Where does violence come from?

[Stigweard]

Question to the panel at the summit:

 

Violence and conflict cannot be observed in newborn babies, so where does conflict and violence come from?

 

How would you have answered?

[soundhunter]

It comes pretty darn early in small babies and children though, newborns aren't mobile and can't speak, so we wouldn't know if there was a kernel of violence or conflict in them yet, but it comes out surprisingly early in wee ones, even those raised in very very peaceful homes.

[sabretooth]

It comes from chimp's,because that is what we are.

 

 

 

 

 

sabretooth.

[thelerner]

Violence starts as anger, and anger comes from a sense of loss. The fear of something being taken away. It starts in the gut, with a shallow breath and moves to hurt the source of the loss.

 

Its a madness that warms and focuses while causing us to burn and separate.

 

 

Michael

[zanshin]

It does start early in children and not always synonymous with anger, young boys play at wrestling and fighting all the time and it can be lots of fun for them- then in adults we many martial arts practitioners in this group- so is sparring in class with your friend enjoyable? and we have war games, sports contests etc. Part of it is what we are and maybe some violence and conflict is healthy. Do newborns babies know love and happiness?- we really don't know what is going on inside their heads, even though they may not be able express things I think we feel most of the range of human emotions and drives very young and very intensely. Emotions come from the limbic system as do basic fight or flight type behaviors deeply ingrained in our core. As we get older higher centers develop to control these primitive urges, we can never eliminate violence and conflict but perhaps thru learning cause and effect and empathy with others we can learn to temper it.

[Bruce]

Useful everyday psychology aside, isn't this essentially the same question as why does maya exist and where does it come from?

[Adj]

I remember being a small child and some one stole my "lello" crayon right out of my hand and started coloring with it peacefully. I remember feeling complete rage for him being so rude and disrespectful so I curled my little fingers into a fist and clobbered that shit head right in his little button nose and retrieved my crayon and continued to color peacefully as tears rolled down his face and blood dripped from his nose.

 

And the preschool teacher caught me and put me in the corner. I was obviously wrong, but did not feel so. And I fought back with a sense of total injustice. I was defending my property, my territory! IT WAS MY TERRITORY. NOT HIS. Why am I being punished for standing up for myself?! And I remember resisting her with every fiber of my being.

 

She eventually gave up restraining me and I felt unstoppable with the glory of victory. And the child who stole my crayon came up to be and apologized! Because he knew, I was the alpha and you don't mess with my territory! ASK first.

 

I remember weeks later him approaching me, "Adj will you be my friend today?"

 

Violence comes from our evolved tendency to be territorial. I can't think of any other explanation.

Territory can be stealing crayons.

Territory can be stealing positions, like my chair, ect.

Territory can be stealing the GLORY.

 

If you were to teach kids that nothing truely belongs to them to remove the idea of OWNERSHIP, maybe that will solve the violence problems.

 

But what will happen? They will grab the crayon out of another kids hand and get their little noses clobbered.

 

We live in a world of violence and you must know how to DEAL with it and be STRONG and stand up for yourself. Otherwise, you will get pushed around. We live in a territorial world and children need to learn this early so that they don't get the snot beaten out of them.

 

Other then that, yea, all violence comes from the sense of ownership and some one taking it from you.

Taking your girlfriend.

Taking your glory.

Stealing your money by injustly giving you a speeding ticket for going 5 miles over the speed limit.

Taking your right of way by cutting you off in thick traffic.

Taking your freedom of speech and religion to the point where you would rather DIE than not have that freedom.

 

Violence comes from the concept of onwership which is derived from our territorial nature. Resisting it is against the Dao. Embracing it through the study of Martial Arts is what will give you CONTROL over your nature and allow you to move forward. Nothing is more emotional than Violent mortal combat and rising above the emotion is a required skill of an immortal. That is one of the reasons why the daoists developed Nei Wu shu.

Edited February 19, 2009 by Adj

[soundhunter]

My kids are currently 5, 2 and 8 months, so I'm in the thick of this childhood anger stuff. My 2 year old is enraged about everything that doesn't go her way constantly, she's the most intensely emotional about things of the three of them, in fact as she was coming out of me, before she was fully born she popped just her head out, looked at my husband and screetched BAH! right at him, startling the heck out of him. She hasn't stopped giving us heck since, and it's been really peaking out lately with unbearably frequent yelling, crying and whining, perhaps anger is a big part of her personality, or perhaps it's a reincarnation thing, I dunno, but it's not just something she learned, it's something in her that's been there since birth.

[Stigweard]

I remember being a small child and some one stole my "lello" crayon right out of my hand and started coloring with it peacefully. I remember feeling complete rage for him being so rude and disrespectful so I curled my little fingers into a fist and clobbered that shit head right in his little button nose and retrieved my crayon and continued to color peacefully as tears rolled down his face and blood dripped from his nose.

 

And the preschool teacher caught me and put me in the corner. I was obviously wrong, but did not feel so. And I fought back with a sense of total injustice. I was defending my property, my territory! IT WAS MY TERRITORY. NOT HIS. Why am I being punished for standing up for myself?! And I remember resisting her with every fiber of my being.

 

She eventually gave up restraining me and I felt unstoppable with the glory of victory. And the child who stole my crayon came up to be and apologized! Because he knew, I was the alpha and you don't mess with my territory! ASK first.

 

I remember weeks later him approaching me, "Adj will you be my friend today?"

 

Violence comes from our evolved tendency to be territorial. I can't think of any other explanation.

Territory can be stealing crayons.

Territory can be stealing positions, like my chair, ect.

Territory can be stealing the GLORY.

 

If you were to teach kids that nothing truely belongs to them to remove the idea of OWNERSHIP, maybe that will solve the violence problems.

 

But what will happen? They will grab the crayon out of another kids hand and get their little noses clobbered.

 

We live in a world of violence and you must know how to DEAL with it and be STRONG and stand up for yourself. Otherwise, you will get pushed around. We live in a territorial world and children need to learn this early so that they don't get the snot beaten out of them.

 

Other then that, yea, all violence comes from the sense of ownership and some one taking it from you.

Taking your girlfriend.

Taking your glory.

Stealing your money by injustly giving you a speeding ticket for going 5 miles over the speed limit.

Taking your right of way by cutting you off in thick traffic.

Taking your freedom of speech and religion to the point where you would rather DIE than not have that freedom.

 

Violence comes from the concept of onwership which is derived from our territorial nature. Resisting it is against the Dao. Embracing it through the study of Martial Arts is what will give you CONTROL over your nature and allow you to move forward. Nothing is more emotional than Violent mortal combat and rising above the emotion is a required skill of an immortal. That is one of the reasons why the daoists developed Nei Wu shu.

 

I certainly hear what you say Adj and you are absolutely correct that violence arises out of our competitive attachments to ownership. However I am resolute in my belief that violence is not within the natural state of one who has achieved Tao. Violence, conflict, and dispute are the symptoms of disharmony and an achieved one has no place for disharmony to find root.

 

Consider the Taoist teaching that we have Hun spirits and Po spirits coexisting within us. The Po spirits are the animalistic spirits that govern our base desires, instinctual drives, and blind impulses. A consciousness that identifies only with the Po spirits will be one that is forever pursuing material gratification and competitiveness. Such a consciousness will incessantly come into opposition with other such consciousnesses and the potential for violence will thus likewise incessantly arise.

 

We are, however, also imbuded with Hun spirits which comprise the spiritual sphere of the soul. Hun is the part of the consciousness that leads the individual to virtuous fulfillment and spiritual sublimation. The correct order for an achieved being is to place the Po spirits under the guidance of the Hun spirits.

 

So whilst true it is that violence is a factual reality of many human relationships it is, in my view, a symptom of individual consciousnesses who have identified too closely with the negative sphere of life. And thus it is the predeliction of a practising Taoist to cure violence at its roots by reestablishing the correct order of one's own internal spirits.

 

[goldisheavy]

Question to the panel at the summit:

 

Violence and conflict cannot be observed in newborn babies, so where does conflict and violence come from?

 

How would you have answered?

 

Newborn babies carry the subtle imprints of violence, that's why they are not visible. Violence is not always bad. For example, when you split firewood with an axe, that's good. Or if you participate in a sport like say Judo, that's arguably good too. I think we all know what the bad violence is.

 

The point is that our nature is to be dynamic and our dynamism is not always smooth and sometimes the sparks must fly, but how, when, in what context, how often, etc., they fly is up to us to a large extent.

 

What influences the violent expressions are our core beliefs, and these are informed by the dominant doctrines of various cultures. Sometimes these doctrines are mostly explicit and sometimes they are mostly implicit and anything in between.

 

For example, if you grow up with a doctrine that declares that the infidels must be killed, that's a source of violence right there. Or if you grow up in an environment where only the strong coercive people get respect, that's another source of violence. This would be a doctrine of "might makes right" practiced implicitly. Or if you grow up in an environment where people are not allowed to express themselves fully. So the dynamic energy of our being becomes bottled up, blocked, and eventually explodes. This can happen, for example, in a society where our natural sexuality is repressed. The doctrine here is something like "some of our natural behaviors are bad, and are to be forcefully suppressed". This leads to frustration which then leads to crankiness which then leads to violence.

 

In all cases the only way to reduce violence is to change the operating assumptions, or the core beliefs. This can be very hard to do, because various cultures cling to their doctrines so very stubbornly, as if their very survival depended on them. Often challenging or even just discussing some aspects of these doctrines is taboo. That's why violence of the bad kind persists. It takes great courage to start asking questions of one's own doctrine. One may need to pay with one's own life for doing that sometimes.

[steve]

I think violence comes from the illusion of separation.

 

Babies don't yet have this delusion, it takes years of conditioning for it to be established.

By adulthood, we are conditioned to perceive ourselves as individuals, separate from each other and separate from our environment.

This is already violence.

To add fuel to the fire, we identify with others who have similar conditioning and form tribes (geographic, religious, political, cultural, national, racial, ...). So the illusion of separation is magnified and reinforced.

 

So a number of different religious tribes now come together to try and figure out how to end violence. But their very existence is at the root of the violence.

End the separation and eventually the violence can end.

But ending the separation means that those tribes can no longer exist. They have to give up that which makes them unique and special. And that can only happen after the individuals who make up the tribe can let go of their individual illusions of separation.

 

Is this a realistic expectation?

Is it even desirable?

Would we value (or even recognize) peace if we didn't suffer wars?

Violence has always accompanied life. Every life subsists on the death of another.

Can that end?

[Spectrum]

separation

Edited February 22, 2009 by Spectrum