When you have a driving agenda, I guess, it is possible to ignore the most obvious facts and logic.

The agenda here is the typical pacifist/atheist “progressive” agenda. Or something very similar. The goal is to twist reality so it fits the ideology. You are not trying to be deceptive, and you sincerely and devoutly believe in your utopianist visions.

War and violence can be eradicated, as long as everyone stops being religious and gets the right kind of psychotherapy. Your vision of a perfect world inspires you to spin fairy tales. Because there are some people, apparently, who need perfection and can’t live without its promise.

No… really… because beginning a sentence with “it seems like” followed by some ulterior motive is the best way to directly address an argument, right?

I mean… rather than pointing out logical flaws and providing hard evidence to the contrary with sources… you’ve merely said you aren’t convinced and made up some ulterior motive to explain the conclusions drawn by deMause. You might want to check out the long list of resources (footnotes) used to write this article… as you’re working to find all that hard evidence in support of what you’re saying. Merely saying you’ve not heard of any evidence and that you’re not convinced, isn’t enough… because all that translates to for me is “I”m ignoring the long list of sources for evidence at the end of the article.”

I’m about to post a series called “The Bomb in the Brain” which you can find on YouTube now, it’s completely loaded with that evidence you claim not to have heard about… so you may want to avoid watching it… if you want to continue to claim you haven’t heard of any evidence.

I am speechless. No comment. You people inhabit your own separate planet.

That does not seem possible. It’s just an attempt to pretend warfare is not natural, and can be eradicated. Violence is a normal part of life for any species of animal. It may be infrequent, but it is always possible, and sometimes necessary. Just as we are born with the potential for love and cooperation, we are also born with the potential for self-defense and competition. All coins have two sides.

The ideology that underlies this field is obviously saying that violence is unnatural and can be eradicated. It’s like saying we could get rid of death. No — violence and death are here to stay.

Little boys, many of them anyway, are born with the warrior instinct. In primitive tribes, most of the young men had to fight. Now days, in contrast, we are specialized and only a minority are needed as warriors. But most still have the instincts.

Are you going to try and convince me that boys play with guns and men watch violent sports and movies all because of bad mothers?? If that were true, then women would be just as violence-loving as men, since we have the same mothers!!

Have you not thought any of your theories through logically????

I feel that you are spinning a mythology, rather than looking at evidence. You want to believe that our species is progressing from more violent and less compassionate to less violent and more compassionate. That might be partially true if you are only considering relatively advanced civilizations. Even then I am not convinced.

Your idea that primitive tribes were violent because of poor mothering is just completely untrue. I can’t imagine where you think you got the evidence for that. Inter-tribal violence is an expression of the territorial instinct, found in all animals. Hunter/gatherers must maintain adequate territory to support their population. That also explains infanticide — population control has always been critical.

When agriculture was invented, it became possible to support larger populations. However, at the same time, demand for agricultural and grazing land increased. The result was dramatic increases in warfare.

Additionally, weapons technology evolved and war became increasingly deadly. Our recent wars have been so much more horrific than wars in ancient times, or in primitive tribes. Yes it’s true that we are less likely to be personally involved in war than in primitive times. But that is because of the structure and technology of our civilization, not because we have better mothers.

And while you are connecting our relatively low levels of personal violence with improved motherhood, you are at the same time saying our mothering is still very bad. That the majority of mothers have postpartum depression! And it was even more common in ancient or primitive times!

How can that be true? If postpartum depression is high now that is probably because of our unhealthy unnatural lifestyle, and the artificial practices in hospital birth.

I still have not finished reading your article. I will finish, but I can already tell that you are more interested in making a case for a certain perspective than in actually looking at evidence.

It seems obvious to me that you are promoting your own brand of political progressivism. You see the history of our species as a movement away from conservative values (however you define them) towards your preferred progressive values.

It seems to me that you choose your examples to fit your preferred ideological perspective. You show correlations and read whatever causation you want to see into them. For example, personal exposure to violence decreases as the practice of infanticide decreases, so you draw the conclusion that mothering has improved, leading to a decrease in personal violence.

But the practice of infanticide is related to poverty and over-population. And poverty and over-population are responsible for high levels of violence. So mothering might not be the causal factor.

i don’t doubt that children have been abused and neglected in all human cultures. What I doubt is the conclusions you draw from that.

I will! And I’ll write more comments!

On the surface our civilization might seem non-violent, but it is the most violent that ever existed on earth. It’s just that we know the big weapons can’t be used or we’ll all be dead. Violence now is mostly behind the scenes.

It is well known in anthropology that the simplest societies have generally been less violent than the more advanced. War is just an expression of the natural territorial instinct, found in most animals. This instinct helps to keep populations in balance.

Violence among humans has dramatically increased, not decreased! This is mostly because of improving technology and increasing population.

It’s true I have not read the article, so I should not be criticizing it. But the utter and complete misconception about the evolution of violence just had to be pointed out.

We are not becoming more peaceful! We just have good police and military protection, in the US. The threat of violence keeps us peaceful, for now, in some countries.

Fingolfin (Luke)