Aggression has been misrepresented as male or (to use the current buzzword in social sciences) patriarchal behaviour. Aggression is behaviour that is useful to organisms to defend against aggression in other individuals. Although the vast majority in the plant kingdom help, sustain and nurture other living things, even among plants, there is aggressive behaviour - examples would be pitcher plants, venus fly-traps etc. Aggression, though unpleasant, was probably useful for survival in the earlier stages of social evolution. When there is scarcity of a need, one way to solve it is to use aggression to grab it from another and in that process, may be, destroying that individual. Human beings have used aggression to secure their needs and to satisfy their greed or lust. When your neighbour uses aggression, unless you become aggressive yourself, there is no way you can protect yourself when there is no rule of law in society. If the machinery for enforcing laws is strong and efficient, one can seek assistance from it to deal with aggression. This happens in organized law abiding societies.
The problem with the world today is that there is too much aggression. Caring behaviour has grown only in sporadic spurts. Whereas the culture of aggression spreads rapidly as bush fire, the culture of care is like mushrooms - sprouting only here and there. There has been a tendency to correlate aggression with male behaviour which doesn't seem to be entirely valid - although males have used more aggression than females and females have used more caring behaviour than males perhaps throughout human history and across most cultures.
Aggressive behaviour manifests not only as violence directed at a rival, but also as some traits and institutions considered positive and good - such as ambition, competitiveness, conventional electoral politics, business management (ruthless competition among rivals for resources and people), military aggression, sports (again a competitive activity), missionary work, large scale environmental engineering - such as building skyscrapers and other larger urban buildings, airports, highways etc. On the other hand, caring behaviour manifests as charity work, health care, nursing, teaching and education, parenting, cooking, housekeeping, civil engineering such as building houses (not factories, dams etc), weaving and tailoring, organic agriculture (not pesticide based large scale aggressive farming!), co-operation, law-abidance, non-corruption, art, philosophy, mathematics and pure natural science (not eco-unfriendly technology).
The problem with the world now is that there is far too much aggression, far too much competition, far too much aggressively ruthless and competitive commerce and too little caring.
Among world religions, Islam and Hinduism have promoted aggression predominantly and caring to a lesser extent. Christianity - as taught originally by Jesus emphasizing love, forgiveness, kindness and healing - was predominantly caring with very little aggression. But the problem was that Jesus and his teachings were appropriated for political maneuvering by aggressive rulers. Churches were formed as a result with political ('ruling') intentions. Politics is a form of aggressive human activity aimed at ruling over and controlling people and to concentrate power and wealth in the rulers and the upper tiers of society who are loyal to the rulers). Churches had a veneer of caring and to a great extent they practiced it - it is very difficult to promote the original teachings of Jesus without at least appearing to engage in some caring activity - therefore they built hospitals, orphanages, schools and colleges all over the world, but concealed behind such activity was their political agenda of bringing as much of the world's population under their fold. This was achieved through missionary work - and the charitable, educational and healthcare work were used to abet missionary work.
Aggression in Islam was towards other tribes and aliens and there was not much stratification within Arab society as they were a nomadic ethnically homogeneous culture. There was no agriculture in desert lands and therefore there was no need for a working class. Slaves were used for personal service - providing person-centred jobs that included cleaning and attending to the person of the master. Society had a limited hierarchy - predominantly three tier perhaps - men, women and slaves. And usually slaves were captives in war. As a nomadic culture, their main threat came from aliens and so they developed a culture of aggression against anyone who is not them. Because they were always encountering fighting tribes, fighting for meager resources of the deserts, aggression was a necessity for them.
Aggression in Hinduism was not towards foreigners. It towards their own voiceless working class in the river basin based agrarian feudal structure of society. Hence this violence is not very apparent to outsiders who come here. Towards foreigners, Hindu culture were generally tolerant and hospitable. Hinduism developed a powerful multi-tiered feudal system and there was incremental oppression as one went down the hierarchy. The lowest class, the agricultural labourers - were the worst-treated - and were deprived of all power and freedom. Eventually, metaphysical scriptural interpretations and rationalization of hierarchic inequality resulted in the rigid consolidation of the caste system. In Hinduism, cooperation, charity, service was not part of their culture. Their culture consisted of 'pyramidal' ruling structures - with the king and the priests at the top and others in society occupying progressively lower levels in the structure. The wellbeing of the working class, their human rights etc were never part of philosophical discourse in any Hindu epic or scripture. Even concepts such as justice and injustice were discussed only as they applied to kings, queens and the royalty and the priestly classes. No epic in Hinduism discussed the social life, the struggles, problems and rights of the working class - the lowest castes - the so-called Chandalas as they were mentioned in Hindu scriptures. The benevolent references to chandalas mainly consisted of statements such as "even a chandala is eligible for moksha if he does the job that is assigned to him wth devotion". There is no mention of the need to save and improve the lot of the poor and the labourers. Conspicuously, there is no mention of the idea of equality or brotherhood of human beings.
In Eastern culture, the idea of human rights, kindness, service, the rights of the downtrodden, cooperation etc. started with the rebel religions of India - Buddhism mainly. Buddha was openly at war against the injustice of the caste hierarchy and the oppression of women. And because it made sense to King Ashoka, Buddhism became the religion of most of the Maurya empire and it remained so for several centuries, it seems. Finally the hierarchical Hindu system defeated and expeled Buddhism from India. But Buddhism continued to have its sway of large parts of East and South East Asia - as far as Japan.
Goodness in society -as cooperation, service, care, helping the weak etc - came with Renaissance in Europe. It was development of science and art that promoted this. Religion had no role in the development of science and art, although religious figures and stories may have been a frequent subject for the artists, the litterateurs, the painters and sculptors. It had obviously started in the later stages of Greek civilization - when ancient Greek culture was established for several centuries and it was reflected in the work of Socrates and other ancient Greek philosophers. Cooperation, help, nursing, education and all the constructive, creative activity of human beings had beginnings in Greek culture, but they were all wiped out by the aggression of the Roman empire. Jesus was a creative, cooperative, caring, nursing, healing rebel against the prevalent religious and state oppression (Judaism). Seeing the popular appeal of Jesus and therefore his political potential, the Romans hijacked Jesus and his teachings and established the organized patriarchal Christian religion with political designs. Religion is used as a tranquilizer and a guilt inducer and it helps the ruler considerably to make obedient the population he is ruling.
Thus, it is clear that throughout world history, we witness the balancing act between opposites - aggression and caring, ruling and cooperation. Aggression is represented by ruling, empire building, exploitation of nature and earth for capitalistic growth, military activity, building cities and roads, politics and organized religious missionary work, sports and other competitive activity, stock market, businesses.. Caring refers to education, health care, legal compliance (law abidance, legislation, policing and judiciary), science leading to rational understanding and limited technology that helps and cooperative living and sharing of resources. Most of our problems arise from caring activities being hijacked by aggressive and ambitious 'rulers'. It is for the discerning among us to now clearly define where our loyalty should be. It should be with nurturing, caring, helping inclinations that we see in human society. Our duty to the human beings - indeed to the whole of the ecosystem - should be to care, help and be kind. But to do this, we should be wary of the rulers hijacking caring institutions. We should be very wary of plutocrats (corporate rulers) taking over controls of education, healthcare and the production and distribution of basic needs such as food, water, shelter and living conditions and environment including sanitation and clean air.
The problem with the world today is that there is too much aggression. Caring behaviour has grown only in sporadic spurts. Whereas the culture of aggression spreads rapidly as bush fire, the culture of care is like mushrooms - sprouting only here and there. There has been a tendency to correlate aggression with male behaviour which doesn't seem to be entirely valid - although males have used more aggression than females and females have used more caring behaviour than males perhaps throughout human history and across most cultures.
Aggressive behaviour manifests not only as violence directed at a rival, but also as some traits and institutions considered positive and good - such as ambition, competitiveness, conventional electoral politics, business management (ruthless competition among rivals for resources and people), military aggression, sports (again a competitive activity), missionary work, large scale environmental engineering - such as building skyscrapers and other larger urban buildings, airports, highways etc. On the other hand, caring behaviour manifests as charity work, health care, nursing, teaching and education, parenting, cooking, housekeeping, civil engineering such as building houses (not factories, dams etc), weaving and tailoring, organic agriculture (not pesticide based large scale aggressive farming!), co-operation, law-abidance, non-corruption, art, philosophy, mathematics and pure natural science (not eco-unfriendly technology).
The problem with the world now is that there is far too much aggression, far too much competition, far too much aggressively ruthless and competitive commerce and too little caring.
Among world religions, Islam and Hinduism have promoted aggression predominantly and caring to a lesser extent. Christianity - as taught originally by Jesus emphasizing love, forgiveness, kindness and healing - was predominantly caring with very little aggression. But the problem was that Jesus and his teachings were appropriated for political maneuvering by aggressive rulers. Churches were formed as a result with political ('ruling') intentions. Politics is a form of aggressive human activity aimed at ruling over and controlling people and to concentrate power and wealth in the rulers and the upper tiers of society who are loyal to the rulers). Churches had a veneer of caring and to a great extent they practiced it - it is very difficult to promote the original teachings of Jesus without at least appearing to engage in some caring activity - therefore they built hospitals, orphanages, schools and colleges all over the world, but concealed behind such activity was their political agenda of bringing as much of the world's population under their fold. This was achieved through missionary work - and the charitable, educational and healthcare work were used to abet missionary work.
Aggression in Islam was towards other tribes and aliens and there was not much stratification within Arab society as they were a nomadic ethnically homogeneous culture. There was no agriculture in desert lands and therefore there was no need for a working class. Slaves were used for personal service - providing person-centred jobs that included cleaning and attending to the person of the master. Society had a limited hierarchy - predominantly three tier perhaps - men, women and slaves. And usually slaves were captives in war. As a nomadic culture, their main threat came from aliens and so they developed a culture of aggression against anyone who is not them. Because they were always encountering fighting tribes, fighting for meager resources of the deserts, aggression was a necessity for them.
Aggression in Hinduism was not towards foreigners. It towards their own voiceless working class in the river basin based agrarian feudal structure of society. Hence this violence is not very apparent to outsiders who come here. Towards foreigners, Hindu culture were generally tolerant and hospitable. Hinduism developed a powerful multi-tiered feudal system and there was incremental oppression as one went down the hierarchy. The lowest class, the agricultural labourers - were the worst-treated - and were deprived of all power and freedom. Eventually, metaphysical scriptural interpretations and rationalization of hierarchic inequality resulted in the rigid consolidation of the caste system. In Hinduism, cooperation, charity, service was not part of their culture. Their culture consisted of 'pyramidal' ruling structures - with the king and the priests at the top and others in society occupying progressively lower levels in the structure. The wellbeing of the working class, their human rights etc were never part of philosophical discourse in any Hindu epic or scripture. Even concepts such as justice and injustice were discussed only as they applied to kings, queens and the royalty and the priestly classes. No epic in Hinduism discussed the social life, the struggles, problems and rights of the working class - the lowest castes - the so-called Chandalas as they were mentioned in Hindu scriptures. The benevolent references to chandalas mainly consisted of statements such as "even a chandala is eligible for moksha if he does the job that is assigned to him wth devotion". There is no mention of the need to save and improve the lot of the poor and the labourers. Conspicuously, there is no mention of the idea of equality or brotherhood of human beings.
In Eastern culture, the idea of human rights, kindness, service, the rights of the downtrodden, cooperation etc. started with the rebel religions of India - Buddhism mainly. Buddha was openly at war against the injustice of the caste hierarchy and the oppression of women. And because it made sense to King Ashoka, Buddhism became the religion of most of the Maurya empire and it remained so for several centuries, it seems. Finally the hierarchical Hindu system defeated and expeled Buddhism from India. But Buddhism continued to have its sway of large parts of East and South East Asia - as far as Japan.
Goodness in society -as cooperation, service, care, helping the weak etc - came with Renaissance in Europe. It was development of science and art that promoted this. Religion had no role in the development of science and art, although religious figures and stories may have been a frequent subject for the artists, the litterateurs, the painters and sculptors. It had obviously started in the later stages of Greek civilization - when ancient Greek culture was established for several centuries and it was reflected in the work of Socrates and other ancient Greek philosophers. Cooperation, help, nursing, education and all the constructive, creative activity of human beings had beginnings in Greek culture, but they were all wiped out by the aggression of the Roman empire. Jesus was a creative, cooperative, caring, nursing, healing rebel against the prevalent religious and state oppression (Judaism). Seeing the popular appeal of Jesus and therefore his political potential, the Romans hijacked Jesus and his teachings and established the organized patriarchal Christian religion with political designs. Religion is used as a tranquilizer and a guilt inducer and it helps the ruler considerably to make obedient the population he is ruling.
Thus, it is clear that throughout world history, we witness the balancing act between opposites - aggression and caring, ruling and cooperation. Aggression is represented by ruling, empire building, exploitation of nature and earth for capitalistic growth, military activity, building cities and roads, politics and organized religious missionary work, sports and other competitive activity, stock market, businesses.. Caring refers to education, health care, legal compliance (law abidance, legislation, policing and judiciary), science leading to rational understanding and limited technology that helps and cooperative living and sharing of resources. Most of our problems arise from caring activities being hijacked by aggressive and ambitious 'rulers'. It is for the discerning among us to now clearly define where our loyalty should be. It should be with nurturing, caring, helping inclinations that we see in human society. Our duty to the human beings - indeed to the whole of the ecosystem - should be to care, help and be kind. But to do this, we should be wary of the rulers hijacking caring institutions. We should be very wary of plutocrats (corporate rulers) taking over controls of education, healthcare and the production and distribution of basic needs such as food, water, shelter and living conditions and environment including sanitation and clean air.
