The Root Cause of War and Violence
Welcome to the quest.
In trying to understand the "root cause" or origin of violence, and in trying to dig deeply into the roots of human nature and ourselves to do so . . . we must, first of all, throw away the simplistic, often one-word explanations that typically stifle efforts to take a deeper look into the matter.
For example,
"It's evil."
"It's senseless."
"It's stupidity."
"It's a mystery."
These "explanations," while possibly correct in one sense, explain nothing. One very pervasive aspect of our human nature seems to be our thinking that when we slap a label on something - even if that label is "mystery" - we think we understand it.
But the way we see it, these words should serve as a starting point, not as ending points. What, exactly, is behind these "senseless," "evil," "mysteries"? How can we really understand them more deeply?
In addition, throwing up the hands and saying "we'll never understand these things" - aside from being a pretty defeatist, unproductive, and loser-oriented mentality - is unproven. We do not know that we'll never understand.
But futility is futile, as the saying goes, and if there is even a possibility that an answer exists, then going in search of one is worth a try.
And a voyage of the mind and soul,
trekking into uncharted, mysterious lands
in search of questions that we don't have answers to . . .
well, that's exactly what your trusty LiveReal Editors are here for.
Many brilliant minds have attempted to tackle this problem before.
So it seems to us that a good place to start
is to analyze what progress they have made.
All this "adventure" business isn't as easy as it looks.
After many days, weeks, months, and years . . . hour after hour of slaving over hot keyboards, traveling the darkest corners of the globe and the most remote regions of the mind . . .
. . . we have emerged, intact and spunky,
with what we think is some pretty cool stuff.
Several of the most prominent modern theorists of human violence are analyzed here: Alice Miller, Ervin Staub, Carl Jung, Ernest Becker, and Charles Bellinger.
As part of our ongoing effort to save you, our friends and appreciated LiveReal readers time and energy, we will do our best to briefly summarize the conclusions of these researchers, outline their usefulness and shortcomings, and examine our current state of progress in regards to understanding what we are after.