by Mark Waybill

Created on: March 27, 2010

It would be a preposterous thing to suggest that people are born with a preformed character. Such aspects of human personality as a violent nature are learned, not given to people when they are born. People learn by experience, and in this day and age of talking, reading and writing etc, also by absorbing data by other means. To suggest that we have already formed our personality at birth is beyond the absurd.

However it must not be ignored that some individuals will be more likely to commit violent acts than others. This is due, however, not to their genetic makeup, but to their environment at a young age and the influences they receive during this crucial era in the development of their personality and habits. This may give the appearance of somebody having always been violent, and thus apparently born that way. Children of violent parents often turn violent themselves.

Whilst it is unclear how much of a role genes play in forming peoples personalities, it is obvious that nurture plays in most cases a larger role than nature in these things. A human responds like all animals to its environment and reacts to various stimuli in the way it thinks best according to its previous experiences by way of its memory, or at a young age according to some instinctive and playful direction of the mind. As we grow older we rely more on memory and less on this playfulness to learn and respond to stimuli until we use mostly our memory except in cases of extreme fear, pain etc where we revert to an instinctive behavior.

Violent nature arises often not out of choice, but out of necessity or influence. And this need often does not exist at birth. If a human is born into a well off family who hit hard times he may find a need to turn violent, but at birth he has none. Putting aside the few cases where genes do play an important role, in most people the environment is the cause of a violent nature.

The various causes of violent behavior are numerous. It would take a very long article to discuss them all. But in most cases their is a need or at least a strong influence to turn violent. If one is poor one has to get food somehow, and if another person wants that food a fight will ensue. If a male wants a female for his wife and so does another male a fight will ensue. Fighting is a part of life in this universe. But people learn this, they don't know it at birth.

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