VIOLENCE

One of the multiple battlefields of environmental determinists versus biological determinists relates to the causes of violence. The former see violence as a primarily culturally rooted phenomenon, whereas the latter see it as being biologically determined This controversy, however, may be due to a failure to distinguish between aggressiveness and violence.

Aggressiveness and Violence

Aggressiveness is an instinct and therefore is a product of bioevolution. However, nature has not selected for the trait of aggressiveness alone but together with a set of inhibiting factors that are activated in certain circumstances, for instance, when two individuals who belong to the same group fight with each other and the life of one of them is threatened. As Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt (1984) argues, a widely obeyed commandment in nature is "thou shalt not kill thy neighbor." Not even animals with as bad a reputation as wolves are an exception to this law.

In humans aggressiveness is linked primarily to the brainstem and the so-called limbic system or emotional brain (Sanmartín 2002). This part of the brain contains the structures that appear to be responsible for the responses (autonomous, somatic, hormonal, and neurotransmitter) that make up aggressive behavior. These automatic responses are triggered unconsciously by certain stimuli and coordinated by the amygdala, a structure in the inner region of the temporal lobe of both brain hemispheres.

The amygdala sets off the chain of effects that constitute the acting out of aggressive behavior in response to a stimulus. It also is responsible for stopping those effects when it receives inhibiting stimuli such as the emotional expression of fear shown by victims.

If humans were only the product of bioevolution, their aggressiveness would be regulated by the amygdala exclusively. However, humans are much more than a product of biological evolution. Indeed, the amygdala is connected to certain brain regions that are considered the seat of consciousness and that experienced extraordinary growth approximately 1.5 million years ago (Damasio 1994). These regions are in the frontal part of the brain cortex, the so-called prefrontal cortex. Their functions appear to be linked closely to the abilities that traditionally have been considered humankind's noblest: imagination, thought, and feeling. Ideas, thoughts, and feelings make up the framework that analyzes emotions and decides whether to reinforce or extinguish them. If, for instance, one of the emotions that constitute aggressiveness is reinforced, aggressiveness may go out of control and its natural inhibitors may be rendered inoperative. Soldiers and terrorists usually undergo a process of cognitive restructuring in which they learn to view their victims not as persons, but as things or symbols. Once victims are not seen as persons, it is impossible to empathize with them; consequently, their facial expressions have no inhibitory capacity.

Strictly speaking, violence is what occurs when the interaction between the expression and the inhibition of aggressiveness is disrupted in a way that hypertrophies aggressiveness and adds the intention to cause damage knowingly, as in the case of soldiers and terrorists. This disruption is influenced by ideas, thoughts, and feelings acquired over the course of a lifetime. Of equal importance are some of the products of the mind and in particular certain technical products. All of them are cultural elements. Violence therefore can be said to be primarily the result of the effects exerted by certain cultural elements on natural aggressiveness, hypertrophying it and conveying intentionality. The adverb primarily is used here because in certain cases (around 20 percent) the alteration of natural aggressiveness is caused by biological pathologies.

Technological Change as a Source of Violence

In most cases violence is born out of culture. Culture in turn is shaped by technology, as Ortega y Gasset (1939) argued, because humans are a nativitate (from birth) technical animals. Human beings change and survive because of bioevolution. However, humans do not worry as much about surviving as they do about the quality of life, always striving to achieve higher standards of well-being. This goal is achieved, but at the cost of creating a sort of supranature that consists of instruments or tools, machines, various forms of social organization, and instruments that apparently free humans of all the elements in nature that make them needy beings: cold, food, and the like.

Human beings also have directed technology toward themselves. On the one hand, they have constructed external prostheses that have modified their natural appearance. On the other hand, technology has penetrated so deeply into humans that they can in principle alter even their genetic information and therefore reconstruct themselves by following preestablished patterns and desires.

These technical interventions have had some negative effects, such as the conversion of innate aggressiveness into violence. Technology (not entirely by itself, of course) has upset the balance between natural aggressiveness and its natural mechanisms of control.

In addition, this technical supranature regularly experiences strong convulsions. At these times there take place the great technological changes that seem to drive historical transformations with increasingly greater speed. The mechanical clock, the fifteenth-century arts of navigation, railways, airplanes and spaceships, nuclear weapons, computers, the Internet, gene technology, and cloning are all technical inventions that have shaken traditions and compelled humans to adapt quickly to new situations. Human beings appear to be forced to adapt themselves to the changes in their technical supranature, not the other way round; this process often is described as social progress.

The consequent demand for adaptation generates a certain amount of stress that is becoming increasingly difficult to control. Uncontrolled stress usually degenerates into violence. In this sense, then, technology in general may become a source of violence (Sanmartín 2000).

Television and Violence

Two technologies are especially linked to violence: the mass media (especially visual media) and weapons.

In the early twenty-first century, not even the industry denies that exposure to violent images in television, video games, or the Internet has effects on the audience and, particularly, on children and adolescents. What is under discussion, however, is the type and degree of these effects. Albert Bandura (1977) stressed the idea that children learn violent behavior not only by imitating the real violence that is present in their environments, but also by emulating the violence (fictitious or not) broadcast on television. This correlation was confirmed by a longitudinal study started in 1960 by Leonard Eron, Monroe Lefkowitz, Leopold Walder, and L. Rowell Huesmann (Huesmann and Eron 1986) that used a sample of 800 eight-year-old children. Jeffrey Johnson (2002) published another longitudinal study showing that seeing violence on television at age fourteen correlated significantly with later aggression (assault and battery, violent or armed robbery). According to Johnson and associates (2002), if exposure to television was one hour per day at age fourteen, 5.7 percent of the individuals at a mean age of sixteen or twenty-two exhibited violent behaviors, and if exposure was increased to three or more hours per day, violent behavior went up to 25.3 percent. Craig Anderson and Brad Bushman (2002), in a related meta-analysis of longitudinal studies, cross-sectional studies, field experiments, and laboratory experiments carried out to that date concerning the possible influence of violence on television, demonstrated that all studies supported the existence of a significant correlation between exposure to violence on television and violent behavior.

Other studies have provided more clues to this problem. Foremost among them that of Jo Groebel (1999), which showed that the relationship between real violence and screen violence is interactive: Violent people use audiovisual media to reinforce their beliefs and attitudes, becoming even more violent. This study dealt with a large sample: 5,000 twelve-year-old children from twenty-three different developed and developing countries with social environments containing high or low rates of real violence. One interesting discovery was that 88 percent of the children had seen the move The Terminator (1984). An even more interesting discovery was that in high-violence environments half the children wanted to be like the Terminator, whereas in low-violence environments the number was only 37 percent. In other words, the influence of screen violence on real violence depends on the amount of real violence surrounding a child.

Before blaming television for violence in society, especially among children and adolescents, one must consider carefully the social environments of those children. When children live in homes in which they suffer or witness abuse, where there is alcohol or drug abuse, where parents and children do not get along, where the homes have cramped or unhealthy living conditions, without the support of other family members or friends, the result may be an environment in which the spark of television violence has little difficulty causing a fire by adding to preexistent violent attitudes and behaviors.

In the early twenty-first century, this environment often also contains videogames, either on game consoles or computer. Many authors, such as Degaetano and Grossman (1999) and Anderson (2004), state that the effects of violent images on video games are even worse than other kinds of images, for several reasons. Firstly, as opposed to films and television programs, in violent video games the player is forced to identify with the main character (the aggressor). Secondly, violent video games require active participation, and active participation promotes learning. Thirdly, video-game violence is directly rewarded. Finally, the level of violence in video games is far superior to that in films or on television.

Computers, and in particular the Internet, are connected to violence, especially violent crime, in different ways. Rather than generating new forms of crime, the Internet has revolutionized some traditional forms of crime by accelerating their transnationalization. If there is one thing that has rapidly globalized, it is the criminal activities of mafias and extremist organizations. Sexual exploitation—and pornography, in particular (Von Feilitzen and Carlsson, 2000)—drugs trafficking, the smuggling of chemical, nuclear and radioactive material, and especially the money-laundering business, have benefited from the globalizing effect of the World-Wide Web. In fact, every year more than 600 billion dollars (slightly more than 2% of global gross domestic product) are laundered world-wide, practically cost-free.

Weapons and Violence

One particular type of technology is especially linked to violence: weapons. From a naturalistic point of view, bioevolution has poorly equipped the human animal for causing severe damage and especially for killing other humans. Human beings do not have fangs, sharp claws, or pointed horns. In order to kill they have to use their feet or fists with great force and skill or put their hands on a victim's neck for several minutes. In such cases, killing takes place at close quarters and a victim's aggression-inhibiting signals are quite effective.

These inhibitors are bypassed, however, when weapons are used. From knives and swords to guns and bombs, weapons have evolved to increase the distance between users and victims, until the victims have disappeared from direct view. This is not a coincidence. Once distance has blurred facial expressions, postures, and other aggression inhibitors, victims cease to be seen as persons and become things. One cannot empathize with a thing, stop one's destructive actions, or even feel sorry afterward. In this way one of the beings most ill-equipped by nature for killing has become, by virtue of technology, one of the most effective killers.

JOSÉ SANMARTÍN

SEE ALSO Aggression;Entertainment;Just War;Military Ethics;Movies;Television;Video Games.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Damasio, Antonio R. (1994). Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam.

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Johnson, Jeffrey G.; Cohen, Patricia; Smailes, Elizabeth M.; et al. (2002). "Television Viewing and Aggressive Behaviour during Adolescence and Adulthood." Science 295: 2468–2471.

Ortega y Gasset, José. (1939). Meditación de la técnica. English Version: "Thoughts On Technology," in Philosophy and Technology: Readings in the Philosophical Problems of Technology, ed. Carl Mitcham and Robert Mackey. New York: The Free Press, 1972.

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