Pargar: Is Violence Innate to Human Beings?

Is violence in humans a result of growing up in a violent culture and society, or does it have a basis in human biology? Is violence innate to humans, or is it environmental and acquired?

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Is Violence Innate to Humans?

Is violence in humans a result of growing up in a violent culture and society, or does it have a basis in human biology? Is violence innate to humans, or is it environmental and acquired?

There are no few moments when, reading the news, we are astonished by the degree of human cruelty. It makes no difference—people in different societies. From the person in Norway who mows down dozens of teenagers, to the teenager in southern Tehran who abducts a young girl, kills her, and burns her body with acid. If we say these are sick individuals and that the human being is not a violent creature, we are confronted daily with difficult examples, examples that repeatedly pose the question to us: is there not a violent seed within the human being? Perhaps that is why violence has taken on very modern and complex forms, forms that sometimes render the scene and consequences of violence invisible. Now, a desk-bound person who has never seen war can, with the press of a button, carry out a deadly attack that results in the destruction of dozens of people somewhere on the other side of the globe. But these modern techniques cannot deter us from the question about violence. Is violence innate to humans? Yet calling violence innate in humans also confronts us with many counterexamples. Can one reach a judgment about violence in humans from the violent nature of a number of people?

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Pargar Program Debate Titled "Is Violence Innate to Humans?"

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Pargar Program | August 2016

Program Guests: Maziar Ashrafian Bonab, genetics specialist; Nazi Akbari, psychotherapist; and Reza Alijani, sociology graduate

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