#43 Intraspecific Human Aggressiveness (Rebellious Angel First Part) -The intelligent Virus

06 Apr

#43 Intraspecific Human Aggressiveness (Rebellious Angel First Part)

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Intraspecific Human Aggressivenes

(Rebellious Angel First Part)

homo homini lupus

HOMO HOMINI LUPUS[1] ( Plauto. Asinaria. II)

We saw war, also intended as competition or aggressiveness, among the factors regulating the number of human beings. To prove also this factor operates with a mechanism at negative retroaction seems to be very difficult; actually, it isn’t like that, but it’s possible and this way hidden or particular forms of intraspecific aggressiveness, like abandonement-violence of minors, can be led to this factor.

Y Child abuse

Intraspecific human aggressiveness probabily originated from mechanisms generally linked to animal behaviour. The more the space at each man’s disposal is reduced because of overcrowding, the more aggressiveness as defense of his own territory increases. This fact is accepted by everybody and fully confirmed, both by lab experiments and by watching animals in their habitat: by increasing the number of mice in a cage the aggressiveness of every subject grows as far to kill his own fellows

mice in a cage

Obviously nobody would think of doing such experiments with men but, in the so called civil life, there are situations of such overcrowding as to exceed any experimental animal situation.

Up to eighty prisoners, who take three-hour turns to sleep, share a 35sq.m cell at Vila Branca, the jail of St. Paul in Brazil. As a protest the oldest prisoners, every 30 day, kill one of them, generally a young man, a just arrived one.

The same happens in nature. Artificial situations of animal overcrowding cause an increase in aggressiveness, violence, with bloody intraspecific clashes

In Gabon the cutting of tropical forest wood reduces animal vital space so that some of them are forced to trespass on other families’ lands. The resulting fights are bloody. Chimpanzees that have lived in a certain area for some time, don’t accept to be invaded by foreigners and violently hold out against their advance.

Refugees react and the consequent fights are ruinous for the species. Dr. Lee White, a biologist of the American society for nature conservation, calculated the number of chimpanzees living in Gabon precipitated from 50 to 30 thousand when deforestation started.

The thesis of overcrowding as a cause of increasing aggressiveness can be demonstrated even with examples on the contrary: in Bronx, the numerical reduction of youngsters, between 16 and 25 years of age, drastically reduced the nunber of homicides.

The fight for the territory and generally intraspecific mortal aggressiveness, begin, in Judaic Christian tradition, with Cain and Abele, therefore since prehistory.

Cain and Abele

Compared with other species competition among men has become particularly important since it has substituted another factor, predation, no more active. As animals which can plunder man don’t exist, the latter tends to multiply beyond the limits of the available resources.

At that point he becomes predator of the fellows of his own species, not to feed on them, even if this still happens nowadays, but because he mortally competes with them for the available resources.

According to a famous theory man , after developing his encephalon enormously, took an erect position just to keep the two fore limbs free.

After holding a club and forming gangs, at first he got the better of his big predators[3], then he decided to attack his fellows men for the conquest of the territory.

Aggressiveness

[1] A pessimistic expression used by Tommaso Hobbes, the philosopher, to mean that despite of civilization and progress,(animal) instinct always lives in man.

[2] Ill-famed quarter of New York where criminality, above all juvenile one, is very active.

[3] It’s in this sentence the genes of aggressiveness as a guarantee for survival and the possibility of reproduction are selected.

Translated from “Il Virus Intelligente” by Enrica Narducci