A state, which possesses undisputed power and a monopoly on violence, is typically regarded as a purely human social phenomenon. However, if we look at the very foundation of the state’s structure—namely, the fact of coercive force exerted on people by political power—it can boldly be called one of the forms of a violent hierarchy of dominance, much like the hierarchies that arise under certain conditions in many animal species. This prompts us to analyze the phenomenon of the violent hierarchy of dominance as a whole, the prerequisites and consequences of its emergence, including in the case of humans.
We will cover all points of this topic. We will examine the history of the emergence and development of states and compare it with how violent hierarchies of dominance arise in animals, including known experiments such as “Universe 25,” in which a mouse population went extinct despite an abundance of resources, or the experiment by Didier Dezos, where some rats forcibly compelled other rats to swim across a pool for food. As a result, we will draw certain conclusions regarding the influence of violence on society as a whole.
First, let us confirm the violent nature of the state. To do this, we must turn to the theory of the stationary bandit. According to this theory, the state is a settled (stationary) bandit who decided to establish themselves in a certain territory, control it exclusively, and rob the population in the long term [1]. We should look at what serves as a prerequisite for the independent emergence of states in different corners of the world. Consider the Nile, Tigris, Euphrates, and Indus valleys in the Old World, and the Mexico Valley, as well as the mountain and coastal plains of Peru in the New World. All these places have one thing in common: lands suitable for agriculture that are limited by seas, mountains, or deserts. In such places, there is simply nowhere to flee from coercive force, which led to the appearance of the first states there. We should also add social boundaries to this. Communities located in the center of populated lands are far more likely to be subjugated than those located on the periphery [2].
Over time, the entire world came under the violent control of certain groups of people, and this continues today. Let us not forget that modern state borders were drawn as a result of wars and subjugations. Even if we assume that in the past some group of people truly volunteered to form a monopoly government, they were either forcibly subjugated by someone else, or they themselves engaged in the subjugation of others. The same happened with subsequent generations, who did not initially agree to such a contract. Current states also actively control your life and their borders, resorting to all possible means. If the state does not allow you to do something, your chances of hiding or escaping from it will be extremely slim.
Let us keep in mind what the stationary bandit theory tells us about the state and move on to considering the issue of violence in the animal world, which is very important for understanding the reasons behind the emergence of a violent hierarchy of dominance. It is worth starting with the research of ethologist Konrad Lorenz, which showed that species with strong innate weaponry have evolutionarily developed a strong innate intraspecific morality of non-violence—that is, a mechanism that inhibits the manifestation of violent behavior in intraspecific clashes [3]. The following example can effectively demonstrate this mechanism:
“During a territorial clash, venomous snakes exaggerate their size by stretching, competing to see who can stand higher; they sway and push each other, but they never bite, nor do they even display their weapons. Some species even threaten each other by turning their heads away. It is no wonder that not only ordinary people, but many zoologists, mistook the tournament battles of snakes for mating dances.” [4]
No one will dispute that venomous snakes are heavily armed species; with a venomous bite, they can instantly kill a member of their own species. But they do not bite their own. This is all due to the Lorenz mechanism (LM), for if its development had been impossible over the course of evolution, many species would simply have self-destructed. However, the development of this mechanism is a fairly obvious process, given that individuals without an innate inhibitor of violent behavior would very often face death due to repeated attacks on heavily armed conspecifics, and therefore their genetic material would not be passed on to future generations.
This mechanism can be observed to varying degrees in many species. The more heavily armed a species is, the more strongly the LM is expressed in its representatives, and conversely—in weak species, it is weakly expressed. Lorenz gave quite interesting examples regarding wolves, which do not bite their tribesmen in the neck, and ravens, which under no circumstances peck out the eyes of other ravens even during clashes. However, after leaving two turtle doves—seemingly peaceful birds of the pigeon family—in one cage for some time, Lorenz discovered that one of them nearly killed the other. Of course, a strong LM could not have developed in turtle doves because, in this case, its absence does not threaten their survival, as they have weak weaponry and can easily flee from an attacker in nature.
Based on this, we can link the development of the LM to two factors: the presence of strong innate weaponry and the impossibility of escaping from violent pursuit. Now it is time to move to the topic of the emergence of a violent hierarchy of dominance among animals, and we will take the famous experiment called “Universe 25” as an example. In this experiment, ethologist John Calhoun created an enclosure for mice in which he provided an abundance of resources. Initially, the mouse population grew rapidly up to 2,200 individuals, but after that, their numbers began to decline, and in less than 5 years, the population became completely extinct.
Many reasons for this can be cited; the conditions of Calhoun’s enclosure were actually far from paradise, and there is also an opinion that the problem lies in the abundance of resources itself—and humanity, by the way, with its current high level of prosperity, faces the same fate. However, the main factor that led to extinction, especially compared to vivariums in other laboratories where mouse populations lived peacefully for decades, was that the design of the enclosure promoted the emergence of a violent hierarchy of dominance:
“The enclosure built by Calhoun, unlike a standard vivarium or natural environments, had one characteristic feature: an extremely irrational and inconvenient systematization of space for the mice, as a result of which a situation arose where the 65 largest males were able to monopolize access to food sources and females, while the mice driven into the center of the enclosure were forced to lead a wretched existence.” [5]
Under such conditions, further reproduction became impossible. The stress level of the mice simply skyrocketed, and the males who occupied the top of the dominance hierarchy did not allow other males access to females even after losing their own ability to reproduce due to old age.
Let us recall another experiment conducted by French researcher Didier Dezos. Six rats were placed in a cage with only one exit—into a pool. At the end of the pool was a feeder with food, but the rat could not eat there—after swimming across, it would take the food and had to return to its companions in the cage. Under these conditions, a rigid hierarchy of dominance formed, in which some rats forced others to swim for food and took it from them. Here too, we can clearly link the emergence of a dominance hierarchy to the limitation of space and the impossibility of escaping from it.
Interesting cases can also be noted in the world of primates. Observation of three species of macaques showed that in two of them (the rhesus macaque and the crab-eating macaque), a strong hierarchy of dominance can be seen, whereas the social relationships of the third species (the Tonkin macaque) are non-violent in nature [6]. Different researchers explain this difference through both environmental factors and genetics. However, it is most likely that a combination of these factors is at play—the corresponding environment led to the development of corresponding innate tendencies, specifically a weaker LM in the first two species and a stronger LM in the third (this explanation is not provided in the macaque study, but it fits perfectly based on the explanation of the nature of violence in many other species).
Another interesting case was observed by biologists Robert Sapolsky and Lisa Sher regarding a troop of baboons—primates known for their aggressiveness. In 1982, the most aggressive males of this troop began feeding at a tourist dump and ate contaminated meat. Eventually, they all died, leaving behind less aggressive males. As a result, the level of violence in the troop decreased sharply [7]. It is also worth remembering the pygmy chimpanzees—bonobos, whose behavior is less violent than that of other chimpanzees. This fact is explained by the fact that they do not have to share their habitat with large and aggressive gorillas. The latter displace and limit the resources of other chimpanzees, which effectively leads them to the very situation where there is nowhere to flee from violence within society due to the limitation of available living space.
Let us now return to humans. Humans are naturally a weakly armed species, which is one of the prerequisites for the development of a weak version of the LM. Combining this with the fact of the limited space suitable for agriculture in the territory where the first states emerged, one can conclude that the state is the same form of violent hierarchy of dominance as in the case of other species when they also find themselves in similar living conditions. And over time, people most prone to violence, who occupied the top of this hierarchy, gained increasing opportunities to control and restrict the freedom of all other people. Thus we have arrived at the modern state of total control, in which, as we mentioned at the beginning, without permission from above, you have no right to anything, including the right to escape from the violence of the stationary bandit.
This state of affairs seriously threatens the survival of humanity. Let us recall Calhoun’s experiment. Many call it prophetic in view of the observed decline in birth rates in developed countries. But usually, incorrect reasons are given, related to the high level of prosperity. The only correct reason is the existence of a violent hierarchy of dominance. This also explains why birth rates do not decline as sharply in less developed countries—states there simply lack the technical means and resources to control their population, regardless of what level of control is written in their laws.
Another reason why violence is a major problem and must be fought is the multitude of negative externalities. These include the increase in stress levels in society and the slowing of economic development, but most importantly—the risk of the destruction of humanity due to the use of weapons of mass destruction. And such means are becoming more accessible every day, even for small organizations and individuals. For example, trends in the development of biotechnology tell us that creating artificial viruses will soon be a fairly easy task, which in turn will allow some violent individual to create and release a very dangerous infection, far more serious than the coronavirus we recently faced. You can learn more about these externalities and methods for fighting violence in another material titled “Violence: Problems and Solutions” [8].
Sources:
1. M. Olson “Dictatorship, Democracy, and Development”: http://ecsocman.hse.ru/data/2012/11/22/1251382788/13.pdf
2. R.L. Carneiro “A Theory of the Origin of the State”: https://vk.com/@bitarchy-teoriya-proishozhdeniya-gosudarstva-roberta-karneiro
3. Konrad Lorenz “King Solomon’s Ring,” chapter “Morality and Weaponry”: https://vk.com/@bitarchy-moral-i-oruzhie
4. V.R. Dolnik “Ethological Excursions into the Forbidden Gardens of Humanitarians”: http://vivovoco.astronet.ru/VV/PAPERS/ECCE/VV_EH4_W.HTM
5. Pavel Khokhlovsky “Universe 25: Crushing Critique of Myths and New Conclusions”: https://tjournal.ru/analysis/212316-vselennaya-25-razgromnaya-kritika-mifov-i-novye-vyvody
6. Bernard Thierry “Feedback Loop between Kinship and Dominance: The Macaque Model”: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022519305804850
7. Kathryn Stutzman “Are war and violence natural? Animal behavior and how it relates to humans”: https://www.goshen.edu/bio/Biol410/bsspapers05/Kat.html
8. Voluntarist “Violence: Problems and Solutions”: https://medium.com/voluntarity/насилие-проблемы-и-решения-c348a72c5bdc