At present, society, especially of the Western model, has adopted a model of so-called permissible, selective, or “legitimate” violence. It consists of the idea that violence is permissible toward a specific person based on a law adopted by the majority of people in a given territory. However, since this is a cultural norm, it cannot be viewed as a given; it is necessary to understand that in other societies, this norm may differ. For a significant part of human history and in a significant number of societies, a completely different model of non-selective violence was practiced. Today, the Taliban, who recently took power in Afghanistan, can specifically remind us of this. This model consists of the following:
Violence may be applied not only to the lawbreaker but also to their family, relatives, and friends; even random people who have committed very minor offenses, or those who have done nothing at all, may become victims of violence for the purpose of intimidating society and strengthening power;
The absence of freedom to agree or disagree with the established law, including through changing one’s location and residence due to restrictions on freedom of movement.
All other things being equal, proponents of non-selective violence have a better chance of victory compared to those who advocate for moderate violence. They will not hesitate to intimidate society, carry out brutal purges, and even organize mass killings and genocide. Due to a much greater willingness to commit violence, their violent potential is far higher.
But in reality, conditions are usually not equal. And one of the important conditions is the level of technological development. For example, this condition played a decisive role in the colonial conquests by Europeans, or in the recent fight against terrorism in the Middle East (including against the Islamic State). If this circumstance had not existed, if the level of technological development had been equal for everyone, then representatives of the Western world would simply have lost in the vast majority of battles. There would have been no colonization of lands already inhabited by other peoples, and there would be nothing to say about the fight against terrorist groups. The side resorting to less selective violence would have had much greater chances of winning, and in those cases, the consequences would have been fatal.
In the absence of significant technological superiority, the Western world could easily be conquered by a crowd of Taliban, ISIS members, or some other psychopaths simply armed with Kalashnikov rifles. If the order of selective violence is to be maintained, it cannot do without scientific and technological progress. But scientific and technological progress, in turn, creates certain risks of violence, including catastrophic ones. The time is not far off when even small organizations, or even individuals, will be able, for example, to recreate a dangerous virus or master ultra-high-capacity energy sources. It is terrifying to imagine what would happen if high technologies were applied for violent purposes. Furthermore, these technologies may eventually be seized by the same terrorists (technologies tend to pass from hand to hand), and then the technological gap will no longer play a role—in the case of weapons of mass destruction, one does not need to be more developed or stronger than the opponent; it is sufficient only to inflict unacceptable damage upon them.
Given the critical importance of scientific and technological progress, as well as the risks it creates, one can conclude that it is necessary to fight against violence. As long as violence is accepted as a given, different groups of people will choose different approaches between selective and non-selective violence. And those who choose the second option—the less civilized and more violent people—will pose a severe threat to the lives of those who advocate for selective or moderate violence. I would especially like to convey this thought to conservatives, who often dislike progress. All that remains is to fight violence as a phenomenon as a whole. Only by completely eradicating it can we get rid of the corresponding risks.
Coercive state measures are almost always justified as a necessary method of ensuring security. This position is held by all supporters of a monopoly on coercive power, regardless of their views. Even minarchists, who believe only the most minimal state is necessary, reduce this minimum precisely to the provision of security. And what can be said about those who hold authoritarian views?
Of course, people with such views have no questions regarding repressive coercive measures for the sake of fighting the coronavirus pandemic. And this is not surprising, for etatists have always said that coercive power, among other things, is necessary for such a case, to force everyone without exception to comply with restrictive measures and get vaccinated once the vaccine is ready; otherwise, ensuring security would simply be impossible. It is also worth noting that etatists very often consider it necessary to punish people for “victimless crimes,” that is, only potentially unsafe behavior. In this case, security is often equated with the stability of established social orders, and as a result, even a word spoken against these orders or the political force supporting them can become grounds for imprisonment, or something even worse.
To the supporters of coercive power, I can only say that if you are so deeply concerned about the issue of security, then why do you suddenly oppose the eradication of the greatest threat to security—violence? After all, it is not pandemics, and even less so the statements of dissenters, but specifically violence and its consequences that are the greatest threat to security! Yet why do you suddenly reject the proposal to better study the neurophysiological mechanism inherent in most people that inhibits violent behavior toward members of their own species (that is, the violence inhibitor), to determine its genetic nature, and, by resorting to the achievements of biotechnology, to develop a solution that would help correct the deficiency in the operation of this mechanism in the small percentage of people capable of committing acts of violence and, indeed, committing them?
Often, it even reaches the point where such people do not bother to familiarize themselves even slightly with the concept of the violence inhibition mechanism and begin to defend the importance of the feeling of aggression, without which a person would turn into a vegetable, although the discussion concerns only the inhibition of aggressive impulses in certain cases. Or they say that violence is important for fighting violence itself, although it is very easy to see what a foolish error is contained in such reasoning. And of course, the inhibition of violence does not contradict the capacity for self-defense, since the presence of an immediate threat to life is a stimulus that primarily activates a defensive reaction (for example, flight or, indeed, self-defense). And in the end, the vast majority of people are already incapable of violence. Even if you look, for example, at countries with the highest homicide rates, the killers themselves will turn out to be thousandths of a percent of the population (assuming that behind every murder stands a separate killer, although this is not the case).
But why do etatists suddenly have such resistance to the idea of eradicating violence? If a person can potentially harm someone by transmitting a virus, you consider it necessary to maximally restrict their freedoms until they are vaccinated. But if a person can potentially harm someone by committing violence (and I remind you that this is a minority of people, while the majority are incapable of violence and never commit it), you consider restricting and “vaccinating” them unnecessary, or even risky? By your own logic of ensuring maximum security, you should support such measures first and foremost. Or is security actually not that important to you?
The necessity of violence as a phenomenon of human relations is most often justified by the fight against violence itself. Since there is a threat of violence in society from a small percentage of people, it must be countered with one’s own “benevolent” and “legitimate” violence. But this scheme only creates its own problems, some of which can be called completely absurd. A violent solution looks especially absurd in light of the fact that the vast majority of people never commit at least brutal violence (causing serious physical harm or murder) and are incapable of doing so. This is confirmed by both military data and crime statistics, even in extremely violent countries where police work is simply paralyzed (Latin American countries).
Most people are non-violent; they will not use force against anyone to achieve any goals, except in the case of an immediate threat to life. Consequently, the scheme of using violence to fight violence requires the existence of one category of violent actors so that they may allegedly protect everyone else from another category of violent actors. And such protection does not imply only defense against an already present violent threat. Most often, it implies the right of security agents chosen for this task to use violence against anyone who, in their opinion, could potentially create some threat to society and other people, including threats of a non-violent nature (since in practice it is impossible to limit security agents, who have the legitimate right to use violence against people, to only fighting violence; they will use it wherever they see fit).
Perhaps this solution is capable of working to some extent in the short term. But in the long term, it leads to the following absurd situation: society must intentionally maintain a certain level of violent actors among the non-violent majority, otherwise there will be no people to solve tasks requiring the initiation of violence. This means that this solution cannot in any way serve the goal of fighting violence, as it creates violence itself. Obviously, to solve the problem of violence, entirely different methods must be considered.
In justification of intraspecific violence as a completely normal phenomenon in nature, one sometimes hears the argument about the selfishness of the gene. Since all biological evolution is primarily the evolution of genes striving for the most efficient preservation and copying of themselves, and only after that the evolution of individuals and populations, then intraspecific violence is not a problem at all. On the contrary—if a carrier of a gene committed violence, they gained an advantage over their conspecifics and passed this gene on. This means that intraspecific violence is a useful tool in the evolution of genes, and no violence inhibitor, slowing down aggression toward representatives of one’s own species, can exist, as it would contradict the attainment of such an evolutionary advantage by specific genes.
The idea that the evolution of genes takes precedence over the evolution of individuals and populations is a correct theory that there is no sense in disputing. But genes do not exist in a vacuum. Genes are carried by specific individuals who are part of specific populations. How the relationships between these individuals unfold will become the decisive factor in the preservation and transmission of genes. And violence will indeed give an advantage to a specific gene, provided it does not mean that gene’s own elimination. But what if it does?
Let’s take those species whose representatives possess strong innate weaponry and have no significant possibility of escaping violence (for example, due to the limited habitat range of the population or an extremely social lifestyle). It is precisely in such species that the inhibition (restraint) of intraspecific violence is observed. When one wolf exposes its neck or belly to another wolf, the latter becomes unable to bite its conspecific; no raven will peck another raven in the eye with its very sharp beak, even during a fight for food; venomous snakes conduct territorial clashes according to clearly defined rituals, without using their venomous teeth and not even demonstrating them to their opponent; oryx antelopes also ritualize battles, while they can freely use their sharp horns against lions. There are many such examples.
What is the benefit of the gene in such behavior? It is that a violent attack on a conspecific, given the latter’s strong weaponry, can end with the death of the aggressor itself with an impermissibly high probability. This means that the gene will not be preserved or passed on; it will simply perish along with its carrier. Only those genes will be passed on whose carriers, in such a situation, do not get into fights unnecessarily (or more accurately, do not initiate them at all, but only defend themselves if someone else has already initiated one). That is, the most advantageous evolutionary strategy for a gene is “cooperation” (let’s call it that) with the gene responsible for inhibiting violent behavior in the carrier.
This is a universal rule for biological evolution. Increasing weaponry of population representatives combined with frequent social contacts between them increases the negative consequences of intraspecific violence, at a certain point making them completely impermissible. As a result, only those genes survive whose carriers were able to compensate for this effect by suppressing violent behavior, meaning they were predisposed to have a sufficiently strong version of a violence inhibitor. The higher the weaponry of the population representatives, the less advantageous an evolutionary strategy violence becomes, and the more advantageous becomes the inhibition of violence.
This understanding should also be applied to humans—the most heavily armed species on the planet, whose weaponry is now growing at a giant pace along with the development of scientific and technical progress. The average person already possesses an inhibition of violence toward other people, but there remain those who suffer from a dysfunction of this neurobiological mechanism. Such people will sooner or later use weapons of mass destruction, which, with scientific and technical progress, are becoming increasingly accessible to recreate, especially regarding biological threats, where a catastrophic scenario could occur literally tomorrow. This means that violence is an evolutionarily failing strategy for humans!
Supporters of the state monopoly privilege known as copyright and patent law are very afraid that without a mechanism of forceful punishment for the unauthorized copying and distribution of information content, its creators will simply be left with nothing, pirates will rob them and deprive them of the means of subsistence and the incentive to create new content in the future. Of course, there are dozens of ways to monetize content without using such a privilege, however, we will not analyze them now, but simply look at one practical example that I have known for a long time, but for some reason remembered only very recently. And this example is a game called Minecraft.
The creator of Minecraft, Markus Persson, is a supporter of piracy; he criticizes the attitude towards this phenomenon prevalent in large companies and is even a member of the Pirate Party of Sweden. He has never been against people freely copying and distributing the game he created. However, this did not prevent him from earning 640 million Swedish kronor (about 100 million US dollars) from the sale of licensed copies of the game in 2012 alone, and later selling his stake in the company he founded, Mojang, for 2.5 billion dollars (currently owned by the Microsoft corporation). Minecraft itself became the best-selling game in the world, with about 200 million licensed copies sold by 2020.
Indeed, although Minecraft is officially proprietary software, in reality it is not protected against copying; its files are not encrypted in any way and anyone can download and use them, and this is not even restricted by its current copyright holders (although I am not familiar with their future plans). Access to the official game launcher is only available to players who have purchased a licensed copy, however, a large number of unofficial launchers already exist, and the game itself can be launched without a launcher, simply using the command line. And for unlicensed players, not only single-player but also multiplayer is available. The game server core has a function in its settings which, by disabling it, the server owner can grant connection access to anyone regardless of whether they have a license; therefore, there are many unlicensed servers in the game. And this fact, by the way, also in no way hinders the development of licensed servers and the earnings of their owners.
As we can see, after creating information content, it is entirely possible to get by without forceful privileges. Their absence did not prevent Minecraft from becoming the best-selling game in the world, nor did it stop the game’s creator, Markus Persson, from joining the Forbes billionaires list. There are also many examples of other games that were cracked and posted on torrent trackers even before their official release; nonetheless, the sales of licensed keys did not collapse because of this.
Record inflation in the US has once again shown that one cannot rely on currencies with unlimited emission and centralized management, such as modern government (fiat) money. For a long time, the US dollar was considered a fairly stable currency, and many chose it specifically as a means of accumulating wealth. Now, all dollar savings are merely awaiting devaluation. The reason for this is the inadequate economic decisions of the US government during the coronavirus pandemic; it decided to combat the arising difficulties by increasing the money supply. And no government in the world can guarantee that it will not make decisions leading to the devaluation of money and the impoverishment of people. Rather, the opposite should be expected—inflation is beneficial to governments, enriching those whose hands the new money supply reaches first (for example, the government itself and state banks), since they can spend these funds at pre-inflation prices. Thus, there is no such fiat currency in which your funds would be safe.
Cryptocurrencies demonstrate a different picture—of course, not all of them, but certainly those that are truly decentralized and crypto-resistant. The emission of such currencies is limited by the mathematics of large numbers, and centralized management is absent—any changes in the network’s operation (and even the implementation of updates by developers) are possible only with the direct consent of the holders of the majority of the computing power involved in it. Together with the absence of any restrictions on the exchange of funds (funds can be sent to any person in a matter of minutes, even one located in a distant country on the other side of the Earth), this makes cryptocurrencies a valuable asset in the eyes of an increasing number of people—the well-known Bitcoin, for instance, recently broke another record in its value.
Sooner or later, the governments of all states whose currencies are considered guarantors of savings stability will, mistakenly or even intentionally, make decisions leading to an uncontrolled increase in the money supply, meaning the devaluation of money and the impoverishment of people. And each time, cryptocurrencies whose emission remains at the initially set level will only become more popular as a means of accumulating wealth, or even as a means of exchange. The decline of fiat money is inevitable when such a good alternative exists!
Violence is a fairly common phenomenon in nature. This is especially observable in interspecies relationships. Representatives of different species are in a constant struggle for territory and resources; additionally, some become food for others. However, the situation changes when shifting to the consideration of intraspecies relationships. Of course, these are also frequently violent in nature, but this is far from always true. Under certain circumstances, a population will begin to develop inhibitors of intraspecies aggression. We will call this the violence inhibition mechanism, or more simply, the violence inhibitor.
The analysis of intraspecies aggression should begin with a look at its positive aspects, which will later allow us to avoid certain misunderstandings. Aggression, including that of a violent nature (i.e., inflicting physical harm, killing), allows stronger and healthier individuals in a population to prevent weaker and unhealthy ones from reproducing. Furthermore, it is simply beneficial for a specific individual capable of using it for their own survival and the transmission of their genes. It also serves as a tool in creating and maintaining a dominance hierarchy that coordinates the actions of individuals. Finally, since aggressive behavior prevents different individuals or groups of individuals from remaining close for too long, it leads to their uniform dispersal throughout the available living territory, and thus to a uniform distribution of limited resources.
One might get the impression that committing violence against fellow clan members is not just useful, but vital for the survival of specific individuals (and the genes they carry), as well as for populations as a whole. But one should not make the mistake of viewing violence in isolation from environmental circumstances. In this case, two of the most important factors are the presence of strong innate weaponry among population representatives and their inability to escape from violence. The stronger these two factors are, the higher the risks of violence. At a certain point, they become too high for the benefits derived from violence to compensate for them. Violence ceases to be an evolutionarily optimal model of behavior. And these risks can grow to the point where individuals simply exterminate each other in violent clashes, and the population comes to an end.
As an example of such a scenario, one can cite the well-known Universe 25 experiment, in which a mouse population raised in supposedly paradise-like conditions went extinct in less than 5 years. The experiment was poorly executed; the conditions were far from paradise. But the main error was the design of the enclosure, which allowed the 65 largest males to use force to block all others’ access to females and food. This triggered a chain of events that led to the extinction of a population limited in space and extremely violent in its order. In more intelligently designed enclosures, where it is impossible to establish such a violent dominance hierarchy, mouse populations can live for decades [1].
As we can see, weaponry and the lack of an opportunity to escape violence prove to be a problem for the survival of the population. However, it is precisely this that creates evolutionary pressure to develop inhibitors of intraspecies aggression among its representatives, which solves this problem. If population representatives possess strong innate weaponry, then the individuals most inclined toward violence who initiate attacks will encounter the weaponry of their fellow members, and this can often lead to their death. Resistance from an armed victim who has nowhere else to run can also be fatal for the aggressor. Even several victories in such a situation do not guarantee success for the aggressor, since there is still a high probability that one of the attacks will end in a lethal outcome for them. Meanwhile, less violent individuals will perish less frequently, as they do not initiate attacks themselves but only defend against them. They will encounter the risk of dying from violence less often than their aggressive counterparts, and thus will more frequently produce offspring.
As a result, natural selection will move toward the development of strong inhibitors that prevent the infliction of physical harm and the killing of fellow members, as individuals lacking such inhibitors will be removed from the population and unable to pass on their genes. The mechanism responsible for such inhibitors is the violence inhibitor. Overall, we obtain an evolutionary model of non-violence, according to which violence is eradicated as a phenomenon of intraspecies relationships in the course of biological evolution.
This conclusion is supported by observations of animal behavior. The concept of the violence inhibitor was first formulated by ethologist Konrad Lorenz. According to his theory, this mechanism is most developed in species whose representatives are capable of easily killing an individual of approximately their own size. Describing his observations of wolves, he showed how the violence inhibitor is activated when one wolf demonstrates gestures of submission to another—exposing vulnerable areas such as the neck or belly. As a result, the stunned aggressor cannot continue the attack. Similarly, observations of crows confirmed that they do not peck out each other’s eyes, even during clashes [2][3]. Indeed, the sharp teeth of a wolf and the beak of a crow are powerful weapons; a single bite or strike to a vulnerable spot is enough to seriously injure, or even immediately kill, another individual. The presence of such weaponry led representatives of these species to develop corresponding inhibitors during biological evolution.
A large number of such observations from various researchers were listed by ethologist Ireneus Eibl-Eibesfeldt. Many animals exhibit ritualization of intraspecies battles, which prevents the use of strong weaponry. This is true even for arthropods, such as fiddler crabs, which do not open their claws wide enough to injure their opponent during clashes. Similar restraint of aggression is characteristic of many species of fish, lizards, and mammals. A notable example is the oryx antelope, which handles its sharp horns carefully in clashes with conspecifics but uses them to their full extent when defending against lions. It is also worth mentioning poisonous snakes, many of which writhe, exaggerate their size, and push each other during clashes, but do not bite and do not even display their weapon [4][5].
At the same time, violence is inhibited to a lesser extent in poorly armed species. Compared to crows, doves with less sharp beaks are not restrained in their aggression and are even capable of killing a conspecific if the latter is deprived of the opportunity to escape, for example, if placed in a cage [2]. Animals that lead a solitary lifestyle are also quite aggressive. Consider hamsters, which generally will fight to the death if several individuals are placed in one cage. In nature, however, they scatter after only a few mutual bites [4]. If we examine the case of a solitary lifestyle in more detail, in its evolutionary influence, it can be equated to escape. Thus, violence does not threaten the survival of bears, who outside the mating season encounter each other too rarely for the occasional clashes to affect the population as a whole.
Based on observations of animal behavior, neurobiologist James Blair suggested that humans possess a similar mechanism that inhibits aggressive behavior. He subsequently developed a model of the violence inhibition mechanism (English: Violence Inhibition Mechanism, or abbreviated VIM). In its development, his goal was to explain the emergence of psychopathy as a result of the malfunction of this mechanism [6][7].
According to the VIM model, the violence inhibitor is activated when a person observes distress signals from other people, such as a sad facial expression or crying. As a result, the person begins to experience aversion and ceases aggressive actions. The violence inhibitor is also a prerequisite for the development of moral emotions in humans (i.e., sympathy, guilt, remorse, and empathy) and the ability to identify moral transgressions in actions consisting of causing harm to people.
As can be understood from the evolutionary model of non-violence we are considering, the development of a fairly strong version of the violence inhibitor could not have bypassed modern humans, as their ancestors began inventing artificial weaponry. Furthermore, population density has increased significantly over history, and the human population has already occupied the entire available habitat on the planet. However, due to rapid social and scientific-technological progress, the violence inhibitor has not had enough time to fully adapt to new circumstances, which creates the problem of violence in human society. But this issue, as well as the general issue of violence inhibition in humans, will be examined in detail in the following topics of the cycle.
Right now, it is important to understand that violence in human society is not an evolutionarily optimal model of behavior. It cannot be so for any highly armed beings limited in their habitat, since the risks of violence increase as weaponry increases, while there is nowhere to run from it. These risks become especially catastrophic in the case of a high-tech civilization due to the possibility of creating weapons of mass destruction. And humanity is exactly such a civilization. All this creates the prerequisites for the necessity of eradicating violence and achieving a non-violent society in which there is no place for forced forms of relationships, as the most evolutionarily optimal model of social organization.
Sources:
1. Khokhlovsky, P. (2020). “Universe 25: crushing criticism of myths and new conclusions”: https://tjournal.ru/analysis/212316-vselennaya-25-razgromnaya-kritika-mifov-i-novye-vyvody;
2. Lorenz, K. (1949). Er redete mit dem Vieh, den Vögeln und den Fischen (King Solomon’s Ring);
3. Lorenz, K. (1963). Das sogenannte Böse. Zur Naturgeschichte der Aggression (Aggression: the so-called “evil”);
4. Eibl-Eibesfeldt, I. (1970). Ethology: The Biology of Behavior, pp. 314—325;
5. Dolnik, V. R. (1993). Ethological excursions through the forbidden gardens of the humanities;
6. Blair, R. J. R. (1992). The Development of Morality. Department of Psychology, University College, London;
7. Blair, R. J. R. (1995). A cognitive developmental approach to morality: investigating the psychopath. Cognition 57, 1—29. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(95)00676-P.
We have already considered the topic of transaction insurance once before. This method is perfectly applicable to the issue of guaranteeing transaction security and compensating for damages in the event of a breach of agreement by one of the parties. The need to resort to violence and forceful measures of coercion is thus eliminated, meaning this concept is fully implementable in the absence of a state monopoly on law enforcement, and indeed in the absence of any police or security agencies whatsoever. Furthermore, it is compatible with the concept of reputational institutions, which creates additional scenarios for its application. Even now, it is actively used in large transactions and in the lending sector. However, doubts are sometimes expressed regarding its applicability in small, everyday transactions.
The way accident insurance currently works can help us dispel these doubts. You have surely been in a situation where, when buying a ticket for a bus, train, or plane, you were offered insurance. Insurance is also offered when renting transport via a mobile application, even if it is just a bicycle or a scooter. Usually, the cost of such insurance is only a few dozen rubles, yet the compensation in the event of an insured loss reaches tens and hundreds of thousands.
See how easy it is? For a provider of risky services, there is no difficulty in concluding a contract with an insurance company and adding the option for their customers to take out accident insurance. This is even profitable for them, as they can receive additional profit from the insurance company for implementing its services. And in the case of transport rental, this matter is simplified to the press of a single button in a mobile application. Since this type of insurance is so easily implemented, there is no problem in making transaction insurance simple as well.
The parties sign a contract, after which it is uploaded to the insurance company’s application (or perhaps concluded directly within it). Then the application calculates the insurance premium rate and the participants of the contract pay it. That’s it. If one of the parties eventually breaches the agreement and the other party provides the insurance company with evidence of the breach, they will be entitled to an insurance payout, which should be sufficient to cover the damage caused. The party that breached the agreement, of course, will not go unpunished if reputational institutions are used alongside this. They will simply be placed on blacklists until they admit guilt and cooperate.
Even in the case of the most ordinary purchases, this concept is also applicable. At a self-checkout terminal, by pressing the corresponding button, or by asking the salesperson, one could also take out insurance. If the product turns out to be unsuitable, defective, or even worse, causes harm to the buyer, and the seller denies their guilt, there would be an opportunity to compensate for the damage through this insurance (and the seller, of course, would suffer reputational punishment). To attract buyers, sellers could add the insurance function and openly publish data on which insurance companies they work with. And those sellers who are unwilling to insure their sales can simply be bypassed by buyers as unsafe agents.
Some might criticize this idea by pointing out that buyers would now have to pay more for goods, and in general, all transactions would become more expensive. However, this is exactly what is happening right now. Due to VAT, excise duties, customs duties, licenses, and the tax burden on entrepreneurs, more than half of the cost of goods already consists of contributions to the state, including for the maintenance of a giant, organizationally extremely inefficient state judicial and police system. Transaction insurance, on the other hand, is a cheaper and more effective solution. Sometimes insurance premiums, where they are currently applied, amount to less than one percent of the transaction amount or the potential insurance payout. Thus, it is a much better solution than state bureaucracy and forceful control paid for by taxes.
When discussing the issue of state violence and the restriction of freedom, one sometimes encounters the argument that this is not such a big problem, since in the modern world of democracies and liberalism, most states are limited in their ability to use force and violate the freedom of their citizens, and in this, they cannot cross a certain line. But in reality, no institutional factors prevent even the most democratic and liberal states from turning into brutal dictatorships. As long as they are stationary bandits and can “legitimately” use the instrument of violence, as long as they have agents capable of committing violent acts, and ordinary people have neither the right nor the possibility to resist violence, a tightening of social orders can be fully expected, provided there is only a pretext for it.
And recently, such a pretext appeared – the coronavirus pandemic. Of course, the pandemic must be fought, but the primary method chosen for this by many states was precisely violence and the forced restriction of freedoms. Moreover, there was no sense in such harsh measures, based on research on the effectiveness of different measures in the fight against the pandemic; also, using the example of Sweden, which has already returned to pre-COVID life, I showed how informing and encouraging less risky behavior ultimately yield better results than strict control and bans. Forceful coercion is a less effective tool in implementing any measures, unless coercion and the restriction of freedom is the goal in itself.
Before continuing the topic of COVID measures, I would like to recall one example of how states effectively destroyed the freedom of movement around the world by introducing passport and visa control. The pretext for this was the First and Second World Wars, during which states needed to control the movement of people. Was the control lifted after the wars ended, i.e., after the pretext for it disappeared? It was not! States took the opportunity to forever make any movement of people beyond the borders of their own “pens” strictly controlled.
During the coronavirus pandemic, borders turned out to be completely closed, but the essence of the matter is not only in that. In many countries, people were literally locked in their homes, deprived of work, and their movements were monitored, for example, using COVID apps. Now, a telling example of the implementation of such a policy is Australia, where people deprived of freedom literally have to fight with police, their movements are tracked by the state via a smartphone app, and violators of COVID norms face imprisonment and fines. Also, in many countries, police can easily beat and detain you, for example, for the lack of a mask or a vaccination passport (I am attaching a recent case from France to the post). This is also true for Russia, where police have already beaten and brutally detained people without masks many times.
Now I want to ask one question: is it possible to believe that after the pandemic ends, states will truly lift all restrictive measures and return to people the same freedom they had before? As far as I am concerned, relying on this would be great naivety. Of course, some freedoms will be returned, but at the same time, states will most likely retain some of the control. It is unlikely to be like in Sweden, where all COVID measures except for border ones have already been lifted, since this country did not rely on harsh coercive measures from the start. By the way, borders after the pandemic may also remain more controlled than before it, and it is quite likely that in this case, even Sweden will no longer be an exception. In general, one should not rely on the idea that for some miraculous reason states will not punish their citizens with police force, deprive them of freedom, and strictly control them simply because they are developed democracies. The question is not so much about political and social institutions as it is about the willingness and ability to commit violence.
Continuing the theme of experiments that allegedly demonstrate the violent nature of humans and their willingness to cause pain and harm to others if circumstances demand it, it is worth considering the Stanford Prison Experiment. This experiment is as well-known as the Milgram experiment we considered earlier. Its published data suggest a willingness of the majority of people to inflict pain on others on the orders of an authority figure. However, as an analysis of unpublished data showed, 56% of participants stopped as soon as they felt the victim was actually experiencing pain, and 72% of those who continued to participate did so because they did not believe in the authenticity of the experiment and the reality of the pain caused to the victim (and indeed there was no pain, only acting). But while in the case of the Milgram experiment the issue was merely about unpublished data, the Stanford Prison Experiment turned out to be completely baseless.
The participants of the experiment were divided into two categories—guards and prisoners—who lived in a simulated prison. All participants were expected to play their respective roles. But, as published data suggest, the experiment soon became truly dangerous. The guards began to cruelly abuse the prisoners, and a third of them displayed sadistic tendencies. Two prisoners were even excluded from the experiment due to the psychological trauma they suffered, and the experiment itself was stopped prematurely for ethical reasons. For nearly 50 years, many believed in the reality of these results and their corresponding conclusions. However, a series of pieces of evidence has recently been revealed that completely refutes this experiment. We will now consider some of them.
First, as the experiment’s organizer Philip Zimbardo assured, the participants were free in their actions, and those playing the role of guards received no prior training. In reality, however, the guards were aware of the expected results of the experiment; they were given clear instructions on how to act in various situations, and efforts were made to instill in them the belief that they were assistants to the experimenters in this study.
Second, and very importantly, the participants understood the requirements of the experiment in advance and corresponded to them. As Zimbardo claimed, the requirements for participation were minimal. However, almost all potential participants understood, for example, that guards were required to be despotic, hostile, and aggressive. This led to the assumption that participants, due to a clear understanding of their role, may have played it to the fullest extent in order to ensure the success of the experiment. In fact, after some time, they stated that they were only playing a role. They also always understood that they were participants in an experiment, that they were being observed, and that none of it was real.
I would like to draw attention to one more point. Such an understanding of the upcoming role could have influenced the selection of participants in favor of those with tendencies toward more cruel behavior, since that was exactly the behavior required. And can an experiment for which more cruel people may have been selected say anything about the cruelty of the average person?
There are many other facts that cast doubt on the experiment. It is worth remembering the participants who had to leave it due to psychological trauma. One of them later admitted that he only simulated a psychosis because he did not like the experiment and wanted to leave as quickly as possible. The unrealistic nature of the experimental conditions should also be understood. And finally, the researchers did not provide all the data—out of 150 hours of the experiment, only 15% were recorded (6 hours of video and 15 hours of audio). Very little personal data was collected from the participants, which could have influenced the course of the experiment.
Sources:
Thibault Le Texier (2019). Debunking the Stanford Prison Experiment;
