complete paper

NOTES

We often tend to see violence as consisting of discrete acts that are separate from each other, as if each violent incident occurred in a vacuum. But that is not the case. All violence is connected by a web of actions and behaviors, ideas, perceptions, and justifications. While the individual and situational dynamics of violent behavior may vary somewhat, they all share a number of essential characteristics that bind them together into what we can call the unity of human aggression.

They saw their violence as being justified and provoked, not as unfounded aggression. From this perspective, the American Indians, including the women and children, had brought about their own destruction by their opposition to colonization.

Research tells us that individuals who are violent in one setting are more likely to be violent in others and, in fact, the single best predictor for violent behavior is a history of previous violence. Of course, this does not mean that an individual who engages in violence is destined for a life of violence; it simply means that those who engage in violence are more likely to do so in the future and across different contexts compared to those without a violent history.

One possible cause for this ongoing problem in the military, according to various experts, may relate to the continuing stress and impact of repeated deployment to combat areas. The violence some soldiers experience in war zones, in other words, may travel home with them and impact their relationships in their private lives.

This is sometimes referred to as spillover theory, which suggests that the values and justifications for violence in socially approved settings “spill over” into other settings and result in illegitimate forms of violence.

War—another example of legitimate violence—has also been found to increase rates of illegitimate violence, not only by soldiers returning from the battlefield and engaging in domestic violence but in the larger society as well.

starting point to the problem of explaining the causes of human violence can be made with evolution and how it has impacted our propensity for violence. While much about our origins is unknown or disputed, what we do know is that we have evolved to inhabit a world in which violent behavior has often proved necessary for survival. Of course, the lives of other animals that inhabit our planet are also characterized by a great deal of violence.