Hakob Nazaretyan read for us Konrad Lorenz’s book «The So-Called Evil».
“How many times have we heard that man is the most vicious and aggressive predator, almost the only animal that can destroy its own kind and destroy its habitat. And Konrad Lorenz, who devoted many years to studying this issue, argues that the misfortune of a person is precisely that he does not have the «nature of a predator.» Now, if our ancestors were lions, then violence would not play such a big role in social history.
It turns out that the more powerful natural weapons a particular species is endowed with, the stronger its instinctive inhibition of intraspecific aggression. The population of animals in which such an ethological balance is not observed quickly dies out, since conflicts between individuals often end in their death. No wonder the people say: «A raven will not peck out the eyes of a crow.» But the dove, a symbol of peace, can stubbornly finish off a defeated enemy …
Our distant ancestors were graceful australopithecines, biologically unarmed creatures, deprived of the opportunity to immediately inflict fatal injury on their relatives, and therefore did not need powerful brakes for mutual killings. But they had to use stones, bones and other objects for defense and attack. With the same weapon they cracked each other’s skulls. According to the laws of nature, these strange creatures should have been a victim of natural selection, but they survived. How? Lorentz makes a convincing suggestion that the first representatives of the genus homo developed a new, unknown to nature, mechanism for limiting aggression, commensurate with the increased ability to kill.
How such a mechanism was formed is a separate question. But since then, the viability of social groups depends on how technological power, fraught with destruction, is balanced by the quality of cultural self-regulation, the development of morality and law. And where this balance is disturbed, crises and catastrophes await people. Lorentz shows that aggression is a necessary condition for viability. And the best human qualities grow out of the need to direct the energy of natural aggressiveness into a constructive channel. Creativity, friendship, love, a sense of humor and a sense of beauty are all converted forms of aggression. The amazingly multifaceted book of Lorenz became a milestone in the development of psychology and anthropology.