Aggression

Abstract

Similar reports of violence appear in each day’s newspapers. While the use of guns is a fairly recent development in human history, violence is hardly new on the human scene. The pre-Christian Romans eradicated the populations of entire cities. Medieval religious leaders used poison to remove their undesirable acquaintances. In modern times over 6 million Jews were exterminated by the Nazi regime. Western civilization’s vast experience with aggression has done little to reduce violence. Judging by the number of people who meet violent death, human beings seem to be using their accumulated wisdom not to control or reduce aggression but to perfect the tools of violence.

The American government rejected the credentials of a proposed ambassador on the grounds that she was a murderer. She had enticed an influential general into meeting her alone for a love tryst. After urging him to send away his bodyguards and taking his gun, she alerted an ambush team which tortured and slew him in her boudoir. She is considered a national heroine in her country.

Newspapers recently reported that two brothers—accused leaders of an interstate burglary ring—made jokes about having killed three young members of their gang. As they led one victim to a grave that they had dug in the woods, they said that the young man noticed the hole and in an attempt to escape ran closer to it before he was shot. According to one of the killers, the brothers laughed about the fact that they didn't have to carry the victim so far in order to bury him.

In a recent magazine story, a well-educated 60-year-old woman wrote of her being regularly beaten by her husband, an outstanding community leader. One night, without provocation, he knocked her down and hurled her out of the house in the midnight chill. With a broken ankle she huddled on the front doorstep until dawn, afraid to wake the neighbors and reveal his brutal treatment. The next morning he drove her to a nearby hospital, where he reported that she had slipped on the ice walking the dog.