Finding 'Nipyeon Naepyeon' in Group Life... The Modern Disease of 'Violence'

The Origin of Violence as Seen by Japan's Leading Primatologist

South Korean society is boiling over the issue of 'school violence' (hakpok). The controversy surrounding lawyer Jeong Soon-shin, who was appointed as the new head of the National Investigation Headquarters but resigned after it was revealed that her child was involved in a school violence incident during high school, has fueled public outrage.

Bullying within groups has always been a major topic in Korean society. It is not limited to schools alone. Similar incidents such as the hazing culture among nurses called 'taeum' and workplace power harassment continue unabated. The manifestation of violence where one human being harms another is not exclusive to adolescents. This is why the Netflix drama 'The Glory,' which centers on school violence, has drawn such a strong response.

Why do humans commit acts of violence? Moreover, why is this violence directed toward members of their own species?

"Human violence is not instinct but an 'invention'"

School Violence

Yuichi Yamagawa, president of Kyoto University and one of Japan's leading primatologists, published a book in 2018 titled The Origins of Human Violence. Having spent decades in academia studying gorillas, Yamagawa’s focus is on 'primates' violence.'

He says that after witnessing civil wars and mass killings in places like Uganda, Rwanda, and the Democratic Republic of Congo while traveling through African tropical forests, he began to question the origins of human violence.

According to President Yamagawa, until the 20th century, sociologists generally believed that human violence stemmed from instinct. Our distant ancestors obtained food by hunting and gathering, evolving into 'specialized hunters' adept at killing other animals, and this instinct was thought to cause violence directed at external beings. This is known as the 'hunting hypothesis.'

However, Yamagawa refutes the hunting hypothesis. After observing other primates living in societies similar to humans for over 40 years, he argues that human violence is not instinctive but rather 'invented.'

"Modern humans cannot tell who is on their side"… Civilization fuels violence

Unlike humans who have built civilizations, the mortality rate due to violence among primates is relatively low. / Photo by Yonhap News

According to the book, primates living in groups have a mortality rate from violence about twice as high as other mammals. In humans, research shows that this rate has increased approximately 10 to 20 times since the advent of civilization.

Yamagawa explains that the emergence of 'ownership' over farmland, the invention of language to share thoughts, and the resulting birth of civilization have all intensified human violence.

In other words, as humans settled down and formed large societies with multiple groups, conflicts between these groups became prominent, leading to increased aggression directed outward as a means of self-defense.

This offers a clue to the violence erupting in various groups in modern society. Yamagawa points out, "Modern humans have become unable to distinguish who is on our side and who is the enemy in complex societies, and in such an environment, it seems we inevitably resort to violence to protect ourselves."

The more complex a society where friend and foe are hard to distinguish, the more aggressively people treat outsiders unfamiliar to them. This explains phenomena such as territorialism in some workplaces, bullying within school classes, and baseless hatred toward refugees?all part of the same context.

Yamagawa emphasizes, "Therefore, when the existence of an enemy becomes certain, modern humans may not hesitate to use violence. We must reaffirm what kind of entities the communities created by humans truly are."

Like chimpanzees and gorillas… humans also have innate empathy

How can the violence of civilized humans be alleviated or resolved? Yamagawa stresses, "Primates such as gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans already possessed 'empathy' before civilization." Although the explosive spread of civilization has caused violence to overwhelm empathy, the root of human sociability still lies in empathy.

In his book, he analyzes, "Gorillas, chimpanzees, and monkeys, which have never engaged in large-scale violence, teach us this. Interestingly, when humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas reconcile, they silently look into each other's eyes as if trying to understand the other's intentions before engaging in affiliative behavior." Although millions of years have passed since humans diverged from other primates, the methods to soothe violence and mend relationships still share the same roots.

The book states, "The fundamental traits supporting human sociability include cooperative child-rearing, communal eating, conversation through language, emotional sharing through music, and face-to-face communication," emphasizing, "We must once again start from this community and build society from the bottom up."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.