'part of human nature'.
EDIT: also let me mention another IMO super-interesting book about this subject: The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness by Erich Fromm. One of the best books I've ever red.
- I doubt that 'normal people' would be able to commit terrorist attacks because normal people experience empathy which would prevent them from hurting people voluntarily (even soldiers who act under strict orders in a war that is perceived as just are often traumatized by hurting/killing an enemy combatant... and this would be much more severe if victims were known to include innocent people or even children).
The problem is that there is always enough people who are not normal (there is a great book about it by Erich Fromm: The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness) and it's possible to 'make' people into something not normal in psychological sense - i.e. suppress their empathy for certain group of people by some war trauma or conditioning/brainwashing.
BTW, I think that it's a myth that even bad men love their mommas. It depends how you define love. From what I remember based on one psychopath that I know really well he claims that he loves his mother and maybe he even thinks he feels something like that but he acts in such a way that his mother often gets hurt by his actions and he acts with complete disregard of that. Not love in my book.
- > You mean the same ancient humans that forced their slaves to become gladiators
I was thinking more along the lines of hunters and gatherers. Ancient Humans, not Ancient Romans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladiator
I know you can find loads of cruel things elsewhere, too. Can you find them before cities?
And even for Ancient Romans I wouldn't be so sure, they kinda prided themselves in arguing coherently. Even just changing the subject like that, whether from genocide or not, doesn't strike me as something the super legalistic and literal Romans would have been so prone to do. And at any rate, they're much, much closer to us than to ancient humans.
> so that their populations could fill their lust for blood
There is no such thing as an inherent lust for blood. This kinda sounds like Freud's drive to death and all that.
> the same ancient humans that would capture religious minorities, cover them in oil, and line them up along the roads to burn
Napalm.. Agent Orange.. depleted uranium.. not even to punish for something they considered sacrilege, but just to get rid of people.
> Humans both ancient and modern are not peaceful creatures
I'm not talking about peaceful, I'm talking about sadism and cruelty and greed for their own sake, and about being numbed to it. If you say humans have a lust for blood, that doesn't convince me at all, but it's proof positive that in 2019 (not still, since hundreds of thousands of years, but by now, since a few ten thousand maybe) we live in a world where that claim goes mostly uncontested.
In my books, very sick people have a lust for blood because they need to destroy persons, because they haven't developed into a person. Other people probably have stuff like, for example, a desire for vengeance that gets created alongside the crime to be avenged, or a strong desire to push back when they are threatened, which gets created when they are threatened, but doesn't exist before or after. But just some kind of lingering dark thing that needs to be fed, some spooky "lust for blood"? I doubt you can find that without a form of abuse being somewhere in the equation, systematic or otherwise.
> [Humans] have been genetically programmed through hunting behavior: cooperation and sharing. Cooperation between members of the same band was a practical necessity for most hunting societies; so was the sharing of food. Since meat is perishable in most climates except that of the Arctic, it could not be preserved. Luck in hunting was not equally divided among all hunters; hence the practical outcome was that those who had luck today would share their food with those who would be lucky tomorrow. Assuming hunting behavior led to genetic changes, the conclusion would be that modern man has an innate impulse for cooperation and sharing, rather than for killing and cruelty.
-- Erich Fromm, "The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness"
- The experiment was criticized (convincingly) in "The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness" by Erich Fromm.
Even without bringing any hitherto unknown evidence in, it's not difficult to see its various flaws.
- I feel a bit silly now, I really thought you might have meant it seriously and with a straight face. But I guess there are those who would say it with a straight face, so I'm glad we can have this discussion anyway.
> It would be preferable not to engage in aggressive warfare. But it's also preferable not to be the one who ends up dead from it.
So far, since the end of the cold war, the US is waging war on much weaker enemies, not any who pose an actual threat to its existence. And I think even conquering any and all potential threats will inevitably mean turning onto its own citizens, too, I believe. I mean, even more so than that is already the case.
And China for example will rise either way, a military defense against aggression might be unrealistic; however, there is also culture, and being worth more as an ally than a conquered territory. More importantly, there is democracy; not yet in China, heck, not yet hardly anywhere, but in theory. And people in general don't like war, it's the elites that use them as cannonfodders and bill payers in them who do. Not being hateworthy seems less risky than trying to win all the time and constantly increasing the stakes. But sadly I think the US is very used to being aggressive, and assumes everybody else is, too, that only American power keeps them in check. I don't think this is true.
> Americans are by no means the only militaristic nationalists around
Of course they're not, but we're talking about the US military on an american website. And the US, at least for the time being, is the top dog. The path the US takes is very important to me because of that, I do think it trickles down to everybody else to a degree, or at least makes it harder to achieve some progress and sanity in other countries.
> it's worth pointing out that those two things are not mutually exclusive.
I disagree, though I guess it's hard to know for sure, because how would we measure it? Still, I think when a nation wages war, the citizens get to shoulder all the costs (or debt, in the case of the US), but they don't get a comparable share in the profits. And I don't think that share outweighs the costs to them, either.
> If you're born into a nation, and into the systems which brought it into being, and you derive benefits from it - food, education, language, culture - then I believe you are to a degree a paricipant in or benefactor of the crimes which made those benefits possible. They were done on your behalf whether you like it or not.
Of course. But I also derive a lot of benefit of things people in general are doing. By "not buying into nations" I meant I don't feel pride in "my" country, just like I don't feel pride in what another right-hander, or male, or member of any other group I could be said to "belong to", is doing. War does live off this spectator sports mentality, and I just don't feel it. It has nothing to do with the internet, at least for me, though I hope it can help that process along. Nations are a way to organize things on a certain scale, but no more. They are not holy or special, they are arbitrary.
> I think you can put yourself beyond nationalism if you wish, and doing so is understandable in a post-Internet age. But I don't believe that puts you above it. You are a product of the industries of slavery, barbarism, greed and genocide, as am I, as is every human being. Before nations, people slaughtered one another in the name of their tribe, or their clan, or their family, or gods. We are all of us standing atop a pile of bones simply by virtue of birth... it's just that some piles are bigger than others.
Sure, but I think we have long since reached a point where the drawbacks of constant warfare and greed are bigger than the benefits of co-operation, though I can not really prove it. One thing is true for sure though, co-operation is also as old as history; if parents and children fought each other over food, we wouldn't exist. We're not just products of exploitation and slaughter, not by a long shot. And whatever put us here, now we are here: with an ability to think and make choices.
I actually don't think humans always slaughtered each other whenever they could and derived some benefit from it. That is, scarcity makes us do that, and nowadays I feel this scarcity is also artificially created, even more so going forward. Greed also creates scarcity: if one is greedy enough, they will not ever be satisfied, even ruling the whole universe. That way lies at best despair, at worst disaster - so why not look for a better way to spend the time until the heat death? Yes, I'm an idealist. I believe in striving for something worthwhile more than adapting myself to what I found, and leaving it behind the way I found it.
I like to believe this is true:
[Humans] have been genetically programmed through hunting behavior: cooperation and sharing. Cooperation between members of the same band was a practical necessity for most hunting societies; so was the sharing of food. Since meat is perishable in most climates except that of the Arctic, it could not be preserved. Luck in hunting was not equally divided among all hunters; hence the practical outcome was that those who had luck today would share their food with those who would be lucky tomorrow. Assuming hunting behavior led to genetic changes, the conclusion would be that modern man has an innate impulse for cooperation and sharing, rather than for killing and cruelty.
Erich Fromm, "The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness"
