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What are the reasons behind man's inhumanity to man?

Over the centuries, nothing has caused more pain and suffering for man than man himself. Through war, hate crimes, and random acts of violence, the fear of the different and unknown has made itself known in human nature.

What do you believe to be the most important motive(s)/reason(s) behind man's inhumane actions towards fellow man?

Man's desire for power? The exploitation of power? The exercising of power gained from a sense of superiority? Other?

Discuss.

Reply 1

Oswy

15

Asymetric power relations and fragmented social structures play their part. Capitalism seems to be the most spectacular era of man's willingness and (technological) ability to destroy each other, and themselves.

If only we could get back to hunter-gathering communities, with TV of course...

Reply 2

</gibberish>

12

"Survival of the fittest".

Reply 3

WaW™

3

laureleana

Over the centuries, nothing has caused more pain and suffering for man than man himself. Through war, hate crimes, and random acts of violence, the fear of the different and unknown has made itself known in human nature.

What do you believe to be the most important motive(s)/reason(s) behind man's inhumane actions towards fellow man?

Man's desire for power? The exploitation of power? The exercising of power gained from a sense of superiority? Other?

Discuss.

I think you've hit the nail on the head! "Fear of the unknown" man is/has always been scared of what might happen if this goes wrong etc so his actions are influenced by it.

I think Technology and the loss of trust has played a big part in this ie the Cold War.

Power/superiority too play a hand when one is in power there ego is massaged and this is where it all begins to go so terribly wrong.

Religion to certain extent too and other not letting it be - by arguing and saying this is right and this wrong has developed hatre between different religions and within them as well.

Greed and Money! Enough said.

Reply 4

Nightseye

7

I don't think it has that much to do with technology, people were torturing each other back in the Middle Ages!

I think it does have a relation to power and needing to dominate another. In the hunting and gathering times there was always one alpha-male (I presume, any history student probably knows much better than me), and all the other had to bow down to him. That natural order disappeared and humans sought the need to dominate by other means, because suddenly it wasn't a naturally chosen alpha-male, the roles became blurred...
..so blurred that now every man is considered equal and all feel the need to assert their power somehow, in the vain, unconscious aim of becoming an alpha...

I wonder if any of that made sense :redface:

Reply 5

Alasdair

14

WaW

I think Technology and the loss of trust has played a big part in this ie the Cold War.

It's worth pointing out that the Cold War wasn't actually a bad thing, when faced with the alternatives.

Without nuclear weapons, the Cold War wouldn't have happened, instead, WWIII would have flowed on rather quickly from WWII, and we probably would have still been fighting it in the 60's...

Reply 6

Lizsco3

1

It might just be down to natural selection and competition. We are after all, animals (with greater intelligence than almost all other animals) and part of nature, so our behaviour may have a biological basis to it. We do have an innate desire to just survive. Wild animals compete for territory, food, resources, mates, etc. A lot of wars have been caused by disputes over land, or what one feels is their territory. In impoverished countries, people will fight to get as many resources as they can in order to survive, which might lead to harming others to get these resources.

Reply 7

KEconomist

a one word anser- RATIONALITY - were rational beings and so seek to desire our self interests above all, as humans we have unlimited wants,therefore we constantly seek these wants, desire for land causes war, desire for the most effecient means causes exploitation, the natural human insecurity that arises from having power causes us to exercise that power as much as we can to ensure we dont loose it.

Reply 8

zzzzzoe

11

i think we're all just animals really.
so yeah! survival of the fittest, or something like that.

Reply 9

buggars belief

I agree with all the people who've said natural selection. It is the unfortunate truth that a behaviour combining a bit of nice with a large portion of nasty makes for surviving well. But it's great that we try to overcome that, and have got morals and realise that although it may seem fair enough to kill your disabled neighbour and take his money, it really isn't.
put simply: At least we (well most of us...) don't eat each other.

Reply 10

Asert

7

Greed, hatred and ignorance

Reply 11

Melancholy

20

Sin.

Reply 12

cottonmouth

11

Because someone who was made out of the rib of someone who was made out of dust ate an apple after being induced to by a talking snake, is the definitive answer to the question.

Back to reality, its simple human nature, survival of the fittest, etc. There is an innate feeling to get rid of the competition. Oh yeah, and money/greed. The Daily Mail.

Reply 13

Catsmeat

13

ChrisRH

"Survival of the fittest".

No, I would not suggest that. As a species we have gradually attempted to 'buffer' the effects of direct inter-sexual competition, and in an evolutionary perspective, as a species, humans display perhaps the least inter-sexual competition amongst all of the primates.

Issues such as fragmentation, fear, panic, greed, lust, power (and the acqusition of) all play a role, though I would hesitate to reduce it to one key foci. Inhumanity implies that we treat eachother with inhuman attitude, and this would imply such motivations as competition. There are many mechanisms that operate behind any social 'act', none of which are entirely personal and none of which are entirely social. A vague summary would suggest that it is a result of the 'human condition', but this cannot account for individual agency in the matter and simply reduces a complex web of motivations into a functional or subconscious reflex. No society is harmonious, and relations between individuals, as the base unit of any social network, will often have multiple motivations, yet none of which are strictly 'biological'.

Reply 14

LoveYourSlavery

Some people are born without the ability to feel compassion towards other human beings. They are called psychopaths. They don't look any different to you or me and they certainly don't all run around killing people randomly as you see in the Hollywood productions.

These people always have an advantage over normal people at getting to the top in any organisation as they are prepared to do whatever it takes to move up. They have an 'end justifies the means' mentality. They hate those beneath them in the system and they worship those above them.

This is how it is possible for great war planners to talk about loosing 10m innocent people just as you or I might talk about what we are going to have for dinner.

A film called Dr. Strangelove illustrates this mentality very well.

Reply 15

Seoid

The most basic instinct for a human is to survive, and secondly for the human's offspring to survive. Short term benefits will always seem more attractive than long term payoffs in this struggle to survive. Survival, historically and evolutionarily, means looking after your own interests. It makes sense to be selfish. Look after your own, screw everyone else. In fact, our basic psychology allows us to very easily categorise our fellow humans into "us" and "them". "Us" = good, like me, worthy of survival, right, worthy of protection. This category can include just our own family, or our family and friends or our entire country. It very very rarely includes the whole world - there is always someone we will see as threatening our survival, as "them." "Them" = different, dangerous, unworthy of survival, need to be stopped (think terrorists, rival countries, people who hold greater resources than us). This basic, catch-all mentality, that suits individual survival, but not overall world peace, leads to "man's inhumanity to man." It sounds terribly defeatist, but I believe it's the way we are, and it'll take a very long time to change, if it ever does.

Reply 16

LoveYourSlavery

Seoid

The most basic instinct for a human is to survive, and secondly for the human's offspring to survive. Short term benefits will always seem more attractive than long term payoffs in this struggle to survive. Survival, historically and evolutionarily, means looking after your own interests. It makes sense to be selfish. Look after your own, screw everyone else. In fact, our basic psychology allows us to very easily categorise our fellow humans into "us" and "them". "Us" = good, like me, worthy of survival, right, worthy of protection. This category can include just our own family, or our family and friends or our entire country. It very very rarely includes the whole world - there is always someone we will see as threatening our survival, as "them." "Them" = different, dangerous, unworthy of survival, need to be stopped (think terrorists, rival countries, people who hold greater resources than us). This basic, catch-all mentality, that suits individual survival, but not overall world peace, leads to "man's inhumanity to man." It sounds terribly defeatist, but I believe it's the way we are, and it'll take a very long time to change, if it ever does.

Yes the struggle to survive has often involved killing other tribes or people from other countries. This is why telling the public that they are being threatened is the most effective way to start any war.

However, the people who have to do the actual killing still found it goes against their natural humanity. This is why in WWI it was found that most of the soldiers fired above the heads of the enemy as, even though they were under imminent threat. Of course this has changed through the implementation of techniques which break down these barriers to the point where we now do have people in the military who can kill someone to simply prove a point to their mates and then laugh about it. Of course the people involved in the planning have never had a problem sending thousands of their own men to their deaths.

As for Darwinism, it is at best an incomplete theory which doesn't include such things as self sacrifice both animal and human. Though Darwin admitted himself that humans contradict the theory of survival of the fittest. If you look into Darwins family you might start to think that he's a rather strange person to be the supposed auther of a theory that has been adopted wholesale by the scientific establishment. The theory gives birth to a philosophy and it was a philosophy in which the Darwins and the Wedgewoods beleived in themselves. In Darwins own family, the results of this philosphy were disasterous.

Reply 17

Catsmeat

13

Seoid

The most basic instinct for a human is to survive, and secondly for the human's offspring to survive. Short term benefits will always seem more attractive than long term payoffs in this struggle to survive. Survival, historically and evolutionarily, means looking after your own interests. It makes sense to be selfish.

Again, in an evolutionary trajectory the human species has been marked by reduced inter-sex competition and an increased emphasis on so-called 'k strategies' of post-natal childcare. If you apply the 'survival of the fittest' model in an absolute sense you fail to consider collective or social sacrifice as a means to ensure the continuance of a lineage et al; if we're biologically conditioned to 'survive' there is no logical, biological explanation for sacrifice and matyrdom. In an evolutionary perspective the human 'condition' is marked by greater sociability rather than individualism (compare Gorilla and human social organisation to observe this).

Reply 18

Seoid

Catsmeat

Again, in an evolutionary trajectory the human species has been marked by reduced inter-sex competition and an increased emphasis on so-called 'k strategies' of post-natal childcare. If you apply the 'survival of the fittest' model in an absolute sense you fail to consider collective or social sacrifice as a means to ensure the continuance of a lineage et al; if we're biologically conditioned to 'survive' there is no logical, biological explanation for sacrifice and matyrdom. In an evolutionary perspective the human 'condition' is marked by greater sociability rather than individualism (compare Gorilla and human social organisation to observe this).

I explained about the whole ingroup/outgroup thing, the "us" and "them" phenomenon. I didn't mean selfishness in an individual sense, I mean a partisan attitude towards one's own group, be that a religious group, a family, a community or a whole country. This a very very strong psychological phenomenon, read some articles on it. Here are abstracts from two:

Anxiety and hostility to an 'outsider,' as moderated by low perceived power.

Abstract: The hostile and anxious responses of young adults to an immigrant (vs. native-born) stranger were examined as a function of participants' self-perceived power. In Studies 1 and 2, individuals with low perceived social power (males, in particular) showed high anxiety toward an "outsider" but more so if that individual was an immigrant (and thus posed an ambiguous threat to their position in the hierarchy). In Study 3, young adult males competed on a reaction time test with an immigrant or native-born rival. With immigrant rivals, males with low perceived social power showed relatively high aggression toward an immigrant rival and derogation of the rival's formidability; however, they showed a more deferential pattern with native-born rivals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)(from the journal abstract)

The development of in-group favoritism: Between social reality and group identity.

Abstract: This study examined how social reality restricts children's tendency for in-group favoritism in group evaluations. Children were faced with social reality considerations and with group identity concerns. Using short stories, in this experimental study, conducted among 3 age groups (6-, 8-, and 10-year-olds), the authors examined the trait attribution effects of reality constraints on eye-color differences and national group differences. The results show that the trait attributions of all age groups were restricted by the acceptance of socially defined reality. In addition, when the information about reality was not considered accurate, only the youngest children showed positive in-group favoritism. It is argued that these findings are useful in trying to reconcile some of the divergent and contrasting findings in the developmental literature on children's intergroup perceptions and evaluations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved)(from the journal abstract)

Ingroup outgroup mentality is what leads to racism, bigotry, bullying, "cliques," extreme identification with radical causes, etc.

We are not impartial, benevolent, altruistic beings, we are beings who seek for ourselves and those dear to us to survive at all costs.

Reply 19

Oswy

15

Seoid

We are not impartial, benevolent, altruistic beings, we are beings who seek for ourselves and those dear to us to survive at all costs.

I think you're offering a false dichotomy here. It's not a matter of humans being either 'altruistic' or 'selfish' but rather that as we've evolved as social animals - with complex cultures - we exhibit all kinds of behaviour which mediate - somewhat imperfectly - our instincts for self-preservation and reproduction etc, alongside our instincts for co-operation and behaviour directed at the success of our wider community. Plenty of humans have made conscious decisions not to have children, sometimes for religious reasons, sometimes because they prioritise their careers; humans are way more complicated in their behaviour than a simple socio-biological reading would have it. We might even be in a unique position as a species in that our cultural forms and influences can take priority over basic biological forces - in other words, we've evolved brains so big we can, and do, subvert nature's 'intent'.

What are the reasons behind man's inhumanity to man?

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