Intraspecific Human Aggressiveness

(Rebellious Angels Fifth Part) 

Carmageddon

Intraspecific human aggressiveness: recently “Carmageddon ” has appeared; it’s a videogame where to collect points, it is necessary to massacre passers-by in town and peasants and cows in the country with a futuristic weapon. There are shouts, splashes   of blood, red strips on the asphalt and even a corpse count up on the right side of the screen.

The comments about all this on the cover of the package are really unique:” become the best in the massacre, squash all that you meet on your way”.

It’s obvious we will never do so, but how many of us , during an exhausting car queueing in our city, didn’t long, at least just for a moment, to eliminate the intruders with any means and start moving freely?

The Italians, who are as usual at the forefront as to creativity, the latter perhaps stimulated by the lack of means, have discovered some new sports where to canalize juvenile aggressiveness (one of the forms of intraspecific human aggressiveness): throwing stones from overpasses of motorways and the target practice with air pistols from moving cars against other cars.

The first is certainly the most famous. The inquiry relevant to the supposed culprits was so full of such arguments, charges, retractions, that eventually the only culprit seemed to be the sollecitor and the two young victims had thrown the stone by themselves.

car hit by a stone thrown from an overpass

The responsible, on the contrary, had got a lot of fans. 5500 youth between 14 and 19 years of age were asked what was their opinion on those who throw stones from overpasses. The 10% answered they could understand and would have liked to imitate them, the 2% would even have wanted to be in their place also when they were captured and imprisoned[1].

Charged with throwing stones from overpasses.

Throwing stones from overpasses has peculiar analogies, either with virtual reality(videogame) or with new and curious animal behaviours.

It would turn out from the interrogation verbals of some investigated subjects that there was some money at stake in the new sport of throwing stones and a real prize for those who could hit a car.

Our heroes had made a real videogame where, like in “Carmageddon”, the winner was the one who could squash a human being. So the initial cause(aggressiveness) brings about two different effects: the spreading of war videogames or actions of gratuitous violence.

We could even hypothesize videogames may be a safety valve; not meaning this, however I intend to insist TV and videogames aren’t the primary cause of the increase of juvenile aggressiveness.

Certainly the monkeys (baboons) that in the motorway Cape Town-Johannesburg threw stones against moving cars didn’t watch TV or played videogames. The episodes were at least three.

Probably the 2200 teen-agers imprisoned in the jails in Ruanda charged with crimes against humanity hadn’t watched TV. These adolescents run the risk of twenty years’ imprisonment because life imprisonment or death penalty can’t be inflicted to those who were underage while committing the crime[2].

In this case it’s evident both juvenile aggressiveness and gang clashes (tribal war) for the conquest of the territory.

The difference is basically in the young age of the protagonists and in the great number of victims; we can relate this datum to the fact that, compared with primordial gangs, since prehistory present tribes (ethnics) have enormously increased just for the lack of other factors regulating population (famine, predation, epidemic).

We can find similar episodes where children took part in war crimes among PolPot’s followers in Cambodia and with the red guards in China during the Cultural Revolution[3].

red guards

[1] It’s interesting for our thesis what Don Giorgio Tonolo, a teacher of psychology in Rome and Don Severino De Pieri, the president of the International Science School of the Salesians in Italy say “…in other words they are only depressed”, because they aren’t murders- goes on De Pieri-there is only a will of death in them.They are all deferred forms of suicide. These statements are a very good start for a study on the genetic bases of suicide phenomenon ( see chapter VI: ” Le mal de vivre”).

[2].Many hundreds of them, younger than fourteen years of age, are imprisoned in reformatories where their rehabilitation is tried, But the task is hopeless: since they are afraid of telling about their faults, even the youngest children keep everything inside themselves and their life becomes a litany of nightmares, deliria, hallucinations, convulsions. Two years ago Ruanda lived four months of blood and horrors. Less than one million of moderate Tutsi and Hutu were slaughtered with axes and machetes by extremist Hutu. Tortures were horrible and often the most atrocious ones were carried out by children. People nailed to trees, victims left to die with their limbs amputated, girls gutted. The Los Angeles Times interviewed Claude, a nine-year-old child with ” a sweet face “, charged with throwing a grenade at his neighbours’ house and destroying the whole family:…I can only remember there was a war”- the baby-monster justified himself.

[3] In this case it was mostly a question of ideological violence.

Translated from “Il Virus Intelligente” by Enrica Narducci

To be continued in:

6) Intraspecific Human Aggressiveness ( Rebellious Angels Sixth Part)

7) Intraspecific Human Aggressiveness (Rebellious Angels   Seventh Part)

8) Intraspecific Human Aggressiveness (Rebellious Angels Eighth Part

9) Intraspecific Human Aggressiveness ((Rebellious Angels Tenth Part)

10) Intraspecific Human Aggressiveness (Rebellious Angels   Seventh Part)

See also:

1) Intraspecific Human Aggressiveness (Rebellious Angels First Part)

2) Intraspecific Human Aggressiveness (Rebellious Angels Second Part)

3) Intraspecific Human Aggressiveness (Rebellious Angels Third Part)

4) Intraspecific Human Aggressiveness (Rebellious Angels Fourth Part)