Imagine this. You're brought up from when you were born in a totally chilled out environent, you had never seen a fight before, had never heard anybody raise their voice to anybody or anything and you werent aware what the word 'anger' even meant. There was no violence at all in the place you are brought up in. Do you think a person would get angry, do you think its in our nature or simply nurture?
Anger isn't a learned behavior. Ever see a baby get mad because it can't make itself understood yet? Red faced and howling like a banshee. What is learned behavior is the ability to push the envelope with it when you know you shouldn't. You learn how far you can go with it before it gets you into trouble. x
it may be an instinct. this doesn't exlude the possibility that we brought anger into existance. there is also a very definite gap between frustration and violence. i don't believe that violence is instinctual.
Even though there haven't been violent conflicts around, I think there may appear some feelings of mild anger, perhaps dissatisfaction or discontent with or about something.
I believe quite the opposite. Human beings, left to their own devices, will be very violent creatures. See: Entirety of human history. Most of the animal kingdom expresses violence other than eating other stuff. Lions fight and kill each other, deer, wolves, snakes, frogs, hippos, and a lot of others. To be truly human is to overcome that. Most violence is perpetrated by those who are emotionally twisted or immature, lacking in intellect, or just see it as what they need to resort to to survive. It's rarely university professors or scientists or philosophers or the more educated "enlightened" groups of people. We have the ability to set ourselves apart from the animal kingdom in this way. I relegate those who choose not to do so to the status of "animal."
so, if a human is raised in an environment lacking violence, will it behave violently? have we really answered this yet? we can't, until we create that environment. i think we all can agree it's worth it to try and find out.
The problem is that there is a difference between anger and violence. They are not synonymous. Anger is an emotion that is a healthy part of our make-up. Violence is a historical behavior. We began as animals and therefore we acted like animals. We were violent because instinct told us it was in our best interest. And it still does. Violence is always an easy solution to a problem. But we are an evolved species with the ability to control ourselves. The answer is maybe. We can not prove that a child would be violent if raised in a pacifist society, but the environment would greatly increase the chances of the child being non-violent. Is a child becoming frustrated or throwing a fit really considered violence? I'm sure there are cases of children being raised around certain ideologies there whole life being completely pacifistic. Buddhists temples for example...
I think xexon's response to the op shed's good light on the nature of anger - for better or worse it's a natural part of us - I would also include most animals in that, warm blooded ones, at least. After all, you can piss off your dog or cat and they will bite or scratch you to let you know - 'Enough!' - and then its over. Back to cleaning whiskers or chasing sticks; I read somewhere that anger is the feeling instrumental in setting limits - if your mental makeup is fairly healthy, you can detect where limits have been transgressed and anger gives you focus and energy to call a halt to the transgression. Problem is, for most of us there are all kinds of kinks (some of us worse than others) in our mental makeup so that anger is channeled inappropriately.
it is completely within human ability to set boundaries with love. we are evolving and there is no need to keep manifesting anger and violence. passion and strength, of course, but not anger.
