The urge to dominate

Is this urge intrinsic, meaning you can't explain in terms of economic incentives etc.? I will give an example from what happens in Indian colleges - bullying is as common as breathing. It is sometimes extremely gross where victims may even kill themselves. Despite warning, bullies continue to do that. They may even be suspended, but they don't care. It is like they enjoy humiliating other students. And these are 20 somethings, educated, from good backgrounds. So there is no reason 'outside' of them that makes them do this.

So is it possible that humans have the intrinsic tendency to dominate, maybe inherited from our primitive ancestors? Is this why the human nature argument works?

Please don't give the same cliched answers. I know people here are allergic to the term 'human nature', but try to see it in a different light, especially by considering examples like bullying.

In your school there are many cases of bullying, yet in my school it is completely inexistant. This is most likely due to the type of students that frequent the schools. The students of my school are very open people who support diversity, what about yours?
If it was human nature it would be common to all humans: universal. We can conclude that, since it is not universal, it is not human nature.

Now that we have arrived at that conclusion we must determine why it is that some of the students in your school are bullies, and why no students in my school are bullies.
For that we need to collect information. I will decribe the students of my school and their background, and you should do the same, so that we can arrive at a good conclusion.
My school is seen by people who don't go there as below average, so not many students actualy want to end up in that school. The problem is the school people consider good (which, interestingly, has cases of bullying) is selective, even though it is a public school, and sends the students who it does not consider good away to other schools. These other schools will see that you haven't been taken by the "good" one and will send you away. Eventualy you will end up in my school, which is not selective, and you will be together will all those who were rejected by the "good" ones, so we have every kind of person.
As a result of this diversity you get many people who are non-violent, or have changed their violent ways, who are open to new ideas. Needless to say most of the students there are sympethetic towards anarchism.
Now for the stuff the marxists care about: the material conditions and social class. Most of the students come from families who work in the public sector. Most of the workers are in the public sector, so they are not very priviledged. They used to receive a decent pay, but now with the crisis the recieve, if lucky, minimum wage (400€). So most students come from working class families with low to medium incomes (mostly low).

I have told you about the students in my school, if you want my argument to reach a conclusion you must tell me about the students in your school.

D-d-double post!

removed music video from this thread.

Please do not spam serious threads with these kind of attachments. They are permitted in chitchat and the music forum

Verbal warning.

If bullying is very common, then it is quite possible that someone who doesn't want to bully others will be bullied just for this.

And of course there is plenty of reason "outside" of them for such behaviour. We are talking about a capitalist society, where competition is central for your standing.

I don't think so. It is the way our societies are structured.

So, do you want us to do exactly what? To agree that those students bully others because it is in their nature, even if we happen to disagree? But if it is in their "nature", exactly what makes some of them bullies, and others bullied people?

Luís Henrique

Those violent forms of ragging are very common in Indian colleges because of the semi feudal - semi colonial structure of the society. It is largely absent in the imperialist countries. Human nature is shaped by the class society itself. When classes disappear, these beastly tendencies within individuals too will disappear.

I do believe in human nature(s) -- I think Left opposition to the idea is mostly naive -- and it only makes sense that we are prone to both physical and social violence.

Nietzsche's critique of ressentiment seems one of the best starts for addressing this from a Western philosophical perspective.

Ouch!

As far as "human nature" arguments go, I would say I believe in only one major aspect of human nature - that humans are easily brainwashed by the society they find themselves in.

For example, if you see a lot of bullying in the community you grow up in, then you see it as the standard for behavior and the standard for survival. If you see a lot of gift giving at the end of the year in your culture, then you see gift giving as the standard of behavior expected from "normal" people. If you see everyone else wearing clothes in your community, then you tend to feel embarrassed when you lose your clothes in public.

If you were abused as a child, there may actually be two different reactions. The assimilation reaction would suggest that you would be justified in abusing others "because the world is harsh and the world showed no compassion to you." The rebellious reaction may push you in the opposite direction, urging you to fight injustice so that what happened to you would never again happen to others.

Kind of off topic, but on a sociological level, if your people have been the target of genocide, some may react by using that to justify the same actions against other groups of people... or you may vow to never let that happen again to people of any kind.

The conflict between living for others and living yourself has a specific historicity, it is the product of individuals being alienated from the human community. The collectivism/individualism dichotomy is not an accurate reflection of the reality of human power relationships. There can be no conception of submission or domination in the realm of ideology if there is no exploitive hierarchy in economic materiality.

There is no intrinsic human nature by the way, any philosopher worth shit will agree. Besides human beings being forever confined to themselves and ultimately defined by their interactions with others, and obvious biological needs, there is very little transcendent and concrete about our nature as social beings.

First principles. Ask first: what is it, this "urge to dominate"? What does it mean? What is its purpose for people? Have you ever felt it?

When you try to dominate another person or thing, you try not only to control it, but to defeat it. To create compliance. To externalize a drama that you feel inside, an inability to dominate one's own weaknesses or sensitivities.

External conditions play a huge role here. The figure with the urge to dominate doesn't simply dominate anyone, but dominates the person who most likely reflects his own insecurities. He sees in this individual the embodiment of his weaknesses - his inability to fight back. This is why the urge to bully or dominate most often comes from individuals who are themselves abused.

Of course, one doesn't need to be abused in order to abuse. One simply needs to have a feeling of helplessness with regards to his (or her) own life.

Now, given this, is the urge to dominate part of human nature? It's hard to say. Human nature is not a transcendental truth that exists outside of external factors.

Rather, human nature is the unique expression humans as a species make under specific circumstances (i.e. in relation to their external environment). The urge to dominate is not a natural impulse on its own, but is natural given certain circumstances.

For example, an abused victim may feel the urge to dominate another person by bullying, but he doesn't feel the urge to dominate his abuser. It's brought out depending upon specific circumstances.

Hope this helps!

Yes it is normal for people to want to excel above others in their respective fields. I fail to see how this has any exclusive systemic relevance as far as a mode of production goes. Unless you are talking about something else. So long as class society exists, the urge to dominate is not even a category or a subject, it is simply a phenomena which exists by default, and I am not talking about individuals "rising to power" but classes competing for domination. In that sense, the Communists should not repress their urge to dominate, it is intrinsically a primal urge for complete emancipation and revolutionary struggle.

The thing about "human nature" is that while the term is often thrown around, it lacks a precise scientific definition. It's more usually defined as "whatever kind of disagreeable habit or anti-social tendency the speaker is referring to right now". It's effectively trying to pin the blame for social failings onto the fallibility of individuals.

As for urges, well they can re-directed and sublimated to other things. But for those people who have a deep-seated psychological urge to demonstrate power over others, they are in my view pathological and deserve decent mental healthcare, not being given socially-important roles like they are now.