Overview on Human Aggressiveness

I have been to Earth. Sequestered as it is near the edge of our galaxy and orbiting a rather common type star, Earth is home to a single technologically adept race called ‘human beings’ or ‘Homo sapiens’. Like many intelligent species before them, humans evolved from simpler organisms on a biologically rich world endowed with great beauty and abundant resources. In the nearly four billion years since the planet formed, it has evolved unknown millions of living species, of which an extraordinary majority, perhaps 99 percent, have become extinct. Of the millions of species alive today, the majority belong to microscopic bacterial groups and the extremely diverse and successful insects. Human scientists have so far identified and named about two million living species, and estimate that several millions more have yet to be discovered. But by whatever scale of diversity we use, we can extrapolate thus:

If the Earth currently contains just three million species, and if that three million represents just one percent of all the life that ever lived on Earth, and if Homo sapiens has been the only species to evolve on that planet with the capacity for true higher intelligence, then human beings represent a one in three-hundred-millionth of all the life ever produced on Earth. Of course, the odds for any particular species having evolved is also only one in three-hundred-million, but my point is that the suite of characteristics that make a particular creature human are indeed quite special because the several essential features needed to be classed as a higher intelligence are found in other species, too. The fact that makes humans human is that they alone possess all of those essential characteristics. Whales and elephants have larger brains, squids have faster neuronal responses, apes have opposable thumbs, and many creatures have language; only in human beings do all these features come together in the necessary proportions to allow the development of higher thought, memory, written language, and rapidly evolving social behaviors.

There is also a lack of serious competition for humans from other Earthbound species, which has not been true for their closest relatives. Earlier Homo species all became extinct after rather brief periods of time, possibly exterminated by their evolving offspring. The world’s great apes, from chimpanzees to orangutans, are all seriously endangered, again largely the result of their human relatives. From their first appearance some two million Earth years ago, humans have grown into a great many predatory roles that have led to modern populations of highly competitive, generally self-destructive, and martially adaptive creatures. In their acquisition of power and self-aggrandizement –at individual, tribal, or national levels – humans will spare no action or destructive impact on other living things or necessary resources if those actions lead to profit.

A prescient and wise man named H. G. Wells had the unusual ability of being a member of the society that considered itself the highest echelon of civilization—the British Empire of the 1890s—when he began writing some of the most potent and empathic essays on the dark tendencies of so-called civilized peoples. His early works were foundations of the literary genre of science fiction, and included The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds. In time, though, this thoughtful author decided to present a brief recitation of the history of the Earth. Among his many insightful observations on the tendency of civilizations to be overcome by self-destructive inclinations was this:

            “We are beginning to understand something of what the world might be, something of

            what our race might become, were it not for our still raw humanity. It is barely a matter

            of seventy generations between ourselves and Alexander; and between ourselves and the

            savage hunters of our ancestors, who charred their food in the embers or ate it raw,

            intervene some four or five hundred generations. Make men and women only sufficiently

 jealous or fearful or drunken or angry, and the hot red eyes of the caveman will glare out

at us to-day. We have writing and teaching, science and power; we have tamed the beasts

and schooled the lightning; but we are still only shambling towards the light. We have

tamed and bred the beasts, but we still have to tame and breed ourselves.” (Wells, 1949.)

As so often happens in very rapidly advancing intelligent creatures, humans have discovered ways to develop major forces of nature far in advance of their cultural and intellectual development. When we first learned of their early experimentation with nuclear power – commencing with atomic bombs – the Planetary Alliance dispatched me to inform humanity of the danger it would face if it brought violence and nuclear weapons off their world. Even after the dramatic demonstration that I provided of the overwhelming power available to the Alliance and informed humans that we could easily turn their planet into a burning cinder, Gort and I left Earth far from optimistic about humanity self-suppressing its violent tendencies. Given what I perceive as the probable fate of Earth, I am also obliged to provide a report on the status and history of humanity as it applies to its destructive habits.

Every single human is a member of the same, single species. Having arisen in the center of the African continent about two million years ago, one of the earliest group behaviors practiced by tribal family groups was the tendency to seek and reinforce individuality. In so doing, humans have put considerable effort in asserting the kinds of individuality that are attained and perpetuated by antisocial behaviors. Earliest of these behaviors included the fierce defense of tribal territories. While it is the extraordinarily rare creature that will not defend its space, sometimes to the death, such a fight to the death is rare. In most cases, if two animals encroach on the same resource, one tends to retreat rather than be killed. Males of such formidable species as elephants, gorillas, and wolves are apt, at some time in their lives, to be challenged by younger and stronger males. To the dominant male goes the rewards of tribal/herd leadership, access to mating partners, and assurance of passing their genes into future generations. When a young male challenges the present leader, there may be one of many resulting interactions. The males may engage in elaborate dance-like rituals, display changes in color, plumage, or posture, or produce sounds so varied as elaborate song or prolonged whines. Birds may spread their wings and utter loud noises at each other, while gorillas pound their chests and shout menacingly. In extreme cases the aggressors may attack each other, such as when wolves wrestle and rams smash their heads together. In these encounters the defeated male generally gets to retreat alive, even if injured. It is a rare thing for one combatant to suffer severe injury or death; more likely the defeated male either assumes a submissive role under the new leader or leaves the family group. Furthermore, the older – “simpler” is the term used by much of self-impressed humanity – the animal lineage, the less likely it is that territorial disputes end in either injury or death. For example, fishes tend to retreat after fairly brief displays. Even the larger and formidable-looking monitor lizards, which engage in male-male combat, rarely inflict notable damage during fights. It is among the “higher” animal species that we see ritual territorial combat terminate in serious injuries. By the time the observer encounters human beings, the incidence of serious injury between competitors increases considerably.

Humans, moreover, take territorial conflict to a much more complex level than any other Earth species in that disputes are very rarely between just two or a few individuals. Instead, many humans join in attacking perceived threats, and by learning to work cooperatively against outsiders, the outsiders adapted and learned how to attack as a group. As combat threats for group leadership became more complex and involved additional tribe members, humans had engaged in practicing gang behavior, the common first step leading to the most detrimental of group activities, war.

War has been glorified and vilified throughout human history. One of Earth’s enduring early scholars, a blind Greek poet named Homer, wrote with clarity and compassion about the horrors, wastes, and inhumanity of war. His voice, fully endowed with disdain for the activity, reverberates down the corridors of human history with authority, and garners great sympathy. Alas, sage words so often go mute around humans whose self-involvement craves power. Throughout the course of human history, whenever a tribal group has been faced with a problem for which war was believed to be even a partial solution, war has been employed whenever possible. As a direct outcome of this reality, Earth has been in a nearly continuous, indeed perpetual, state of war since before humans had learned to write or preserve their ideas in print. War may not, at one time, have been a predominant characteristic of humanity, but it has certainly assumed that role since at least 6,000 years ago. For as long as people lived in communities and certainly since the dawn of what may be called civilization, war has become one of the central activities of humanity.

To expand on the nature of war it is important to understand that it is a condition from which humanity is never free. Though no nation is constantly at war, Earth has so many nations that there is always a war taking place somewhere. In most incidents war is waged by two or more nations, but if there is adequate internal discord a country may engage in a civil war. Use of the words “civil” and “war” together is certainly oxymoronic, for “civil” refers to actions by civilians rather than by professional military forces. In reality, civil wars often, perhaps typically, occur when national factions split, with at least one group intent on taking a portion of national territory to establish its own new state. Because governmental power, and by direct extension control over the general population, is often related to territorial holdings, established governments are loathe to cede territory. Loss of territory allowed the Korean peninsula of Asia to become North and South Korea in 1953, each entity politically and idealistically an enemy of the other. Several southern states ceded from the United States of America in 1861 and formed into the Confederate States of America. It is how Pakistan broke from India after British rule of the subcontinent in 1949. Only in very rare instances does a nation undergo a peaceful and truly civil separation, such as when Czechoslovakia split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1991.

There is a single inexplicable and counterintuitive reason for the history of continual warfare: war is not necessary. Though the earliest human conflicts were understandable, the perpetuation of war by later societies is illogical. Need for land and resources became less important factors as human society developed. Trade, immigration, philosophy and abundant resources available to people made any “need” for war an illusion. Civilizations flourished because of commerce, and very few things could not be purchased across cultures, including other humans. Such human resources could be had by outright ownership in the abomination of slavery, or they could be “leased” under contract for prescribed periods of time, or one could simply engage the services of foreign experts via equitable financial agreements. Why, then, was war so regular an activity and why do Earth’s people continue its practice so enthusiastically today?

This concern about humanity’s most widely-practiced group pastime has been the subject of debate, study, and sheer guessing since humans produced their first authors. Many writers have made astute contributions to a collective grasp of just what war was and what it did. In the works of philosophers from around the planet came the universal acknowledgment that wars are the tools of death to great numbers of young men who form the soldiery. Why, then, are so many young men and, increasingly, young women so ready, so eager to march off and kill other young people? What makes them accept the murder of people they do not know, who may have done them no harm, for reasons they barely understand? How can well-raised intelligent children grow into late puberty and then join or be pressed into military service, be systematically taught to kill, and not question the ethics of their actions? By the standards of our Alliance, Earth is a world on which it is normal and acceptable behavior to raise each generation of youngsters to be ready, trained and obedient participants in the execution of other people – so long as the government determines which other people are to be killed.

To understand the factors behind the successful perpetuation of cultures of war, we need to examine the most influential components of human societies, and I offer examples from the individual up to the highest echelons of those societies.

Recall that humans are highly ego-motivated animals, both self-aware and inordinately self-centered. The keystone to self-centrism is cultivation of awareness of how “I” am different from others people, coupled with belief that “I” am also, at least in some ways, better as well. “You” may have more wealth, but “I” have a prettier wife; “you” have a prettier wife, but “I” have more intelligent children; or “you” have intelligent children, but “I” have a more prestigious job. Of course, what “I” actually want to have is the greatest wealth, prettiest wife, most intelligent children, and most prestigious job, but society quickly teaches young adults that such a suite of objects is exceedingly unlikely. Each person tries to obtain the best they can, and then engages in constant comparison to other humans. In this way people have invented universal competition, the  most basic source upon which conflict is built. In most of human history a warrior was allowed, indeed expected, to plunder the conquered. Insecure egos could add perceived value by gaining wealth, land, or slaves won in wars. Just to survive a war and have stories to tell could raise one’s status among peers. Acts that, if conducted by individuals would be considered theft, murder, and heinous crimes become heroics, patriotism, and profit for a soldier. The allure of returning home with wealth, glory and tales of adventure appeal to many, but most especially to the young men ready and eager to step away from the parental home and start an adult life of their own.

To build societies based on war there are only a very few acts of stupidity that need to be followed. On Earth, all of these activities have been successfully impressed into the consciousnesses of the dominant groups, though they would most likely deny this and take offense at the mere suggestion of this reality. But those acts essentially shout throughout history sparing no civilization: religious beliefs and faith, political adherence, nationalism, social and cultural insularism and conformity.