WEBVTT - Name Thy Demons: The Roots of Human Violence 0:00:03.080 --> 0:00:05.920 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.920 --> 0:00:14.400 Works dot com. Hey you, welcome to Stuff to Blow 0:00:14.440 --> 0:00:17.840 your Mind. My name is Robert Lamp and I'm Christian Segar. Robert, 0:00:18.000 --> 0:00:22.160 you and I both play pretty violent video games and 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:26.520 enjoy them, but none of us are violent men. And 0:00:26.920 --> 0:00:29.000 I'm kind of curious about this. I mean, I spend 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:32.480 a good thirty to forty minutes a day just chilling 0:00:32.479 --> 0:00:36.280 out playing titan Fall and shooting a bunch of stuff, 0:00:36.720 --> 0:00:40.400 you know, and I find it relaxing. It's totally predicated 0:00:40.600 --> 0:00:44.479 on war and violence, and like the mechanics of the 0:00:44.520 --> 0:00:47.560 game like have like there's like kill executions and stuff 0:00:47.600 --> 0:00:49.760 that are you know, supposed to make it more thrilling 0:00:49.840 --> 0:00:53.320 or whatever. But like I get like a sort of 0:00:53.400 --> 0:00:57.560 zen quality of like clearing my mind from doing it. Yeah, 0:00:57.600 --> 0:00:59.840 it's interesting to take it apart. I mean it's true. 0:00:59.880 --> 0:01:02.440 I I've never thrown or taken a punch in my life. 0:01:03.120 --> 0:01:06.360 I've never had like a true interest in personal martial arts, 0:01:06.360 --> 0:01:08.800 except you know, maybe it's just a possible way of 0:01:08.840 --> 0:01:12.920 like exploring your body awareness. I could see the appeal there. Yeah, 0:01:13.040 --> 0:01:15.920 violent media has always been present in my life. I 0:01:15.959 --> 0:01:18.280 write violent things from time to time. I've always been 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:22.759 a fan of of the simulated yet impactful theater violence 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:25.959 of professional wrestling. Uh, and it does make me wonder 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:28.360 to what it's extent is there like this innate violent 0:01:28.400 --> 0:01:32.559 aspect of of of humanity that finds its way out 0:01:32.600 --> 0:01:35.200 in these forms. I mean, I also ask these questions 0:01:35.240 --> 0:01:37.720 when I observed my my five year old son. I'm 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:39.920 around him all the time. I don't know to what 0:01:40.000 --> 0:01:43.480 extent the influences of other children play into his uh, 0:01:43.720 --> 0:01:46.320 his uh, his demeanor, but but I know that he 0:01:46.360 --> 0:01:49.480 digs mostly sweet things at his age. He like the animals, 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:54.280 he likes totorow and yet he easily took to dinosaur violence. Uh. 0:01:54.360 --> 0:01:57.279 And he likes to climb on me in a manner 0:01:57.320 --> 0:01:59.840 that feels kind of wrestling esque, and he's taken to 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:03.920 sort of punching me, but he's not. He doesn't call 0:02:04.040 --> 0:02:07.320 him punches. He's he pretends that his fists are dinosaur 0:02:07.320 --> 0:02:12.440 eradicating asteroids and he'll go asteroids falling, and then he uh, 0:02:12.760 --> 0:02:17.000 he's sort of like that. Your kid is acting out 0:02:17.080 --> 0:02:21.640 like mass extinction level genocide with a punch. That's pretty amazing. Yeah, 0:02:21.680 --> 0:02:24.400 Like the first time you watched Panio, another Miyazaki film. 0:02:24.800 --> 0:02:26.799 He was a little upset because Panio's dad was a 0:02:26.840 --> 0:02:30.520 little too serious. Granted he's voiced by Liam Neeson in 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:33.200 the version he's watching, but he got upset over that 0:02:33.960 --> 0:02:36.160 and had to grow to where he could watch Panio. 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:40.640 But and but yet dinosaur eradication via extinction of it, 0:02:40.840 --> 0:02:43.480 he's totally on board. Yeah. Oh, I imagine, like he's 0:02:43.480 --> 0:02:46.519 seen skeletons and museums and stuff like that of dinosaurs, 0:02:46.480 --> 0:02:49.600 so he's got a firm grasp on that. Yeah. Well, 0:02:49.680 --> 0:02:52.480 you know, I've been thinking a lot about this lately, 0:02:52.600 --> 0:02:56.400 not just your son and and like the progression of violence, 0:02:56.400 --> 0:03:01.160 but just violence in general. It's been in the news lately. 0:03:01.320 --> 0:03:04.000 And I'm saying that now, and I suppose you could 0:03:04.040 --> 0:03:07.120 say that at any period of time, right, there's been 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:10.720 violence in the news recently. It just feels like it's 0:03:10.760 --> 0:03:14.440 it's it's omnipresent, and it it's been kind of disturbing me. 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:17.600 So a friend suggested that I read Stephen Pinker's The 0:03:17.639 --> 0:03:22.000 Better Angels of Our Nature for reassurance, because essentially the 0:03:22.000 --> 0:03:24.240 premise of this book is that the world is actually 0:03:24.400 --> 0:03:27.160 less violent than it used to be and things are 0:03:27.240 --> 0:03:31.600 getting better in terms of violence, but slowly. It doesn't 0:03:31.600 --> 0:03:35.280 seem like it in the present because the media's attention 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:37.280 is very much on the sort of like it bleeds, 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:41.560 it leads news, right, So of course, like there's constantly 0:03:41.560 --> 0:03:45.040 going to be stories about shootings or bombings or fires 0:03:45.240 --> 0:03:49.360 or knife attacks, right, And this kind of stuff is 0:03:49.400 --> 0:03:53.520 pretty disturbing and upsetting, and I think in a cynical 0:03:53.560 --> 0:03:56.200 worldview makes you think like, oh gosh, like we are 0:03:56.280 --> 0:04:00.320 just you know, bent on utter self destruction. But Ker's 0:04:00.360 --> 0:04:02.920 book actually makes a really good point that we're not, 0:04:03.480 --> 0:04:05.880 and that there are a lot of ways in which 0:04:05.920 --> 0:04:09.480 we're rising up out of that. Now you're probably asking 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:11.040 you some of you may be asking yourself. Who is 0:04:11.040 --> 0:04:15.840 Stephen pinker Well. He's a Canadian born American cognitive scientist, psychologist, linguist, 0:04:16.200 --> 0:04:18.760 and popular science writer. His name has come at a 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:22.320 time or two on the podcast. I think, uh, what 0:04:22.360 --> 0:04:25.120 was it? Euphanisms? I think we're one of the recent 0:04:25.160 --> 0:04:28.720 things we're discussing euphanisms and Pinker's writing he talks about 0:04:28.760 --> 0:04:32.640 euphemisms and here in relation to ideology, So we'll touch 0:04:32.640 --> 0:04:35.680 on that a little bit. And actually this episode. This 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:38.320 is like a meta stuff to blow your mind episode, 0:04:38.320 --> 0:04:41.120 because I feel like we're really zooming up big picture, 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:49.240 looking at human biology, evolution, philosophy, and very specifically neuroscience 0:04:49.279 --> 0:04:52.640 in a lot of cases. But it touches on many 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:55.800 episodes that you and Joe and I have have done 0:04:55.800 --> 0:04:58.040 in the past, so we'll be bringing in stuff from 0:04:58.200 --> 0:04:59.719 that as well. Yeah, we're gonna be zipping down the 0:04:59.760 --> 0:05:01.560 high way here, and along the way, they're gonna be 0:05:01.560 --> 0:05:04.479 some exits to look very interesting. In some cases, those 0:05:04.480 --> 0:05:07.320 are avenues we've explored before. In other cases are avenues 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:09.600 that we can explore in the future. So let us 0:05:09.600 --> 0:05:11.600 know and we'll either direct you in the right direction 0:05:11.800 --> 0:05:14.320 or accord a new episode that lines up with that area. 0:05:14.760 --> 0:05:17.640 So just up front, I should establish that this book, 0:05:17.680 --> 0:05:20.400 The Better Angels of Our Nature is massive. It's like 0:05:20.440 --> 0:05:23.159 eight hundred nine hundred pages long. So there's no way 0:05:23.200 --> 0:05:25.680 we could do an episode that would be of like 0:05:25.839 --> 0:05:28.680 normal length for you to listen to where Robert and 0:05:28.680 --> 0:05:31.400 I had discussed this entire book. It's just too big 0:05:31.440 --> 0:05:34.560 to do that. So for this episode, we're really honing 0:05:34.640 --> 0:05:38.240 in on a section that he refers to as inner Demons, 0:05:38.279 --> 0:05:44.120 and this is where he explains why human beings are violent, 0:05:44.240 --> 0:05:46.200 and he does a really good job of doing it 0:05:46.200 --> 0:05:50.839 by doing this massive literature review of of human existence 0:05:50.920 --> 0:05:53.400 and sort of how we've applied violence over time, but 0:05:53.480 --> 0:05:58.640 also what we've learned about violence through various research methods. Uh, 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:01.080 we're gonna touch the other stuff that's in the book, 0:06:01.120 --> 0:06:02.719 and like Robert said, like if if some of it 0:06:02.760 --> 0:06:05.080 comes up and you say, like, oh, I would like 0:06:05.120 --> 0:06:07.400 a full episode on that, you know, we may gloss 0:06:07.440 --> 0:06:09.840 over it here, but talk to us and maybe we'll 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:12.040 be able to do something in the future. So he 0:06:12.120 --> 0:06:17.200 starts off with doing this overall huge data analysis. Basically, 0:06:17.200 --> 0:06:19.000 I think it's like the first six chapters of the 0:06:19.040 --> 0:06:21.640 book where he essentially looks at the course of human 0:06:21.720 --> 0:06:24.920 history and says, yeah, violence is a major part of it, 0:06:25.120 --> 0:06:28.160 and it seems to be very specific to our species. 0:06:28.520 --> 0:06:32.640 But it doesn't have a fixed rate. So violence isn't 0:06:32.720 --> 0:06:36.080 like a human urge in the way that sexes or 0:06:36.200 --> 0:06:39.400 hunger or sleep. And he says, in fact, if you 0:06:39.440 --> 0:06:44.400 look at the data presented, violence has actually declined over time, 0:06:44.480 --> 0:06:47.159 and there's plenty of evidence that human beings are in 0:06:47.240 --> 0:06:50.800 fact averse to violence. So for instance, uh, this is 0:06:50.839 --> 0:06:52.600 something we've talked about on the show before it comes 0:06:52.680 --> 0:06:55.640 up in the office a little bit too, that there's 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:59.560 an example that most soldiers in war don't actually fire 0:06:59.640 --> 0:07:03.880 with the tent to kill during wartime. This observation comes 0:07:03.880 --> 0:07:06.400 from the Second World War and from historian and US 0:07:06.640 --> 0:07:10.240 Army bridgetier General S. L. A. Marshal, and he reported 0:07:10.240 --> 0:07:13.920 the firing way it was fifteen and out of every 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:16.360 hundred men engaged in a firefight, only fifteen to twenty 0:07:16.400 --> 0:07:19.360 actually use their weapon. And then in Vietnam, for every 0:07:19.640 --> 0:07:22.520 enemy soldiers killed, more than fifty thousand bullets were fired. 0:07:23.080 --> 0:07:25.680 But we have to point out that some critics have 0:07:25.800 --> 0:07:29.880 charged that Marshall's observations were more observational than a true 0:07:29.920 --> 0:07:33.960 science scientific study, and others have been less kind. Yeah, 0:07:34.320 --> 0:07:36.480 so it's I mean, you can you can look at 0:07:36.480 --> 0:07:38.680 that and maybe, like, if you're worried about the amount 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:40.600 of human violence that's going on in the world, you 0:07:40.600 --> 0:07:43.560 can say, well, that's an encouraging sign, right right, And 0:07:43.560 --> 0:07:45.400 and I and I should also point out that this 0:07:45.440 --> 0:07:49.440 is just one of the many examples that Pinker draws upon, 0:07:49.760 --> 0:07:52.240 and so he's not basing everything just on this on 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:55.680 this thing about to kill stats. Uh, and in general, 0:07:55.840 --> 0:07:58.840 when we're talking about Pinker's argument that violence is going 0:07:59.120 --> 0:08:03.480 going down, he is talking about over arching statistical evidence 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:07.760 and just in the broad picture of human culture, obviously 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:11.280 an individual human is still capable of staggering cruelty and violence. 0:08:11.600 --> 0:08:14.480 We know the examples. We preserve the examples in our 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:17.720 cultures like specimens on a shelf. But again we have 0:08:17.760 --> 0:08:19.840 to come back to what does the larger pictures say, 0:08:19.880 --> 0:08:23.760 What are the larger trends for humanity itself? And so 0:08:23.840 --> 0:08:28.239 for evidence of human violence. Pinker actually at first turns 0:08:28.320 --> 0:08:32.199 to one of the an unlikely area that I would 0:08:32.200 --> 0:08:34.800 think of, But actually, when you brought up your son earlier, 0:08:34.840 --> 0:08:37.640 it makes sense. He looks at two year olds as 0:08:37.679 --> 0:08:41.520 being the most violent stage of humanity, basically talking about 0:08:41.520 --> 0:08:43.240 and you would know better than I do, but you 0:08:43.280 --> 0:08:46.400 know that like at that age, we're thrashing around a lot, 0:08:46.440 --> 0:08:48.360 We're more likely to get angry at the drop of 0:08:48.360 --> 0:08:51.640 a hat or burst into tears and and really like uh, 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:56.880 kind of exert like dominance and revenge kind of tactics 0:08:56.880 --> 0:08:59.640 over small petty things. Yeah, I don't know, it's a 0:08:59.640 --> 0:09:01.920 difficult want to rule on because I just have the 0:09:01.960 --> 0:09:07.679 one child too to base my observations on, and then 0:09:07.679 --> 0:09:09.600 every kid is going to be a little different. Maybe 0:09:09.600 --> 0:09:12.560 Pinker just had some really rough kids. Yeah, I don't know. 0:09:12.600 --> 0:09:14.160 I mean when I guess one of the things is 0:09:14.360 --> 0:09:17.600 when emotional responses are coming online for young children, there 0:09:17.640 --> 0:09:20.880 are less filters, so when they feel mad over something, 0:09:20.960 --> 0:09:23.360 they feel it, and then when they feel happy about something, 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:26.520 they just feel it. And so you observe these these 0:09:26.679 --> 0:09:29.319 for what what for an adult would be just crazy 0:09:29.400 --> 0:09:32.120 mood swings, but for a child, like that's the power 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:34.960 they're they're painting with. But even when you look at 0:09:34.960 --> 0:09:38.839 the statistics related to adults, it gets a little bit 0:09:38.840 --> 0:09:41.840 scary in terms of how much we fantasize about violence. 0:09:42.200 --> 0:09:46.160 Seventy of men and fifty to eighty percent of women 0:09:46.240 --> 0:09:49.680 in a study, and these were all college students, admitted 0:09:49.720 --> 0:09:53.520 that they fantasized about killing someone. Uh. And this kind 0:09:53.520 --> 0:09:55.720 of gets into the sort of idea, like the general 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:59.160 idea that bad people actually do what good people dream 0:09:59.200 --> 0:10:02.120 about doing. Right, and this is why we have this 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:05.400 violent fiction and fun right like our video games where 0:10:05.440 --> 0:10:08.360 we're shooting everything or we're watching horror movies or action 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:10.840 movies or whatever. I think I think that the language 0:10:10.840 --> 0:10:12.400 here is very important. Like when we use terms like 0:10:12.480 --> 0:10:16.079 fantasize that that makes it sound like you're like the 0:10:16.400 --> 0:10:19.440 revenge fantasy on my head. Here is just I'm really, 0:10:20.080 --> 0:10:22.240 I'm really getting off on this vision of me, uh, 0:10:22.800 --> 0:10:26.679 punching that guy in the face. Whereas and we'll get 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:29.160 into this more later on, but if you view it 0:10:29.240 --> 0:10:32.920 as a sort of mental simulation, if you're thinking of 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:36.240 the things that I could do in response to this uh, 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:39.360 you know, this individual uh ticking me off or offending 0:10:39.400 --> 0:10:42.520 me in somewhat some fashion. Of all the possible things 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:45.240 I can do, punching them is one of those things. 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:47.920 And here is how it might play out in my mind. 0:10:48.040 --> 0:10:49.760 Here are the pros, here the cons. Here's how it 0:10:49.840 --> 0:10:52.000 might make me feel. But then here's how it might 0:10:52.000 --> 0:10:54.560 feel to to get arrested. So if you look at 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:56.120 it from that point of view, it's like it's not 0:10:56.360 --> 0:10:59.559 it's not as creepy and weird as fantasizing about violence. 0:10:59.600 --> 0:11:02.560 It's more like, yeah, your brain knows that violence is 0:11:02.600 --> 0:11:05.079 always an option. It's just to what degree does your 0:11:05.080 --> 0:11:09.720 brain say that it's almost always never worth the effort. Yeah, 0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:12.160 and pinker later, you know, goes on to describe that 0:11:12.200 --> 0:11:15.360 as sort of one of our angels rather than our deanons, 0:11:15.440 --> 0:11:19.520 is the ability to rationalize risk assessment, essentially whether or 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:22.280 not the risk and reward is worth it for violence. 0:11:22.880 --> 0:11:26.839 But where it gets really and it's really worth us 0:11:27.400 --> 0:11:31.920 zooming in on is the neuroscience, because neurosurgeons have described 0:11:32.200 --> 0:11:35.760 something that's referred to as the rage circuit in the 0:11:35.760 --> 0:11:38.760 mammalian brain. And I'm gonna walk you through this using 0:11:38.800 --> 0:11:41.360 a rat's brain as an example to start off, why 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:44.480 did you bring that in in your pocket? Or you know, well, 0:11:44.520 --> 0:11:46.880 I've got the rat. I figured I might as well 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:49.559 take the brain out. Uh. So, here we've got the 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:52.680 rat brain. It has a pathway that connects three major 0:11:52.760 --> 0:11:55.960 structures in the lower parts of its brain, and these 0:11:55.960 --> 0:12:00.200 are similar to other mammalian brains like humans. A aller 0:12:00.280 --> 0:12:04.439 of tissue in there is called the para aqueductal gray 0:12:04.480 --> 0:12:07.720 and this is comprised of gray matter that is surrounded 0:12:07.720 --> 0:12:11.040 by a fluid filled canal that runs from the spinal 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:14.160 cord to the brain. And this is essentially where this 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:17.840 rage circuit lies. It contains all the inputs that create 0:12:17.840 --> 0:12:21.800 our irritation, things like pain and hunger and blood pressure 0:12:21.440 --> 0:12:24.400 and our heart rate and temperature and our hearing, and 0:12:24.440 --> 0:12:27.400 so the para aqueductal gray is partly under the control 0:12:27.480 --> 0:12:33.040 of our hypothalamus, and it's regulating emotional, motivational, and physiological states. 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:37.240 It sits on the pituitary gland, which is pumping hormones 0:12:37.360 --> 0:12:41.920 into the bloodstream, regulating cortisol from our adrenal glands, and 0:12:41.960 --> 0:12:45.240 cortisol is pretty important here in terms of like the biochemistry. 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:50.040 The hypothalamus itself then is regulated by the amygdala, which 0:12:50.160 --> 0:12:54.720 is applying our memory and our motivation, giving emotional coloring 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:57.880 to our thoughts. So on top of all of this, 0:12:57.880 --> 0:13:02.280 this entire rage circuit is the cerebral cortex, and that 0:13:02.520 --> 0:13:07.760 patches into our eye sockets literally with the orbital cortex. 0:13:08.200 --> 0:13:10.160 These terms are going to be important later as we're 0:13:10.200 --> 0:13:15.360 going through sort of methods of rage turning into violence. Now, 0:13:15.360 --> 0:13:17.040 I'm going to step away from Pinker for just a 0:13:17.080 --> 0:13:21.720 second to discuss uh some ideas by neurobiologists Douglas Fields. 0:13:21.760 --> 0:13:24.960 These are not ideas that are contrary to Pinker's arguments. 0:13:24.960 --> 0:13:28.000 I think they line up rather nicely in fact, as 0:13:28.080 --> 0:13:30.480 as we continue on with the discussion, but Fields has 0:13:30.520 --> 0:13:32.760 written a great deal about the rage circuit as well, 0:13:32.800 --> 0:13:35.800 and he argues that violent behavior is often the result 0:13:35.800 --> 0:13:38.880 of the clash between the modern world and the evolutionary 0:13:39.000 --> 0:13:42.640 hardwiring of our brains. We all have triggers, he says, 0:13:42.679 --> 0:13:44.160 and we have to be aware of them in order 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:47.520 to manage them. And uh, these are the triggers that 0:13:47.559 --> 0:13:51.760 he proposes. It spells out the word life morts, So 0:13:51.880 --> 0:13:53.920 that's I didn't know that was a real word. Yeah, 0:13:53.960 --> 0:13:58.959 life morts. There's so many great band ideas already, Rage circuit, life, more, life, 0:13:58.960 --> 0:14:01.080 more more. It's his L I F E M O 0:14:01.200 --> 0:14:03.800 r t s That L is for life and limb 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:07.720 that's defensive aggression as a trigger for your violence. Then 0:14:07.760 --> 0:14:12.040 I for insult, F for family or maternal aggression. So 0:14:12.080 --> 0:14:14.719 you're protecting your family, protecting your your your child, or 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:17.360 at least that's the argument in your brain. Then there's 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:22.080 an environment to territorialism. Then M for mate, which does 0:14:22.120 --> 0:14:26.160 not refer to British pub brawls but rather made benheaviorimating aggression. 0:14:26.600 --> 0:14:29.600 Then there's oh for organization, the organization you're part of 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:33.880 are for resources or lack of resources, T for tribe, 0:14:34.760 --> 0:14:38.320 an s for stop and this one refers to being trapped, 0:14:38.360 --> 0:14:41.960 constrained or cornered. Yeah, And as we'll discover with Pinker, 0:14:42.040 --> 0:14:45.120 that s part that being trapped, restrained, or cornered, that's 0:14:45.120 --> 0:14:49.480 when humans can be their most violent. Quick quote from Fields. 0:14:49.520 --> 0:14:52.600 This is from a National Geographic interview. He says, you're 0:14:52.640 --> 0:14:55.200 not going to engage in violence and risk life and 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:59.000 limb for a trivial reason. There are very specific triggers. 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:02.080 So that's the it's key here. The even though our 0:15:02.160 --> 0:15:06.240 violence within the modern framework is irrational in many cases, 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:11.480 it's tied into evolved responses that makes sense in the 0:15:11.520 --> 0:15:14.400 in the like the long history of human evolution and 0:15:14.440 --> 0:15:17.960 sort of the the the the full temporal picture of 0:15:18.080 --> 0:15:22.200 the human being. Yeah, and Pinker makes this point and 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:25.160 I'm gonna cap it at the end of our episode two. 0:15:25.200 --> 0:15:28.840 But that, like, the ability to define these things and 0:15:28.920 --> 0:15:32.440 recognize what's within ourselves that makes us capable of violence 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:36.800 is sort of the first step towards stopping it from happening. Indeed. Uh, 0:15:36.840 --> 0:15:41.200 And so it's whether it's Fields model or it's Pinker's model, 0:15:41.520 --> 0:15:43.280 you know, that just depends on what sort of like 0:15:43.480 --> 0:15:48.400 linguistic thing you're applying on top of it. But both help. Now. 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:52.960 Pinker also focuses on practicality of violence, and he says, 0:15:53.280 --> 0:15:55.920 when you move toward harming a fellow human, it must 0:15:55.920 --> 0:15:59.280 accomplish two things. It's got to be at least increase 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:02.320 the chance at the target will come to harm, and 0:16:02.400 --> 0:16:05.720 it will give the your target and overriding goal of 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:09.160 harming you before you harm them. This means we have 0:16:09.240 --> 0:16:12.480 to consider the consequences of our actions practically, like we're 0:16:12.480 --> 0:16:16.080 talking about earlier risk reward rationality. This is why most 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:21.200 human violence is cowardly, stealthy, and preemptive. Right, so we 0:16:21.320 --> 0:16:24.160 tend to do it from afar, or you know, do 0:16:24.200 --> 0:16:26.720 it when somebody's not looking or or not be a 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:29.880 part of it. Right. Um, it's very rare that like 0:16:30.080 --> 0:16:33.360 somebody will be so psychopathic that they will like, uh, 0:16:33.880 --> 0:16:36.640 just you know, murder hundreds of people face to face, 0:16:37.600 --> 0:16:41.760 because the human averseness to that violence is biological. I 0:16:41.840 --> 0:16:44.560 briest to mind all these examples as generally from our fiction, 0:16:44.600 --> 0:16:47.600 where like one character demands that the villain fight them 0:16:47.600 --> 0:16:50.160 fair and square, right, and but yeah, this is generally 0:16:50.200 --> 0:16:53.240 not what we do. We're all about taking advantage and 0:16:53.280 --> 0:16:56.200 having the upper hand. Oh yeah, and there's absolutely evolutionary 0:16:56.280 --> 0:16:59.760 reasons for that too. Another component of that that Pinker 0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:02.600 brings up is something that he refers to his forward panic, 0:17:02.880 --> 0:17:05.320 and this is when humans face an opponent in a 0:17:05.400 --> 0:17:08.520 long state of apprehension and fear, and then when they 0:17:08.520 --> 0:17:11.240 can catch that opponent in a moment of vulnerability, it 0:17:11.359 --> 0:17:15.000 leads to just utterly savage violence. This is human beings 0:17:15.000 --> 0:17:18.080 that they're worse. So going back to that model that 0:17:18.200 --> 0:17:21.879 Fields has earlier, that's when you're trapped or restrained or cornered, right, 0:17:21.880 --> 0:17:24.960 and you've got the opportunity to break free from that, 0:17:25.040 --> 0:17:27.520 and that you just see human beings just going to 0:17:27.760 --> 0:17:31.040 just utter carnage. Then, yeah, this is basically the whole 0:17:31.080 --> 0:17:33.520 idea of the Purge series, right, yeah, yeah, you know, 0:17:33.760 --> 0:17:35.879 I hadn't really thought of it before, but like those 0:17:36.320 --> 0:17:41.159 speak to sort of a real like inner uh quandary 0:17:41.280 --> 0:17:45.560 of human violence. So he also argues though, that the 0:17:45.600 --> 0:17:48.080 way that we get away with that in our own 0:17:48.160 --> 0:17:51.720 heads is because we have something called a moralization gap, 0:17:52.200 --> 0:17:56.200 and this is where we create narratives of victims and perpetrators, 0:17:56.240 --> 0:17:59.440 and they diverge, and only really a neutral party can 0:17:59.560 --> 0:18:02.520 see how they diverge from one another. So it's really 0:18:02.640 --> 0:18:06.000 kind of self serving thinking. That's a form of cognitive dissonance, 0:18:06.000 --> 0:18:08.879 and we develop all kinds of mental strategies of self 0:18:08.960 --> 0:18:12.720 deception to help support it. Subsequently, this quirk in psychology 0:18:12.800 --> 0:18:16.360 means no one thinks they're evil, right like you hear 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:18.679 you think about that in the world, like people who 0:18:18.720 --> 0:18:21.399 are described as villains, No one sits around and thinks 0:18:21.480 --> 0:18:24.920 I'm evil, I'm doing evil right. They all think that 0:18:24.960 --> 0:18:28.200 what they're doing is innocent and that they themselves are 0:18:28.280 --> 0:18:32.720 long suffering victims within their own narratives, so they always 0:18:32.720 --> 0:18:35.840 think they're acting morally. And Pinker reminds us here of 0:18:35.880 --> 0:18:40.200 Hannah Errant's infamous term the banality of evil, when referring 0:18:40.200 --> 0:18:44.200 to the ordinariness of the Nazis atrocities during World War Two. 0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:47.320 It's worth remembering this when you're looking at our storytelling 0:18:47.359 --> 0:18:49.560 to write, Like whether you're making a story, you're watching 0:18:49.560 --> 0:18:52.800 a movie or reading a book, even the worst bad 0:18:52.840 --> 0:18:56.879 guy has justifications for why they think what they're doing 0:18:57.000 --> 0:18:59.160 is right, you know. And so when when we tend 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:01.119 to watch fiction is just like, this guy is just 0:19:01.200 --> 0:19:03.760 evil for the sake of being evil. At least in 0:19:03.800 --> 0:19:07.240 this current day and age, that's not necessarily engaging for us, 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:10.400 right right, Yeah, you need some idea of their motivations 0:19:10.400 --> 0:19:14.400 and why they view their actions as righteous. Yeah. Um, 0:19:14.880 --> 0:19:16.560 and again this all makes perfect sense if you look 0:19:16.560 --> 0:19:19.719 at things from a life morts standpoint. The triggers are 0:19:19.760 --> 0:19:22.880 they're they're evolved to enable survival, and what you can 0:19:22.880 --> 0:19:26.560 think of is the temporally average human, the tribal hunter gatherer, 0:19:26.600 --> 0:19:31.480 the hominid. All of this culture business is relatively new. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. 0:19:32.240 --> 0:19:35.280 A couple other terms I want to establish upfront for 0:19:35.400 --> 0:19:38.680 Pinker before we get into what his quote unquote demons are. 0:19:38.880 --> 0:19:41.560 Another thing that he describes within the brain is the 0:19:41.640 --> 0:19:45.080 seeking system, and this runs from the fore brain through 0:19:45.119 --> 0:19:47.160 a bundle of fibers in the middle of the brain 0:19:47.240 --> 0:19:51.520 to the ventral striatum, which we call the reptilian brain. 0:19:51.880 --> 0:19:54.840 It was discovered in rats when psychologists realized that if 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:58.760 they stimulated it with an electrode via a lever, the 0:19:58.880 --> 0:20:01.840 rats themselves they would at this lever it was stimulate 0:20:01.880 --> 0:20:04.200 the electrode in their own brain and what they would 0:20:04.240 --> 0:20:07.199 start doing is hitting the lever over and over and 0:20:07.240 --> 0:20:09.679 over against stimulating that part of their brain until they 0:20:09.680 --> 0:20:13.879 became utterly exhausted. And these connections are actually two way, 0:20:13.960 --> 0:20:17.480 they're not top down. So all these components in the brain, 0:20:17.520 --> 0:20:20.560 they're talking to each other. The neurons within are signaling 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:25.200 each other with the neurotransmitter dopamine, and this motivates animals 0:20:25.240 --> 0:20:29.399 to achieve goals for instance, hunting. Uh. There's actually also 0:20:29.480 --> 0:20:32.600 a fear circuit that is theorized and it's connected to 0:20:32.600 --> 0:20:36.080 the rage circuit. Some extreme fear, so this goes back 0:20:36.119 --> 0:20:37.919 to what we were talking about about being you know, 0:20:38.040 --> 0:20:43.880 caught or trapped. Extreme fear will trigger an enraged, defensive 0:20:43.880 --> 0:20:46.800 attack or violence, So there you go. Likewise, there may 0:20:46.800 --> 0:20:50.639 be another motivational system that triggers violence that is referred 0:20:50.640 --> 0:20:55.360 to here as inter mail aggression or the dominance system. Basically, 0:20:55.440 --> 0:20:58.040 the idea here is that the seeking system in our 0:20:58.080 --> 0:21:01.960 brain leads males of a species to willingly seek out 0:21:02.000 --> 0:21:07.040 aggressive challenges with other males, and this sometimes also leads 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:11.200 to blind rage. Now, the difference here between the rat 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:13.800 brain that I've got here in my hand and our 0:21:13.920 --> 0:21:19.000 human brains is that these structures are enveloped by large 0:21:19.000 --> 0:21:23.919 bloated cerebrum. The for humans, we have this big cerebrum 0:21:23.960 --> 0:21:26.920 surrounding all of this stuff, and and it's taken up 0:21:27.040 --> 0:21:31.600 by the frontal lobes, which possibly contends with our rage 0:21:31.680 --> 0:21:36.280 and fear with things like restraint, prudence, and morality. And 0:21:36.400 --> 0:21:39.359 this is where Phineas Gauge comes up. Good old Phineas Gauge. 0:21:39.400 --> 0:21:41.440 I can't imagine how many episodes if you go back 0:21:41.440 --> 0:21:43.720 through the stuff to blow your mind catalog, he comes 0:21:43.800 --> 0:21:46.399 up as an example. Yeah, Phineas Gauge, it comes up. 0:21:46.400 --> 0:21:49.080 It comes up quite a bit. This was a nineteenth 0:21:49.160 --> 0:21:53.000 century individual. There was a freak railway accident that blasted 0:21:53.000 --> 0:21:56.720 a crowbar like tool called a tamping iron up through 0:21:56.760 --> 0:21:59.919 his skull. It entered under the left cheekbone and exit 0:22:00.040 --> 0:22:02.720 through the top of his head, and it basically gave 0:22:02.800 --> 0:22:07.320 him a frontal lobotomy. So when I was in high school, Uh, 0:22:07.440 --> 0:22:10.200 for dare they made t shirts for all of us 0:22:10.440 --> 0:22:14.720 that had Phineas Gauge's skull with the railway rod shooting 0:22:14.760 --> 0:22:18.080 through it. Dare you mean to keep a kid off drugs? 0:22:18.119 --> 0:22:22.000 Because it was a demonstration of what your head was 0:22:22.080 --> 0:22:24.280 like when you were drunk or when you were on 0:22:24.359 --> 0:22:26.520 certain kinds of drugs. So it's supposed to be these 0:22:26.520 --> 0:22:29.240