-Why Do Societies Become Non-Violent?-
These columns are derived from Howard Bloom's 3,900 chapters of raw notes for future books. They have not gone through the fact-checking and rewrite process to which Bloom subjects his published work. However we at the Big Bang Tango Media Lab find Bloom's notes fascinating. We hope that you enjoy them too.

Why are some societies more violent than others? South American societies were violent when Hegel described them in 1827. Societies go through developmental phases. The Western societies that today are relatively peaceful were ravaged by warfare in which peasants were murdered, raped and pillaged by their own troops in the 1300s.
South and Central America have countries where political violence is the norm and others where the politics are relatively peaceful. one thing distinguishes the two. The handful of countries where peace is common were not colonies of Spain, they were colonies of England. The differences have nothing to do with race. Both sets of countries are mixes of blacks, Indians and Europeans. They're differences of culture.
Something causes a tremendous shift in society from the premium placed on violence among people like the Sioux or the Yanomama to the premium placed on non violence in a society like ours, where parent's groups rise up to protest the violence on television and the spread of violent toys, or like the China of the 15th century, where the bulk of the citizens refused to fight an invasion. There's a massive shift from the premium placed on violence in 15th century England, where cock throwing was an exercise in personal violence and hunting was regarded as a noble sport and as a practice for war, to today's England with it's unarmed police officers and its incessant demonstrations for peace.

Yes, hard as it is to believe today, English citizens in the 1500s loved small instances of violence. They loved to watch bull dogs and pit bulls tear apart the bodies of living bulls and to watch the bulls strike back and try to gore, to spit and shish kebob the dogs. They loved bair-baiting, tormenting a bear intolerably. They loved to tie chickens to a post and pelt them to death with stones. Today all of that is gone. It's scarcely even remembered. Why?
South American countries seem to respect power and brutality. They hate the United States and fantasize about treating America with brutality. We keep trying to win their friendship. In Venezuela, the locals wanted to tear Richard Nixon apart and burn the pieces. They almost succeeded. Nixon was the symbol for America to the Venezuelans. If the Venezuelans or a great many other people in the so called Third World, had their way and rose in the hierarchical scale sufficiently to have power over us, they would treat us with a harsh violence it's hard for us to imagine.
Both militant Islam and Marxism idealize violence. Militant Islam sees itself as perpetually at war with a non-Islamic world. And Marxism holds as one of its highest values revolution. Revolution is the use of a gun to redistribute power. Marxist Nicaraguan children in the days of the Sandinistas were taught to count using coloring books with pictures of men with machine guns. Tiny Marxist states in the 1980s had standing armies that dwarf those of democracies. Marxist Ethiopia in the 1980s starved its citizens so its soldiers could have guns. When mankind glorifies violence, the killing of other men cannot end.
Some societies encourage violence toward children. Some say "spare the rod and spoil the child," a phrase that was once a common guide to parenting in our own society. Today our society even discourages spanking.
What's the difference between a society that dictates violence and one that dictates peace? What's the difference between one that dictates turning the other cheek and one that believes in an eye for an eye and the glory of battle? During the Russian Revolution, crowds gathered to see thieves beaten to death. Cries of pain were greeted with thrills of delight. A stable society has to de-emphasize violence. Violence is the primary means of redistributing resources. A stable society remains stable because the current resource distribution is more or less satisfactory.

Differing experiences during the growth of an animal or a human, cause different areas of the brain to develop. The brain of a cat raised indoors is different from that of a cat raised outdoors. Could this account for the abhorrence of violence that tends to accompany a large, stable, well organized empire and the love of violence that seems to characterize more primitive cultures? Are the brains of children in societies that idolize the violent sculpted by their violent heroes and their mass-murdering superstars? Fifty percent of the brain cells with which we're born are chiseled away by the time we're roughly five. Only those brain cells our society seems to value survive. Are the brain's violent capacities nurtured in a culture of violence during those first five years of life? Do those brain cells that restrain us and make us non-violent undergo preprogrammed cell death and morosely wither away?
Maslow's hierarchy of needs may help explain the rise of permissiveness and the shift from a violent orientation. What is the hierarchy of needs? If you can't breathe, you don't pay much attention to gourmet food. But if you've been breathing regularly for some time now, you come to take oxygen for granted and may become obsessed with the pursuit of caviar. in the days of hunters and gatherers, proto-Japanese were quite delighted to find berries and nuts in the woods. By modern times, when food was more plentiful, nuts and berries were referred to contemptuously in Japan as "famine food."

The shift from love of violence to its abhorrence probably comes as a society moves up the hierarchy of needs. The more needs it takes for granted, the less violent it wants to be. Now let's look at a possible reason for this quaint phenomenon. It's the old adage, "when you ain't got nothin' you got nothin' to lose." A pre-Englishman hunting acorns for tonight's meal and living in a cave could gain a great deal by clubbing his neighbor then making off with his mammoth chops and wife. But if a fifteenth-century Chinese citizen chose violence as his daily lot, he'd lose the comforts of the latest high tech gadgets and of food as exotic as morsels of roasted human baby flesh. He'd trade that in for life in the field, horrible rations, and a probable return to home in a box.

There's another plus to non-violence. You can turn your time to making things that others want and will pay you for. When you concentrate on production and innovation, you enrich not just yourself, you enrich your neighbors and you enrich the folk thousands of miles away who trade with you. The more production, the more there is to consume. Peace can bring riches. Violence can bring poverty.

In the days of the Romans and later, in the days when Arab armies conquered half the known world, violence brought you booty. Violence gave you the palaces, jewelry, wives, and daughters of those you conquered. But not today. Today violence destroys cities. Violence destroys wealth and leaves little to plunder. Violence leads to wreckage. Violence turns gardens into a desert. Violence leads, let me repeat, to poverty.
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In a message dated 98?03?11 07:12:25 EST, (friend) writes:
<< Just listened to the Audio Book of "How the Irish Saved Civilization". Describes how St. Patrick converted the Irish, taught them the ways of Christ's Peace, and set them up to be whipped by the Vikings later on. FASCINATING. The Darwinian social dilemma is that with predator avoidance the first priority in life, it is easy to learn to kill strangers. >> ESPECIALLY IF YOU ACCEPT THE IDEA THAT INTERGROUP COMPETITION PLAYS A SIGNIFICANT ROLE IN EVOLUTION. THIS WOULD MAKE KILLING STRANGERS BUT *NOT* KILLING YOUR FELLOW GROUP MEMBERS A NECESSITY. TO KILL OTHERS IN YOUR GROUP WOULD BE TO DIMINISH PART OF THE PROTECTIVE MECHANISM WHICH IS YOUR SHIELD AGAINST OTHER GROUPS??THE GROUP TO WHICH YOU BELONG AND WHICH DEFENDS YOU WHEN YOU COME UNDER ATTACK OR WISH TO ATTACK TO RAISE YOUR OWN GROUP'S STATUS AND BOUNTY. THE ONLY "BRETHREN" YOU'D WANT TO KILL WOULD BE "CRIMINALS," THOSE WHO BEHAVE IN SUCH A WAY AS TO WEAKEN THE GROUP STRUCTURE. cheers?? howard


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