Fernando Alcoforado*
We live in a world that has as one of its main characteristics the violence practiced by man against his fellow men. The perception of many people is that violence represents the predominance of the animal instinct that we have over the values of civilization. This would explain the escalation of crime and wars at all times around the world. The debate on violence places on the agenda the question of human nature, the subject of which was addressed by eminent thinkers such as Raymond Aron (French philosopher and sociologist), Henry Bergson (French philosopher and diplomat), Hannah Arendt (German philosopher), Sigmund Freud (Austrian, neurologist and founder of Psychoanalysis), Carl Rogers (American forerunner of humanistic psychology), Thomas Hobbes (English political scientist, philosopher and mathematician), Jean-Jaques Rousseau (Swiss writer and philosopher) and Karl Marx (economist , German philosopher, historian and political scientist), among others. Scientists and philosophers have been asking the question for thousands of years: is human nature innate or is it a product of the environment or both? Is it determined genetically or by the society where the human being lives or by both?
Why does the world become more violent each year? Not only is there an increase in the number of armed conflicts on the globe, but the people themselves are more violent. What’s the explanation for that? It is not uncommon to say that since the world existe, violence has always existed among human beings. It will be difficult to find someone today who does not believe this statement. And yet, it is false. In the early days of humanity, there was no violence that manifests itself today in relations between individuals and between human communities and nation states. No human being, no people of that distant time would have had the idea of attacking his fellow man. It is difficult to try to establish a parallel between the way of life of human beings of that time with the humanity of today. At that time, living in peace and harmony with others was something as natural for humans as breathing, eating and sleeping. Human beings have already lived on Earth, without being offended or mistreating each other, much less fighting each other. No record from that time has reached the present and, therefore, it is assumed that this situation did not exist.
According to Raymond Aron, as the life of man is organized in families and in groups, less likely the bellicose behaviors might seem to us [ARON, Raymond. Paz e guerra entre nações (Peace and War between nations). Editora Universidade de Brasília, 1962]. In Sumer we will find the first evidence of the existence of troops with military training. According to Aron, no anthropologist has ever found any evidence that men had devised an organization or combat tactic before the Bronze Age (3300 BC to 1300-700 BC). It is not surprising, therefore, that the first indisputable evidence of armies and war dates from the Bronze Age, which is a period of civilization in which the development of this metallic alloy resulting from the mixture of copper and tin occurred.
Just as for the first human beings it would be inconceivable the idea of causing any harm to their fellowmen, today, it sounds like illusion, fantasy, the idea of a world without conflicts, as we consider violence as a characteristic of human beings. It can be speculated whether there was an intermediate phase between the many millennia during which man lived under the threat of the beasts and the much shorter period when the threat to his security began to originate in other men. It would be a time when men had sufficient technical means to defend themselves against the beasts and without engaging in the pursuit of wealth and class struggles, conquests and dominions. It is demonstrated that small societies, without metallic instruments, isolated, still do not show characteristic features of bellicose societies.
In the human species, however, the manifestations of aggression are inseparable from collective life. Even when it comes to the reaction of one individual against another, aggression is influenced, in many ways, by the social context. The emergence of a properly social existence was not the only cause of the new dimensions that took on the phenomenon of aggressiveness: the frustration and inadequacy resulting from the aggressive reaction constitute the most important fact in human relations. Aron defends the thesis that frustration is a psychic experience, revealed by consciousness. All individuals experience frustration since childhood. Frustration is, first of all, the experience of deprivation, that is, a desired and unattainable good, an oppression felt painfully. The chain of causality that leads to emotions or acts of aggression always originates in an external phenomenon. There is no physiological evidence that there is a spontaneous incitation to the struggle, originating in the individual’s own organism. Physical aggression and the desire to destroy are not the only possible reaction to frustration.
Henry Bergson, for his part, states that the origin of violence and war is the existence of property, individual or collective. People who fear the lack of food and raw materials they need to survive are ready to attack. Thus authentic wars are born, adjusted to their essence [BERGSON, Henry. Les Deux Sources de la Morale et de Religion. French & European Pubns, 1976]. Hannah Arendt addressed the issue of violence in her work On Violence published by Harvest Book in 1970 in which she discusses, especially with Niezstche and Bergson, about what she calls the biological justification of violence. Arendt disputes this position, stating that “nothing could theoretically be more dangerous than the tradition of organic thinking in political matters, through which power and violence are interpreted in biological terms”.
Arendt maintains that neither violence nor power are natural phenomena, that is, a manifestation of the vital process, they belong to the political realm of human affairs, whose essentially human quality is guaranteed by man’s ability to act, the ability to start something new . Arendt dismisses the organic metaphors of violence as a disease of society. The denaturalization of the phenomenon of violence in Hannah Arendt is her refusal to associate the historical process with the struggle for survival and violent death in the animal kingdom and to give up the meaning of politics as a determination of the human.
Freud emphasizes the destructive aspects of man in his work. It is evident the need, placed by Freud, to control and repress the individual, due to the danger that he could represent to society, which leads him to conclude that the man, advocated by him, is not, socially speaking, very trustworthy. According to Freud, civilized society is perpetually threatened by disintegration because of this primary hostility of men towards each other. Culture has to resort to every possible reinforcement in order to erect barriers against the aggressive instinct of men. Faced with such a hostile and disintegrating being, nothing could be more natural than for society to make use of its coercive power [GUSMÃO, Sonia Maria Lima. A natureza humana segundo Freud e Rogers (Human nature according to Freud and Rogers). Available on the website <http://www.rogeriana.com/sonia/natureza.htm>).
Carl Rogers has a view opposite to that of Freud, as he believes that it is precisely in a coercive context, where the individual cannot expand, or rather, update his potential, which makes him hostile or antisocial. Otherwise, we have nothing to fear, because their behavior will tend to be constructive. Rogers observes that when man is truly free to become what he is at the bottom of his being, when he is free to act according to his nature, as a being capable of perceiving the things around him, then he clearly, it moves towards globality and integration.
Hobbes has as a central thesis about human conduct, that all human beings are selfish and are willing to use others for their own benefit. Hobbes speaks of the “war of all against all”, the permanent struggle that would be unleashed if men did not live in safety and had to depend completely on their own resources. Hobbes seeks to show that there can be no society without government and without the sanctions of the law. There would be only antagonistic individuals. Competition – the desire to outdo others – is part of the fabric of our lives: we either want to achieve something at the expense of others, or we want to defend what we have already achieved [TRIGG, Roger. A Natureza Humana em Hobbes (Human Nature in Hobbes). Available on the website <http://qualia-esob.blogspot.com.br/2008/03/natureza-humana-em-hobbes.html].
The central idea in Rousseau’s thought is based on the conviction of man’s natural goodness. According to Rousseau, the socialization obstacles took man away from himself and pitted him against his fellow man. It is in this process of transformation that man degenerates. For Rousseau, socialization is the cause of the denaturation of man, and the best path for its degradation. Communion with nature is the only way to preserve the true essence of man. JJ Rousseau thought that wars arise, or at least widen, with the expansion of communities and that class inequality and individual property are linked to wars of conquest and domination by warriors [FULGERI, Dalva de Fatima. Conceito de natureza em Rousseau (Concept of nature in Rousseau). Available at the website <http://www.paradigmas.com.br/parad12/p12.6.htm>%5D.
Marx presented a definition of the essence of human nature in the Philosophical Manuscripts, characterizing human beings as free and conscious activity, in contrast to the nature of the animal [NOMOSOPHY. A Natureza do Homem Segundo Karl Marx (The Nature of Man According to Karl Marx). Available on the website <http://nomosofia.blogspot.com.br/2011/10/natureza-do-homem-segundo-karl-marx.html>%5D. Marx claims that social conflicts result from the division of society into classes with the emergence of private property to replace collective ownership of the means of production that prevailed in primitive societies [VIANA, Nildo. A Renovação da Psicanálise por Erich Fromm (The Renewal of Psychoanalysis by Erich Fromm). Available on the website <http://br.monografias.com/trabalhos914/renovacao-psicanalise-fromm/renovacao-psicanalise-fromm.shtml>%5D.
From the above, it appears that Aron defends the thesis that aggression is influenced, in many ways, by the social context, Bergson says that the origin of violence and war is the existence of property, individual or collective, Arendt argues that neither violence nor power are natural phenomena, that is, a manifestation of the vital process which belong to the political sphere of human affairs, Freud and Hobbes converge in their thoughts when considering man’s aggressive instincts and the need for coercion to repress them. The pessimistic view of Freud and Hobbes is opposed to that of Carl Rogers who states that only in a coercive context does man become hostile or antisocial and that if there is no coercion he will tend to be constructive. Rousseau’s central idea is the conviction of man’s natural goodness and that it is society that degenerates him, pitting him against his fellow man. Marx claims that man is the creator of his own development and that human beings are capable of changing the world around them and, in doing so, change themselves.
Historically, much of the discussions about the origins or causes of human behavior reveal to us the existence of a highly controversial issue. This is the controversy between the influence of the social environment on people’s behavior versus biological inheritance determining people’s behavior, which is what epigenetics does. Modernly, there are those who defend epigenetics as an explanation for the problem of violence. I completely disagree with attributing the problem of human violence to epigenetics and not to the social environment where he lives.
The basic premise of the influence of biological inheritance is that the person receives it from his parents. Who defends the influence of biological inheritance considers that the basic characteristics of man (his intelligence, personality, physical traits, etc.) are already formed, “ready” at birth, due to his biological inheritance (his native endowment). This view resulted in the belief that human behavior (or a large part of it) is innate, in the sense that we are born with certain tendencies and propensities, which cannot be altered by learning.
There are two basic errors in the influence of biological inheritance: 1) Sex cells are not characters, traits or characteristics (physical or behavioral), but genetic information or genes. There are no genes that make someone a musician or a scientist. Genes create the basis for cultural traits, but do not force the development of any particular trait. Acquired characters are not transmitted biologically; and, 2) Any trait, character or characteristic that the individual presents at birth is, by definition, innate or congenital, but not necessarily hereditary (genetic), as there are traits caused by environmental factors.
The basic premise of the influence of the social environment is that it is primarily responsible for the formation of the basic characteristics of man, especially his intellectual capacity. According to the philosopher John Locke, the newborn’s mind was a blank slate (blank page, leaf or canvas) – the story to be written there was authored by the social environment, that is, the individual’s life conditions and experiences. One of the most important adherents of this position was the psychologist John B. Watson, founder of behaviorism in the United States, who, in his various works, insisted on a “cultural” or “environmental” explanation of the development of human behavior, admitting as a basic premise the fact that human beings are infinitely malleable, almost entirely at the mercy of their social environment.
The learned behavior results from the individual’s interaction with the social environment; this interaction creates experiences that are registered in the memory and contribute to the improvement of subsequent performances. It is noted that, as a result of an individual’s interaction with the environment, its execution is made possible by the individual’s genetic makeup. Therefore, the position of those who interpret the problem of human violence is mistaken, associating it with epigenetics and not with the social environment. The social environment determines human behavior, including political and social behavior.
The individual violence that may be exercised by the human being can therefore be attributed to factors that are endogenous or intrinsic and exogenous or external to the individual. There are individuals who act with violence and others who do not when they are victims of the actions of others. Other individuals act violently against their fellowmen when they seek to achieve their goals with the use of force. At the individual level, it is necessary to identify whether his violent behavior is related to his psychic structure or his character structure. If the problem is psychic, the individual must be treated by psychiatrists and if it is of character, which is composed of a person’s attitudes and habits and his consistent pattern of responses to various situations, including attitudes, conscious values and behaviors, he must be treated by psychologists and educators. The psychic problem demands the action of the psychiatrist and the character problem demands the action of education supported by psychology.
Another approach that we have to consider from the point of view of violence is that of collective violence. Collective violence is exercised by governments with the use of police forces to fight crime and, also, to repress social movements that threaten power holders and ruling social classes. Extreme collective violence is exercised by governments when they seek to dictatorially exercise their power by crushing their opponents by force, but collective violence can also arise in society when social classes unite to overthrow a government that attacks their interests or to promote social changes. In the case of violence practiced by governments, it is institutionalized and, in the case of popular violence, it is always articulated in response to the violence practiced by those in power. When a mass of individuals come together to exercise violence against the powers that be, there is convergence of all individuals in this action. In other words, individual wills are transformed into collective will.
To make human beings behave constructively and be able to change the world around them, it is therefore necessary to educate them. Kant, the philosopher, thus understands education: to develop in the individual all the perfection of which he is susceptible. Such is the noble purpose of education. Pestalozzi, consecrated pedagogue, says: to educate is to progressively develop man’s spiritual faculties. John Locke, great preceptor, expresses himself in this way on the subject: to educate is to make spirits upright, willing, at all times, to practice whatever is in accordance with the dignity and excellence of a sensible creature. Lessing, a no less illustrious authority, compares the work of education to the work of revelation, and says: education determines and accelerates man’s progress and improvement.
The fight against violence in the world will only be victorious with the education of all human beings in all quarters of the Earth so that, through this, they acquire the awareness of the world in which they live, organize themselves in each country and in all the world to carry out the political, economic and social changes necessary to eliminate social inequalities and obstacles to political, economic, social and environmental development in their respective countries. In parallel with the education effort of all human beings, humanity needs to be provided as urgently as possible with the necessary instruments to control its destiny and put into practice a model of society that promotes in each country, to the highest degree , economic, social and environmental progress and globally democratic governance in the world. This is the only means of survival of the human species and to stop the decadence of humanity that manifests itself in unbridled violence such as that which occurs at the moment. There is no other means capable of ensuring the interests of humanity and of all nations, of all forms of life and of future generations.
In every country in the world, a new model of society should be adopted that enables civilized coexistence among all human beings. This new model should be inspired by the social democracy that exists in the countries of Scandinavia (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland), where the most successful of all was implemented with the necessary improvements and adaptations. In 2013, The Economist magazine stated that the Scandinavian countries are probably the best governed countries in the world. The UN World Happiness Report 2014 shows that the happiest nations in the world are concentrated in Northern Europe, with Norway at the top of the list. The Scandinavian countries have the highest ranking in real GDP per capita, the highest healthy life expectancy, the greatest freedom to make life choices and the greatest generosity. It is no coincidence that the Scandinavian countries, in addition to having great economic and social successes, are leaders in HDI (Human Development Index) in the world.
A democratic governance of the world should exist to build the governability of the global economy and environment and the maintenance of world peace. Through it, the defense of the general interests of humanity would be pursued. It would ensure that each State respects the rights of every citizen in the world, seeking to prevent the spread of global systemic risks of an economic and environmental nature. It would avoid the empire of one and the anarchy of all as it is at the moment. Governance with these characteristics can only result from consensus among all peoples and nations in the world. The preservation of peace would be the first mission of any new form of global governance.
The new world order to be built must organize not only the relations between men on the face of the Earth, but also their relations with nature. It is necessary, therefore, that a planetary social contract be drawn up that enables economic and social development and the rational use of nature’s resources for the benefit of all humanity. The building of a new world order based on these principles is urgent. This government will exist one day even if it happens after a gigantic economic or environmental disaster. It is urgent to think about this in order to stop the violence and wars that proliferate around the world.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 80, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).
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