Are Humans Innately Aggressive?

[David777]

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[gruntlabor]

Yes, we are Apex predators. Our strong survival instinct will probably also be our downfall.

Yes, we are innately aggressive.
Carnivores kill
We are carnivores
Therefore, we kill

 

[Nathan]

Yes, we are innately aggressive.
Carnivores kill
We are carnivores
Therefore, we kill

...and as carnivores we like steak! Medium rare, with some horseradish on the side, baked potato....

 

[Babs2u]

How? There has always (or maybe nearly always) been a person or group, motivated by power and greed, who have conquered weaker, smaller, under-defended and otherwise vulnerable groups, and claimed their land and resources. And maybe there always will be.

How do you do away with those people?...or, more correctly, how do you do away with their need for aggression?...which is obviously motivated by power and greed.

Good question.

 

[Babs2u]

Yes, indeedy. The hominoids who survived to become the homosapiens of today passed on the aggressive genes through to our DNA. Everybody knows that a large majority of us carry Neanderthal DNA, except that the Neanderthals didn't survive as a species. So how do we explain that? ???

But today the nerds seem to be in power so could that all change?

 

[Warrigal]

I think it is a "sin" issue ; we can sin against ourselves as in suicide but also against others as in fighting or war - the puzzle for me is why many humans maybe 50% or more have no desire to fight or kill - so it would seem that in that cohort the "fight instinct" of "gene" as defused ; died out perhaps. It could just be an evolutionary process ; some evolve to non- aggressive humans before others?? - there surely is aggressive we see it in the ME and in Ukraine and parts of Africa. China fascinates me it subdues its neighbours but doesn't go to war??

I am not the least bit aggressive. Never was as a child either. By nature I am co-operative, not competitive. That said, I am sure there is within me a deadly potential.

If I were in a refugee camp I would hope that I would gather children to me by setting up a makeshift school. I would want to help and protect as many as I could, but I have never been put to the test. I know that if anyone murdered or raped one of mine I would be perfectly capable of hunting them down with intent to kill.

Humans are not sheep, neither are we wolves, but somewhere in the genome there is something of the herbivore and of the carnivore. Youn
only need to look inside our mouths to see traces of both.