Автор: Битарх

Question to Bitarkh

Bitarch, although I only recently became acquainted with libertarianism, I have already read about voluntarism and realized that it is exactly what I need! I am so tired of living among the abusers, boors, and rapists who surround me now! I wish a vaccine that destroys the ability to initiate aggressive violence would be invented as soon as possible, and along with it, universal prosperity would arrive! My father used to beat me, my ex-boyfriend beat me too, and once some thug even tried to rape me in an alleyway! Well, until the vaccine is invented, I want to ask for your help. Bitarch, I want to have a child with a strong Lorenz inhibitor, who would be guaranteed never to initiate violence and yet be able to stand up for themselves, just as you, strictly speaking, do. I am not a poor woman; I can sign a written waiver of alimony; all that is needed is conception from a carrier of a strong variant of the Lorenz inhibitor. Otherwise, there are two extremes around: either mama’s boys and wimps unable to protect themselves, or alpha males with testosterone overflowing and absolutely unrestrained in the manifestation of violence, but something in the middle is needed. Do you agree? And if so, how much do your services for the conception of non-violent offspring cost?

Katya Latysh

I am glad that you liked the ideas I promote and that you believe it is necessary to eradicate violence. As for your delicate request—unfortunately, I cannot 100% guarantee perfect genetics on my part. Although I am a non-violent person, who knows, perhaps I am a carrier of recessive genes that determine a weak variant of the violence inhibitor. There is no genetic test yet to determine the variant of the Lorenz mechanism (the violence inhibitor). Moreover, it is unnecessary to ask me specifically—most people are non-violent anyway; it is unlikely that I can offer anything more than they can. You have simply been unlucky so far, crossing paths with those same 2% of crazed degenerates who have an extremely weak variant of the inhibitor. The distribution of degenerates can be quite uneven, and it is possible that you found yourself in an environment with an increased concentration of them. Perhaps a good solution would be to slightly change your surroundings and your social circle?

I also want to note—one child cannot fix the situation as a whole. If you have financial resources, perhaps it is worth considering investments in biotechnology, obtaining the appropriate education, or some other way to help eradicate violence in degenerates? After all, the sooner it becomes possible to create a genetic test for the violence inhibitor variant and gene therapy to strengthen it, the faster the problem of rapists will be solved and no one will ever apply violence to you again. And in this way, you will be able to precisely guarantee both the non-violence of your children and that they themselves will never encounter violence.

Think about this; if violence is so unpleasant to you and you have certain opportunities, perhaps then it would be a good idea to dedicate your life to the fight against violence and bring closer the day when this problem is finally solved?

Bitarch

The Role of Violence in the Survival of Species and Populations

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Intraspecific violence is often credited with the role of a mechanism important for maintaining the life of individual populations and even entire species. For example, violence is a tool for establishing a dominance hierarchy, excluding weak individuals from competition, allocating limited resources in favor of the strongest and most adapted members of the population, etc. To a certain extent, these statements are true, but what is definitely incorrect is to look at the phenomenon of violence in isolation from other factors—an error often made when presenting violence as a mechanism that works the same way in all cases.

Factors such as the innate armament of population members and the possibility of avoiding violence through flight play an important role in intraspecific violence. In cases where the armament of individuals is quite weak, the population is not limited by a strict habitat (it has room to expand), and individuals generally possess a good ability to flee, then certain benefits can indeed be derived from intraspecific violence without encountering an unacceptable level of negative externalities created by it. In short, in such cases, the benefits outweigh the losses.

But everything changes with an increase in the armament of individuals, with the limitation of their habitat, and if their ability to flee is less developed. The more pronounced these factors are, the more negative externalities the population will experience—violence will begin to threaten its survival. This was noted in ethological research by Konrad Lorenz, who also did not deny the positive aspects of violence, but at the same time took into account factors capable of turning this phenomenon into a catastrophe. He also described the concept of a mechanism that inhibits (restrains) intraspecific violence. I will provide an excerpt from his book “Aggression, or the So-called Evil”:

“A raven can knock out another raven’s eye with a single blow of its beak; a wolf can rip open another wolf’s jugular vein with a single bite. If reliable prohibitions did not prevent this, neither ravens nor wolves would have existed for a long time. A pigeon, a hare, and even a chimpanzee are unable to kill one of their own kind with a single blow or bite. Moreover, such poorly armed creatures possess an ability to flee that allows them to escape even from ‘professional’ predators, who are far more skilled in pursuit, capture, and killing than any superior fellow of their own species. Therefore, in the wild, it is usually impossible for such an animal to harm its own kind. Consequently, there is no selective pressure creating a prohibition against killing.”

From all this, a simple conclusion can be drawn: intraspecific violence can be useful, but only as long as factors such as armament and the inability to flee from violence do not become so pronounced as to create too many negative externalities. And the more pronounced these factors are, the greater the harm will be, which will ultimately lead to selective pressure toward stronger inhibitors of aggressive behavior among population representatives.

Now let us briefly consider the case of humans. Their innate armament is quite weak, and they have not yet fully adapted to the artificial armament that emerged during the development of civilization and scientific and technical progress. But this armament, along with the current lack of possibility for significant expansion of living space (humans have already spread across almost all habitable territory on the planet), creates a great threat to the survival of humanity. Intraspecific violence may have been useful for the distant ancestors of humans, but since they began using artificial weaponry, the situation has changed fundamentally. It is also worth adding that when discussing violence, the characteristics of humans and human society that distinguish them from animals and the animal world are often overlooked. Violence has an extremely negative effect on human psyche and behavior. Violence also disrupts economic relationships. This creates even more negative externalities.

The Myth of the Attacker’s Advantage

Voluntarist, Bitarch

The idea of universal armament and armed self-defense is often attempted to be portrayed as untenable by resorting to the argument of the attacker’s advantage. After all, what difference does it make whether the victim is armed or not if the attacker is still better prepared for the clash, since he is the one who planned it, while the victim expects nothing. And in general, few attackers will risk encountering a stronger opponent; they will prefer to choose a weak victim and bypass a strong one. The attacker always has the advantage; he is most often stronger, and freedom of armament will only give him more of an advantage since he will be able to arm himself freely.

To begin with, it should be noted that it is precisely the restriction of the freedom to arm oneself that gives the attacker an advantage. The ban only works for law-abiding citizens. If we take statistics from the USA, then 94% of mass shootings occur in gun-free zones, and 80% of armed criminals obtained their weapons illegally, most often on the black market, rather than simply buying them in a regular gun store; furthermore, 57% of criminals fear armed citizens more than they fear the police. All these facts directly indicate that it is precisely the regulation and prohibition of armament that gives the attacker an additional advantage.

And even if, after this, the attacker still retains some advantage over the victim, in general, this still decides nothing. The attacker cannot guarantee success; in the best-case scenario for him, his chance of success is merely higher than that of his victim. However, the risk of his failure in the event that the victim is armed is also high, and he will expose himself to this risk with every attack. Victory in one individual clash will not make him a winner overall; soon he will face a failure that could cost him his own life. And violent criminals make up an overwhelming minority of the population; as analysis of Russian crime shows, in the worst case, we have one violent criminal per year per 695 people (and that is considering not only murders, rapes, and the infliction of serious physical harm, but also, for example, battery). This means that, purely statistically, rapists and violent criminals have no chance of defeating an armed civilian population, or even inflicting any serious harm on society.

There can be no rights and freedoms to violence

Voluntarist, Bitarch

To the question of whether a person has the right to commit violence, we have only one answer — they do not! No single person in the world should possess the right to initiate an act of violence against another person. But some people (most often supporters of authoritarian-conservative views and force-based methods of solving problems) may say that this is a restriction of freedom. Freedom to commit violence is a freedom like any other, which means we are contradicting ourselves and are authoritarians ourselves, wanting to forcibly impose a single life scenario on everyone.

This is a rather inadequate manipulation in essence, which ignores the fact that violence leads to people being deprived of their freedom. That is, when one person initiates an act of violence against another person, they thereby deprive them of their freedom. Accordingly, violence is non-freedom. The right to violence is the right to deprive people of their freedom. However, the elimination of violence, the striving for its complete eradication as a phenomenon as a whole, is the elimination of the factor that leads people to non-freedom. And no verbal manipulations will change the essence of the phenomenon of violence!

“Legitimate” and “illegitimate” bandits

Voluntarist, Bitarch

The recent case of the seizure of power in Afghanistan by the Taliban movement only further confirms the theory of the stationary bandit, according to which states arise not through a mythical social contract, but because nomadic bandits decide to settle down and move from irregular looting to stable tribute (or taxation) and the subjugation of people. Even the most liberal and democratic states continue this tradition, as in their case as well, a person has no right to disobey the orders and tax rates established from above—disagreement with this is punished by violence, exactly as in the case of a bandit attacking an unarmed and defenseless victim. And even the provision of certain socially useful services by the state does not change the essence—it is the same as so-called “protection rackets,” where you either agree to pay bandits for some form of protection, or they will attack you.

But it is also important to note that the legitimacy of a specific group on the world stage, that is, its recognition as a state by other states, is purely a question of victory and the seizure of power. Some states are already ready to recognize yesterday’s Taliban terrorists today, and there are even talks of cooperation, including from Russian government structures at the level of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Similarly, in their time, the Bolshevik bandits were recognized; after they seized power, the representatives of the previous Tsarist government suddenly became the bandits.

The winner is recognized and always spoken with, even if they were a mad bandit only yesterday. And this is the only thing, rather than any “social contract,” that distinguishes a “legitimate” and recognized political force from an “illegitimate” bandit-terrorist. But the essence itself remains the same.

Self-defense and the inhibition of violence

Voluntarist, Bitarch

An important question is how self-defense fits into the concept of the Lorenz mechanism (LM)/violence inhibition mechanism (VIM). From a rational point of view, restraining violence is a good and useful thing. But would a person with a strong LM/VIM be unable to defend themselves from an immediate threat of violence?

Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to find specific studies linking self-defense and the LM/VIM concept. In the future, I will try to study the neurophysiological aspects of self-defense in more detail and combine them with similar aspects of violence inhibition. However, I will now put forward a hypothesis about such a relationship based on the evolutionary aspects of the development of LM/VIM, which can serve as a starting point for further research.

According to Konrad Lorenz’s theory, the inhibitor is most pronounced in species whose representatives possess strong innate weaponry and do not have a statistically significant opportunity to avoid violence by fleeing. These two factors exert evolutionary pressure to strengthen the LM/VIM, as they create a threat to the survival of the species. And how did evolution handle this threat? It is not that complicated. Non-aggressive members of the population encounter intra-species violence only when they are attacked. Aggressive individuals, however, initiate violence themselves. Because of this, they end up in violent clashes much more often, and therefore die more frequently than other individuals, failing to pass their genetic material to the next generation. Thus, violence is weeded out, while the strong version of the violence-inhibiting mechanism is reinforced.

But for non-violence to be reinforced, it is necessary that the victims of violence be able to defend themselves during a direct attack using their weaponry. Otherwise, the aggressor’s life would be under no threat, and it would be the less aggressive individuals who die, leading to the opposite effect, and eventually to the extinction of the species (unless its representatives choose flight as an alternative, as hamsters do, for example, scattering after only a few mutual bites). But since we still observe heavily armed species in nature whose representatives are not prone to fleeing from intra-species aggression, and we also observe a strongly expressed LM/VIM in them, it means that victims of violence can indeed use their weaponry for self-defense against aggressors.

How might this work? An immediate threat of violence leads to a defensive reaction from the victim, which may weaken the operation of the violence inhibitor for a short period of time. As soon as the immediate threat passes, everything returns to normal. At the same time, the possibility of weakening the inhibitor to a state where the affected individual becomes capable of initiating violence themselves is excluded. Otherwise, the threat to the survival of many species would continue to exist, because the number of violent individuals in their populations would not decrease as a result of acts of violence, but might even increase, as victims would become new aggressors.

Self-defense is a permissible and evolutionarily optimal strategy for eradicating violence in a population. And humans are not exempt from this. If everything stated above is correct, then humans should also be capable of self-defense during a direct attack when there is a threat to their life, even if they have a strong version of the LM/VIM inhibitor. At the same time, they would not be capable of initiating violence outside of situations that directly threaten life, as this would relate to other, successfully inhibited types of violent behavior. I will also add that all of this points to the realism of evolutionary strategies for fighting and eradicating violence based on armed self-defense during direct attacks by various types of aggressors.

The Worst-Case Scenario Argument

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Quite often, the “worst-case scenario” argument is brought forward against the idea of a free society. It posits that we cannot abandon the state because we have something to lose; although the state may be a poor solution to our problems in many respects, it could be much worse without it, and therefore it is not worth the risk. This argument cannot be called valid because it does not consider the possibility of the opposite situation—that is, the “best-case scenario”—and moreover, it completely ignores the worst-case scenario that could occur if state power is preserved.

Absolutely any human activity and any aspiration carry both the possibility of achieving a positive result and the risk of encountering various dangers. This applies even to everyday actions, such as walking to the store or to work. Even in such elementary activity lies a small, but still present, risk of tripping on something along the way, falling and being seriously injured, or being hit by a car at a pedestrian crossing. And what can be said about something more complex than a walk?

However, the probability of the worst-case scenario occurring does not deter people from activity and aspirations if they can also lead to a best-case scenario, and especially when there exists a worst-case scenario associated with abandoning them. I think it is obvious what worst-case scenario awaits you if you refuse to go outside. Many initiatives have found realization in an attempt to avoid the worst-case scenario of inaction, even though action also brought certain risks. If every initiative were discarded solely on the basis of the presence of risks, without considering the risks of inaction, we would now live in a more backward world without many of the phenomena and technologies we are accustomed to.

Perhaps in the pursuit of achieving a free society, as in any other pursuit, certain risks are hidden. However, again, let us not forget that there is not only a worst-case but also a best-case scenario, and that there is a worst-case scenario if the status quo is maintained. By the way, history has already shown us many examples of the latter. How many state regimes have destroyed millions of lives. And can anyone really say that the worst-case scenario of a free society would be even worse than life under another Stalin, Hitler, or Pol Pot? After all, all states strive precisely for centralization and the strengthening of their power, and we can observe this process even now. Just 10-20 years ago, both in the Western world and in our post-Soviet space, there were freer orders, and now one can very easily receive punishment (up to imprisonment) even for actively defending positions, or simply making statements that do not coincide with the state agenda. Thus, it is not far to go to the level of the authoritarian communist/fascist regimes of the last century.

States have always moved, and continue to move now, toward their own worst-case scenario. This alone indicates that we should attempt to achieve a free society as an alternative capable of providing a best-case scenario. This is especially relevant in the case of the post-Soviet space. Perhaps people of the Western world have something to lose in economic terms; they have accumulated a certain wealth, the risk of losing which most likely will not justify such a pursuit in their eyes. We do not even have that. For us, a free society is like an injection of an experimental drug for a terminally ill patient—either this, or nothing will remain but to resign oneself to the rapidly deteriorating state of affairs.

The Importance of Fighting Violence

Voluntarist, Bitarch

In connection with the recent anniversary of the terrorist attacks committed by Anders Breivik in Norway, I would like to remind you of the importance of fighting violence. Although such a tragic event is not a global catastrophe, it is frightening to imagine what future Breiviks might present to us, especially considering what fruits of scientific and technical progress could end up in their hands. Perhaps it will be another shooting, which is very bad, but it will most likely not affect you personally. Or perhaps such a person will decide to use some high-tech means to cause as much harm to people as possible—for example, by constructing a dirty bomb, releasing a previously unknown strain of a very dangerous and deadly virus (a scenario I described in the material “The Reality of the Viral Threat“), or using some other extremely destructive means unknown to us now.

But the capacity to commit violence is not the norm for a human being. On the contrary, 98% of people experience disgust at least toward brutal violence, and all brutal violence is committed by no more than 2% of people. This is because a natural part of human nature is the violence inhibition mechanism (Lorenz’s mechanism (LM) according to Konrad Lorenz’s theory, or VIM according to James Blair’s model). A person with a strong version of LM/VIM will never be able to commit violence. It is committed only by those who suffer from a pathology of the violence inhibitor. Violence is a pathological state. Therefore, it must be fought in an appropriate manner.

If violent tendencies were noticed to a sufficient extent in childhood—when a person is unlikely to be able to make a decision to intentionally hide them until the time they can organize a terrorist attack—or if mass testing for the congenital variant of LM/VIM were practiced in society, both in childhood and when conducting relationships with people in adult life, and if gene therapy treatment were then applied to those in whom the LM/VIM pathology was discovered, many terrorist attacks, as well as much violence in general, could have been avoided.

Perhaps in the past we did not have a sufficient scientific and technical base for this. But now the time has come; biotechnology and gene therapy are developing at a rapid pace. And now it is not too late to start fighting violence to avoid a catastrophic scenario in the future and finally completely rid human society of pathological violence. Does anyone really want the appearance of a new Breivik, and one who is even more heavily armed?

Innate Non-Aggression Morality: Relation to Moral Realism and Ethical Intuitionism

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Not long ago, I considered the question of morality in the context of the concept of the violence inhibition mechanism (VIM)—a cognitive mechanism that inhibits violent behavior in humans. A healthy person who does not suffer from VIM dysfunction is incapable of committing acts of violence against other people. The manifestation of direct brutal violence is successfully inhibited (restrained) in more than 98% of people. The capacity to commit violence is an aberration and a pathology, not the norm of human nature.

Within this topic, the question of a human’s ability to distinguish between transgressions of a moral and a social (conventional) nature (moral/conventional distinction) is of particular interest. Moral transgressions consist of causing harm to a person, whereas social transgressions consist of violating established norms. A beating, for example, would certainly be a moral transgression, while a student leaving the classroom without the teacher’s permission is merely a transgression of a conventional nature.

When a person encounters experiences that demonstrate moral transgressions, distress signals from their victims, such as a sad facial expression or crying, lead to the activation of the VIM and the emergence of a rejection response. The person develops an association between the moral transgression, the distress signals, and the subsequent rejection; as a result, they become capable of understanding and identifying moral transgressions by analyzing certain actions.

Such an association does not arise in the case of social transgressions, as they do not initially lead to the activation of the VIM in a person. Consequently, people with VIM dysfunction, such as psychopaths, cannot understand the difference between moral and social transgressions, because from a neurophysiological point of view, it truly does not exist for them—they perceive these transgressions identically; more precisely, moral transgressions are perceived by them in the same way as social ones.

The fact that psychopaths and people with violent tendencies are indeed incapable of understanding this distinction is a fact confirmed by a vast amount of evidence and research. Let us also recall the fact that violence is a deviation from the norm of natural human behavior. In fact, the morality of non-aggression is biologically predetermined for humans, which we learned by conducting research into human nature. Thus, this morality can be attributed to moral realism.

But we will not stop there, because it is worth mentioning one more thing—a person with a functioning VIM (which, as previously stated, is the norm of human nature) will become capable of recognizing transgressions of a moral nature, and therefore, a corresponding morality of non-aggression will develop in them absolutely regardless of whether they know anything about their own nature at all. If they are unfamiliar with the concept of the VIM and the notion of a moral transgression, the morality of non-aggression will be perceived by them as something intuitive, self-evident. For the vast majority of people, this intuitive understanding will coincide, and on the issue of violence, they will converge on a single position that committing acts of violence is unacceptable, without conducting any research and without attempting to form any logical conclusions (violent views will originate only from the violent minority). Such a universal intuitive understanding of morality pertains to moral (or ethical) intuitionism.

As we can see, the innate morality of non-aggression is simultaneously an objective fact of human nature, pertaining to moral realism, and an intuitively understood norm, pertaining to ethical intuitionism. Of course, we can see that the latter stems from the former—that is, a person’s intuitive understanding stems from their objective biological nature. Therefore, the innate morality of non-aggression simply unites these approaches to morality, simultaneously corresponding to both of them and deriving one from the other.

Violence and Cultural Influence

Voluntarist, Bitarch

Based on the concept we are considering regarding the inhibitor of intraspecific violence (the Lorenz mechanism (LM), as we call it in view of the corresponding theory of Konrad Lorenz, as well as the violence inhibition mechanism (VIM) according to James Blair’s model), we find that a human’s ability to commit violence against another human is a deviation consisting of a malfunction of the innate LM/VIM. Thus, violent offenders are people suffering from a genetic and neurophysiological pathology [1]. This concept can be countered by the argument that the level of violence in human society, from the very emergence of humans to the present day, has decreased at rates completely incomparable to the speed at which traits are fixed in a population as a result of natural biological evolution. Additionally, different levels of violence are observed under different social orders. I will not dispute the validity of such assertions; however, by providing two arguments, I will prove that they do not refute the LM/VIM concept.

The first thing to understand is that a person with a weak or dysfunctional version of the LM/VIM does not necessarily have to commit violence. A good upbringing, the absence of circumstances that provoke violence, and the presence of circumstances that deter it, while not eliminating the risk completely, reduce it to a certain extent. Combine this with the fact that violence is committed by a minority of people. Military evidence shows that only up to 2% of people experience no resistance to killing (and war is a highly provoking circumstance for violence). An analysis of crime in the Russian Federation determined that in the worst possible scenario (and in reality, it may be better), on average, only one new violent offender committing a violent crime no less severe than battery is reported per 695 people per year.

If environmental circumstances change such that, for example, instead of one person per 695 people, two people begin to commit violence per year, then the level of violence in society will increase by at least twofold, and most likely much more, since those who have previously committed violence may begin to do so more frequently. The consequences would be significant. However, violence would still originate from an overwhelming minority of people, so observing such changes does not refute the LM/VIM concept.

Let us now turn to the evolutionary argument. Under natural conditions, biological evolution is indeed a very slow process. However, it can be accelerated through artificial selection. Cultural influence can also lead to such selection, as it artificially alters the social and physical environment in which genetic selection occurs. This is called dual inheritance or gene-culture coevolution.

A classic example is the development of lactose tolerance, which resulted from the development of dairy farming that occurred only approximately 5,000 years ago. Another example: between 800 and 1700, the culture of the Ashkenazi Jewish ethnic group practiced limiting employment to professions requiring a high level of intelligence, which created selective pressure in favor of people possessing it. Combined with the genetic isolation of the ethnic group, this presumably led to high IQ scores, as well as a number of hereditary genetic diseases among its representatives. Furthermore, as a result of territorial expansion in the second half of the last millennium, mixed races appeared. And even the consequences of urbanization and industrialization, which began 200-300 years ago, are already leading to measurable genetic changes [2].

Similarly, cultural influence can lead to the strengthening of the LM/VIM. The growing cultural unacceptability of violence creates selective pressure in favor of less violent people, while violent offenders are filtered out more and more. Culture does indeed influence the level of violence in society, but this does not contradict, and may even fit into, the LM/VIM concept.

Sources:

  1. https://panarchy.ru/2021/07/12/анализ-внутривидового-насилия-как-яв/;
  2. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK210012/.