Aggression in male animals and men is very often linked to the sex hormone testosterone. Thus, a decrease in testosterone levels should be followed by a decrease in aggressiveness, and an increase in its levels — by extremely high aggressiveness. Of course, aggression is linked to testosterone, but it cannot be reduced exclusively to the action of a single hormone in isolation from all other neurophysiology. Otherwise, one might arrive at certain misconceptions, for example, that if a high level of testosterone in some men is natural, then violent behavior is also absolutely natural. Additionally, such a view contradicts the concept of the violence inhibitor, according to which many species and even humans possess innate restraints on intraspecific aggression.
To begin, let us recall that the violence inhibitor is linked to the serotonergic system, and the activation of certain serotonin receptors (1A and 1B) can suppress attacking aggression without affecting defensive aggression and other forms of behavior. But how can testosterone affect this effect? As one study shows, there is simply no such influence. Testosterone-driven activation of aggression and serotonin-driven inhibition of aggression work independently of each other; that is, the pro-aggressive effect of testosterone does not consist of suppressing serotonin function. And the influence of serotonin on testosterone-induced aggression is apparently carried out via a parallel inhibitory pathway. It is presumed that this influence occurs in brain regions such as the medial amygdala, hypothalamus, prefrontal cortex, and the septum (septal area), where both sex hormone receptors and serotonergic nerve endings are simultaneously located.
Such an influence of serotonin is necessary to restrain aggression so that it does not cease to be adaptive and functional behavior. This aligns with the violence inhibitor theory, according to which certain internal restraints on aggression prevent it from escalating into violence that causes harm to members of one’s own species. And since testosterone does not disrupt the operation of these restraints, it cannot be the cause of uninhibited aggression. Of course, testosterone increases aggressiveness, but normally only within natural inhibiting limits.
Aggressive feelings and behavior are a natural part of human nature. But this naturalness of aggression is often, and absolutely erroneously, perceived as a capacity for its boundless manifestation, up to such violent actions as murder. And from such an incorrect interpretation of the nature of aggression, a conclusion is drawn about the impossibility of eradicating violence from human behavior, since without it a person would become a “willless vegetable,” incapable of many types of activity that require aggressiveness from them. But this absurd substitution of concepts can be easily refuted with one practical example—the statistics of domestic violence in the families of American football players and police officers.
If you believe that aggressiveness is a necessary component of many types of human activity and social communication, then you will agree that American football is a fairly aggressive sport, and a person cannot do without this component to participate in it. Why it is necessary for police officers, I think, does not even need to be explained. But there is one categorical difference between players and police officers. As American domestic violence statistics show, the level of violence in police families is up to 4 times higher than the national average. At the same time, in the families of players, it occurs almost 2 times less than the average.
Why is this so? While players simply need to achieve good sporting results, the immediate task of a police officer is to carry out violent attacks on other people, who themselves often committed no violence at all, but were merely accused of violating some state laws and “victimless crimes.” Obviously, the first profession may attract people who clearly demonstrate their aggressiveness but are still non-violent, and whose aggression is limited and under inhibiting control. The second profession will more often attract precisely violent people, since their official duties require violence.
Using the example of these two professions, we can clearly see the difference between functional aggression under inhibiting control and pathological violence that has spiraled out of control. The former is absolutely sufficient for a person to perform any activity, provided, of course, that it does not consist of committing violence itself. A person will not become some kind of “willless vegetable” if their aggressiveness is limited. Moreover, it is naturally limited in the vast majority of people, who could never intentionally cause serious harm to someone, let alone kill, feeling a strong repulsion toward such acts. Therefore, calling the capacity to commit violence an important trait for many types of human activity would simply be an absurd substitution of concepts.
It has become a fairly established opinion that human beings possess no instinctive behavior. Sometimes, even the instincts of highly developed animals (especially primates) are subject to partial doubt. Priority is given to the crude satisfaction of immediate needs, while all other behavior, it is claimed, is purely social in nature. Based on this position, the idea that humans have innate predispositions regarding social behavior—for example, a tendency toward either violent or non-violent behavior—is also criticized. Thus, human behavior is seen as purely a product of upbringing and environment, unless it concerns certain pathologies already described by medicine. Or even if an individual does have some innate predispositions, they can be easily “overwritten” by upbringing.
To understand whether humans have instincts or not, it is necessary to define the concept of instinct itself, as well as another similar concept—the reflex. An instinct is defined as a set of complex hereditary and preset behavioral acts, whereas a reflex is a standard reaction to a stimulus. It is immediately apparent that the difference between an instinct and a reflex comes down to the complexity of the structure of these phenomena, without a clear boundary being drawn. This can lead to some confusion in the study of innate behavioral predispositions. However, while instincts are generally considered not to be present in humans, no one doubts the existence of reflexes.
Perhaps the most criticized is the maternal instinct. However, it is an indisputable fact that an attachment between mother and child usually does arise. Research clearly shows that during pregnancy and breastfeeding, oxytocin—a hormone that plays an important role in this process—is produced in the mother. However, researchers agree that this cannot be called an instinct.
At the same time, for some reason, the innate human fear of certain threats encountered during evolution is explicitly called an instinct. For example, research has shown that the fear of snakes and spiders is present in 6-month-old infants. In general, the concept of the threat superiority effect, which explains the human ability to react quickly to threats in the environment, suggests a protective reaction to both innate and experience-acquired stimuli, not just the latter.
Let us now turn to the topic of aggression. As ethologists claim, the restraint of intraspecific aggression in animals, expressed, among other things, through the ritualization of battles, is instinctive in nature. However, the model of the violence inhibition mechanism in humans calls the rejection reaction—which arises in a normally developing individual from childhood when observing distress signals (expressions of sadness, fear, pain) from victims of violence—merely an unconditioned reflex. It should also be noted that this mechanism is important in the development of empathy, and children as early as 2-3 days after birth show an empathic response by reacting to the crying of other children with reactive crying, which is more intense than their reaction to other irritating stimuli.
We know that it is primarily the correct functioning of such a mechanism—which causes a feeling of rejection toward violence, plays an important role in the development of empathy, and leads to the development of a number of important conditioned reflexes—that makes a person non-violent, and only after that comes upbringing. Is such behavior instinctive, or is it simply a reflex? It is impossible to say for sure until a clear boundary is drawn between these concepts. However, if researchers nonetheless call the innate fear of threat, which influences the regulation of aggressive behavior, instinctive, then why can the violence inhibition mechanism not also be called instinctive? Especially since in many people it is so strongly expressed that it absolutely prevents the commission of violence, at least in its serious forms.
Libertarian Band has released a video on the ethological approach to defining the concepts of aggression, violence, and self-defense. Ethology, as a science that studies animal behavior and serves as a link between biological and sociological sciences in the study of human behavior, is a fairly precise tool for solving this problem. The ethological approach can provide us with clear answers regarding what should be considered aggression and violence, as well as where the boundaries of self-defense lie.
I recommend everyone watch this video and share it with others, so that there will be less confusion in the future during conversations about aggression, violence, and self-defense.
I have one tiny but lovely channel in my subscriptions, primarily about practical agorism, but occasionally it drifts into reflecting on more abstract things. And not so long ago, it suddenly began a series of posts on the bitarchy theory of restructuring humanity based on a violence inhibition mechanism. Naturally, I couldn’t pass this up; I waited until the series finished, and now I recommend it to you, along with the channel itself.
It begins with this post, and further on, you can read many posts almost consecutively up until this one, the final one. Fortunately, they are mostly short. I usually lack the tediousness to dive into overly detailed breakdowns of complex topics, so I gladly leave those to the men, and then I assimilate the resulting product and recommend it to others if I find it worthy.
The author concludes with a significant remark:
The question remains open: “what would be the most clever replacement for Lorentz’s theory?”. I’m still thinking.
Can Transhumanism Help Eliminate Aggressive Violence?
Ancap-chan, based on the ideas of Bitarch
The Problem
There is an opinion that the means of fighting aggressive violence offered today are treatments of symptoms rather than the problem itself. What is the point of punishing the manifestation of genetically inherited tendencies; wouldn’t it be more reliable to fix the genes?
Aggression is determined by the hormonal background. Several different hormones are involved in the regulation of aggression.
Hormones are released as a response to changes in the body occurring under the influence of both the external environment and internal processes. For example, aggression can be caused by violence, or simply by hunger.
The predisposition to aggression is partially inherited. The predisposition to hormonal pathologies, which can lead to a sharp change in aggressiveness, is also partially inherited.
Inherited factors can manifest to varying degrees under the influence of the environment, meaning that the predisposition to aggression can be reduced or developed through upbringing.
Aggression is a complex behavioral construct linked to other character traits, such as exploratory activity, independence, and the willingness to protect loved ones.
Specific genes responsible for the predisposition to aggression have not been identified. Even less so have genes responsible for the predisposition to specific types of aggression, particularly the predisposition to initiate aggressive violence. It is clear that there are several genes, located on different chromosomes, not only sex chromosomes.
Throughout human history, there is a clear trend toward the reduction of intra-species aggression. This can be fully explained by Konrad Lorenz’s classical model: the higher the ability of members of a species to destroy their conspecifics, the faster the genes responsible for the predisposition to intra-species aggression are washed out of the population during lethal conflicts. With the mastery of tools, human armament increased sharply, and natural selection went to work, weeding out the most aggressive. However, this happened very recently by evolutionary standards, which is why humans still have disproportionately high levels of aggression compared to their ability to kill people. This, essentially, is what is interpreted as the problem.
What approaches can be taken to solve it at the current level of technological development?
Today’s Approaches
Medical. If aggressiveness is treated as a disease, it is effectively cured by barbaric methods such as lobotomy or haloperidol. Along with aggression, everything human in the patient is “cured,” which is hardly different from murder; therefore, an individual approach to each patient using more delicate means must be developed. Complex treatment with an unguaranteed result cannot be practiced on a mass scale, so let us leave this approach only for the most pronounced pathologies.
Educational. Since the genetic predisposition to aggression can be weakened by good upbringing, it makes sense to focus on raising children without the use of aggressive violence. As a result, a child without pathologies will channel their natural aggressiveness into wonderful things, such as research activity or social activism. And for a child with a pathology, it will at least be manifested in a weakened form.
Sexual Selection. This means of reducing aggression in the population is already working quite well. If, for a potential partner, feats performed to win them over are not as important as benevolence and care, then carriers of genes with low aggression have a better chance of having offspring — after which aggressive individuals go off to burn through their lives and get along perfectly well without reproducing.
Acceleration of Natural Selection. When the direct shooting of aggressors in self-defense becomes common legal practice in society, the genes of aggressors are washed out of the population more radically than through sexual selection. The problem here is that the application of lethal self-defense also requires a certain predisposition to aggression; therefore, this approach works well in societies with brutal traditions, contributing to their rapid civilization — after which its effectiveness begins to decline.
Now let’s fantasize a bit to understand what transhumanists might offer us.
Tomorrow’s Approaches
Embryo Selection. A DNA sample is taken from the fetus and analyzed for a predisposition to pathological aggression; if the result is positive, the pregnancy is terminated. This is already how more obvious hereditary diseases, such as Down syndrome, are fought. Convincing the mother to make another attempt at conception is a solvable task, provided there are not too many cultural constraints in society prohibiting the termination of pregnancy.
Gene Modification in Adults. A virus is created that integrates into human DNA and either switches off the genes responsible for the predisposition to aggression or reduces their expression. The technology of gene modification itself has already been created and is actively developing, but which specific genes should be corrected and how is still poorly understood. Direct switching off of genes most obviously linked to aggression currently leads to many undesirable side pathologies in experiments. Moreover, we are talking about a whole complex of genes in different chromosomes, and modern tools are unable to provide such precise and large-scale correction. Thus, I evaluate the prospects of this specific branch of development as modest. But if the methodology can be refined even to the level of modern pharmacological methods of aggression regulation, it could replace them in psychiatry and also be used as a means of rehabilitating criminals instead of the idiotic practice of imprisonment.
Gene Modification at the Embryonic Stage. The method is the same as in the previous point, but it introduces changes to the genome that will subsequently be inherited. The task is much easier since changes need to be made to literally one cell, rather than processing the entire brain of an adult. However, while the forced application of correction to adults can somehow be justified by the fact that they committed offenses, ethical problems arise with children. I assume that the implementation of these methods will occur with a significant delay compared to the previous point, despite the relative simplicity.
Cyborgization. Since aggression is regulated by the hormonal background, it is not absolutely necessary to mess with the genome if the hormonal background itself can be regulated. Currently, this is done with medication, but in the future, implanted hormonal regulators could be used. It is hard to say which branch of development humanity will ultimately follow, but subjectively, the prospect of solving the problem by simply installing an app on a specialized gadget seems very attractive; furthermore, this methodology has minimum ethical barriers — I would gladly acquire such a device for myself.
Conclusion
First of all, I state that the complete eradication of aggression from humanity, similar to the betrization described by Stanisław Lem, is not only technically unrealizable at the current level of capabilities but also undesirable, since aggression is linked to many qualities useful to humans.
Essentially, aggression is a reaction to a stimulus, in which an attempt is made to eliminate the stimulus. Aggression can be opposed, firstly, by patience, that is, a reaction to a stimulus in which an attempt is made to adapt to its effect without eliminating the stimulus itself, and secondly, by flight, that is, a reaction to a stimulus in which an attempt is made to avoid the action of the stimulus. If the entire richness of human reactions to stimuli were reduced to patience and flight, it would close off not only the possibility of self-defense but the general ability to remove obstacles, especially if this involves any small amount of risk.
There is uncontrolled pathological aggression. It is usually associated with brain injuries and diseases or serious hormonal imbalances. The forced treatment of such diseases, in my view, is a special case of self-defense, especially since such aggression is usually identified when a person is already violating the NAP. The more the result of the treatment resembles a natural level of aggression, the better; but if medical intervention produces side effects that make a person’s life difficult (for example, if they are completely deprived of manifestations of aggression), this would be an undesirable but justified result. I am also prepared to consider the presence of a predisposition to pathological aggression in a fetus as sufficient grounds for abortion or genetic correction at the embryonic development stage — provided there are reliable, proven methods of diagnosis and correction.
As for the natural level of aggression, it is already gradually decreasing in humanity, and in recent years, this has been accompanied by a significant decrease in violent crimes. Therefore, measures to force this decrease seem completely unnecessary to me. Non-violent upbringing of children is already becoming an ethical norm. Sexual selection is already working fully in favor of caring partners rather than dominant ones. Civilian weapons, for all their utility, already look somewhat archaic. Not yet at the level of crinolines and frock coats, but somewhere at the level of evening gowns and three-piece suits. Cute, sophisticated, but unusual.
And finally, I will note once more that the optimal solution seems to me to be the ability to arbitrarily regulate one’s own hormonal background. For example, through the use of an implant. It would certainly be useful for suppressing outbursts of aggression, but I suspect that I personally would use it for the opposite: in situations where my level of aggression is insufficient. For example, before using a weapon for self-defense. Or in order to stop procrastinating and sit down to write a long-postponed post.
I understand that this can be settled within contract jurisdictions, but how should one act in general? For example, if I see someone drawing a weapon in a public place, can I shoot first before they have harmed anyone?
Han Solo
I understand your desire to remove the responsibility for choosing the best course of action in an extreme situation. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.
You see someone drawing a weapon in a public place. You can also draw a weapon and shoot first, or you can choose not to. You don’t know which decision will be correct because you do not have full information about the situation. There are real-life examples where a person drew a weapon to defend themselves from an attack, but bystanders decided that he was the attacker and shot him. What if that person is drawing a weapon to protect themselves from someone outside your field of vision?
Therefore, a safer practice is considered to be shouting the sacramental “Stop, or I’ll shoot!” before shooting anyone—this is done primarily to inform witnesses that you did not start the attack and that you are hoping for a peaceful resolution to the conflict. By the way, this is taught in firearm safety courses, so I’m not reinventing the wheel here.
Yes, any delay before firing carries the risk that you will not be the first to shoot. But no one in that specific situation will decide better than you which risk is preferable: shooting without warning and answering for having attacked, or giving a warning and taking a bullet.
Today I was walking with my son, who is almost 4 years old; we weren’t bothering anyone. My son started messing with the ice on the road. A boy about 7-10 years old was passing by with his parents. They walked past, but the boy suddenly turned around, approached my son, and pushed him (not very hard—my son stayed on his feet).
анонимный вопрос
I cannot guarantee that in a real-life situation I would react the way I now conceptually consider to be correct; too much would depend on various insignificant factors. How repulsive the boy would be to me personally, how adequate his parents seemed to me, how much of a hurry they were in, and, most importantly, how shocking this episode was for my son.
The more vile the kid seems to me, the more unpleasant this episode was for my son, the less his parents are rushing, and the more sane they look, the greater the likelihood that I would develop the situation toward preventing such crap in the future. That is, I would draw their attention to this crap and ask them to hold the boy’s hand, since walking aggressive children on a leash is not common practice.
If, hypothetically, the interaction is likely to be very short, then I would probably limit myself to making a scary face and making some kind of sharp, threatening gesture toward the kid. Ideally, the kid should quickly bolt or recoil and fall on his backside. The goal is for the aggressor to be humiliated without the use of direct physical force, and then I can focus on figuring out how my son is doing.
If he is indignant and wants to fight back, then the conversation will be along the lines of “we really scared him!”. If he is more surprised and trying to understand what that was, then I’ll discuss with him what that was (imagine a dog barked at you on the street; you don’t need to kill the dog, it’s enough to chase it away). If he didn’t pay much attention, then let him continue with his business; it’s good when a person has a strong psyche.
A call for murder, is that freedom of speech or not? An insult, when I call someone “short” with the intention to “offend”… 1. …a person who is short, 2. … a person who is tall, is that freedom of speech? If I engage in bullying using insults, is that freedom of speech?
Generally, is bullying a form of aggression? If one reads Svetov, for some reason he believes it is not.
анонимный вопрос
As usual, I will begin by briefly defining the terms. Aggression is the initiation of a conflict. Conflict is the presence of grievances. Aggressive violence is the initiation of a conflict through the use of violence. NAP is a legal principle according to which no one can be granted the right to unpunished aggressive violence. Freedom of speech is a legal principle according to which words do not constitute a violation of the NAP. Bullying is the public tearing apart of a tied-up animal by a pack of dogs (there are many other uses of the word “travlya,” but in the figurative sense when people “hunt” or bully other people, it refers specifically to this method of hunting/baiting). An insult is a manipulation intended to provoke the insulted person into escalating the conflict, preferably to the point of violating the NAP, in order to justify further, more serious sanctions against the insulted party.
If you agree with the proposed definitions, it should become quite obvious to you that the content of any words—be it slander, a call for murder, or even an order to commit murder—according to the principle of freedom of speech, does not violate the NAP. Nevertheless, words can easily be a form of aggression, albeit non-violent, since words can be used to initiate a conflict.
It is also easy to see that I have defined the concept of bullying vaguely, because it is not a legal term, but a purely polemical one. Nevertheless, it stems from the image of an amusement involving the tearing apart of an animal deprived of its freedom, and this is a fairly important point. As long as the object of your actions, carried out through verbal insults, can freely avoid the conflict simply by ending communication, I would not call it bullying—the factor of coercion is absent. In other words, I define bullying as systematic insults under conditions of coerced communication; that is, there is an element of aggressive violence in bullying, but not in the words, but specifically in the restriction of the freedom to leave the conflict zone.
Thus, verbal persecution in prison or in a conscript army is bullying. Similar persecution at work is not bullying, but simply a conflict. It can be ended by resigning. Persecution in school is bullying only if the persecuted person is forbidden from leaving the school.
An important point. Legal responsibility for bullying lies specifically with the one who restricts freedom, not with the one who bullies. That is, not with the dogs, but with the one who chained the bear to the post. This is exactly why responsibility for bullying in school lies with the parents, teachers, and the state: the state obliges parents to provide the child with a secondary education, teachers apply sanctions to the child for leaving school without permission, and parents deny the child the right to switch to homeschooling. Similarly, responsibility for bullying in prison lies with those who put the conflicting parties in one cell and locked them in, and for bullying in a conscript army—those who conscripted the conflicting parties into one military unit and forbade them from leaving it.
As for Svetov, he did indeed, in a conversation with Boris Kagarlitsky, get somewhat confused in the definitions of “aggression,” “violence,” “aggressive violence,” and “self-defense,” which his interlocutor caught him on, and as a result, the debate was lost. Therefore, the assumption that he was insufficiently strict with concepts in some other conversation does not seem improbable to me. Furthermore, the term “bullying” itself has no precise definition, so a specific phenomenon that someone calls bullying may either include aggressive violence or be pure non-violent aggression. Moreover, one party to a conflict may call the behavior of the other party bullying, even if it contains neither violence nor even aggression. For example, someone performs their job poorly, receives criticism regarding the actual deficiencies in response, and loses their bonus. Why would that not be a reason to position oneself as a victim of bullying?
A violation of the NAP is first and foremost not the dogs, but the chain.
