Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
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E O Wilson 1975 Sociobiology. The New Synthesis. The Belknap Press, Cambridge Massachusetts.
About 4400 people die every day because of intentional acts of
self-directed, interpersonal, or collective violence. Many thousands
more are injured or suffer other non-fatal health consequences as a
result of being the victim or witness to acts of violence.E G Krug, J A Mercy, L L Dahlberg, A B Zwi (2002)The world report on violence and health. Lancet vol 360 p 1083-10
While the general principles derived from studies of animals can be applied [to understanding aggression] in man, this must be done in a sophisticated manner. To cite some examples, in the human case the manner an individual perceives himself is a crucial issue; observational learning is more likely to affect him if it involves an individual he respects; the norms of the groups with which he identified are likely to have a profound effect on his behaviour; the extent to which he feels himself to be frustrated will be influenced by the extent to which he had acquired self-esteem and security; and the extent to which he avoids violence will be affected by the guide-lines for behaviour that he has acquired and by his future goals.
R A Hinde (1974) The Biological Bases Of Human Behaviour. McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York.
Amygdala stimulation [in humans] can evoke intense dream-like hallucinations, visceral sensations, emotions, and other mental phenomena…..Since most of the evoked mental phenomena are expressions of emotional tension, a parsimonious explanation for these observations is that artificial activation of the amygdala may produce emotional tension. Conversely, amygdala lesions appear clinically to reduce emotional tension……These observations imply that the amygdala helps organize the discharge of emotional tension into consciousness.
E Halgren (1981) The amygdala contribution to emotion and memory: current studies in humans. In :The Amygdaloid Complex pp 395-408 ed: Y Ben-Ari Elsevier/North Holland Biomedical Press. Amsterdam.
In 1978 the anthropologist Carol Ember calculated that 90 percent of hunter-gatherer societies are known to engage in warfare, and 64 percent wage war at least once every two years……In 1972 another anthropologist, W.T. Divale, investigated 99 groups of hunter-gatherers from 37 cultures, and found that 68 were at war at the time, 20 had been at war five to twenty-five years before, and all the others reported warfare in the more distant past. Based on these and other ethnographic surveys, Donald Brown includes conflict, rape, revenge, jealousy, dominance, and male coalitional violence as human universals.
Steven Pinker (2002) The Blank Slate. Allen lane, London.
You take a straight tip from the stable, Cokey: if you must hate, hate the government or the people or the sea or men, but don’t hate an individual person. Who’s done
you a real injury. Next thing you know
he’ll be getting into your beer like prussic acid; and blotting
out your eyes like a cataract and screaming in your ears like a brain
tumour and boiling round your heart like melted lead and ramping
through your guts like cancer.Joyce Cary (1944) The Horse’s Mouth. Michael Joseph, London.
The peasant wife was destined for a life of suffering – so much so, indeed, that her life became a symbol of the peasant’s misery, used by nineteenth-century writers to highlight the worst aspects of Russian life. The traditional peasant household was much larger than its European counterpart…..The young bride who arrived in this household was likely to be burdened with the meanest chores, the fetching and the cooking, the washing and the childcare, and generally treated like a serf. She would have to put up with the sexual advances of not just her husband, but his father too…. Then there were the wife-beatings. For centuries peasants had claimed the right to beat their wives. Russian proverbs were full of advice on the wisdom of such violence…
Orlando Figes (2003) Natasha’s Dance. Penguin Books, London
If we were to ask, what has been the most dangerous emotion of the last two centuries, one possible answer might be: the nostalgia for community, the yearning, in an age of mechanization and eclecticism, for the sort of powerful sense of group identity that will enable you to hold hands with people and sing along, your lucid individuality submerged in the folly of collective delirium, united in a common cause, which of course implies a common enemy.
T Parks (2002) Soccer: a matter of love and hate. New York Review of Books, vol 49 pp 38-40
The soldiers sprang to their feet and charged, and simultaneously the second machine gun opened fire….In the incomprehensible hurricane of bullets the soldiers whirled and fell for half an hour………The machine guns ceased, the guerrilleros ceased, and two hundred soldiers threw aside their arms and ran back to cover as a stampede of mules and donkeys rushed through them, hurling them to the ground and trampling them. The two hundred rose to their feet and Hectoro and the men and women of the village burst upon them firing revolvers into their chests from point blank range, and hacking their limbs with machetes. Coldly Hectoro dismounted and walked among the carnage, slicing the throats of all who still lived……..
Only fifty men of the brigade….escaped back to the camp…Back on the field of slaughter the victors were both jubilant and appalled. Shaken, pale and trembling, they embraced each other and then wandered dumbly among the fallen.
‘They were innocents,’ said Misael. ‘Look at them, they were all boys.’
‘Yes,’ said Pedro. ‘Little boys with mad leaders and fear in their hearts.’
Louis de Bernieres (1990) The War of Don Emmanuel’s Nether Parts. Martin Secker and Warburg, London.