According To Research, Humans Are Not Inherently Violent
According to research (or, perhaps, not so much research, but evidence), violence in humans is not inherent.
Across the world, there are groups and societies, such as the Chewong of Peninsular Malaysia, and the Semai people, who live in the centre of the Malay Peninsular, in which violence is not accepted, not seen as a norm, and not at all prevalent.
The Chewong people are a small Orang Asli (meaning ‘Original People’ in Malay) society of around 450 people living in the heavily forested area of mountains in Peninsular Malaysia, South East Asia. The majority live in either a game reserve, surviving through hunting, trapping, fishing and foraging; or in an village that is open to tourists and is near to the Elephant Sanctuary in Pahang, Malaysia. Some of the Chewong people also have wage labour jobs.
The Chewong people have history of living peacefully, partially due to their beliefs that, as well as humans, there are super-humans, or spirits. These superhumans can cause disease, natural disaster, and so forth. Humans must live by certain rules, or the spirits will cause accidents and disease. These rules help dictate how a Chewong person will live their life. For example, the Punen rule bids the Chewong to avoid desires that they cannot fulfill, as these unfulfilled desires can lead to conflict and strife, while the Maro rule states that a visitor must be offered tobacco and food. The rules emphasise and promote a peaceful and harmonious life. The Chewong people, upon finding themselves in a hostile situation, will withdraw from the conflict, sometimes moving to different settlements to avoid others with whom they have discord.
According to Signe Howell in Society and Cosmos: Chewong of Peninsula Malaysia, the Chewong show a lack of competitiveness as well as a lack of aggression. This has been the case for many years as there is no history of warfare amongst any of the Orang Asli, nor recorded in their myths and legends. As Howell wrote in his ethnography of the Chewong, “The Chewong Language has no indigenous words for war, fight, quarrel, aggression, attack, crime, or punishment. Their reaction to encountering violence has always been to run away from it.” When talking about attacks from Malays in the nineteenth century and before, Howell explains that the Chewong described the attacks using verbs that applied to hunting and other daily life activities. They said that it never occurred to them to fight back with their poisoned darts or traps around their homes, which they used for hunting and trapping for food. Although many said that in retrospect hiding was foolish, and if they were to be attacked again, they would fight back, Howell describes how many of the people would pack their belongings and flee from strangers.
It is not just fighting and warfare in which a lack of violence is displayed; there is no rivalry displayed either. Spinning tops is a common and highly competitive game amongst Malay children. However, when the Chewong children play, it never occurred to turn it into a competition. Neither do they race in any way. The women go to the fields together and dig for tubers to make bread, they fill their baskets and then wait for one another to finish. There is no hurt or animosity caused by one woman being faster than another. However, although they do not compete to finish the task, there is no help from one another either.
Another community that exists without violence and aggression is the Senoi Semai people of the hills and mountains of central Malaya. This nonviolence and lack of aggression goes further than it simply not being allowed, for example, the Semai don’t say, ‘It is forbidden to hit people’, they say, ‘We do not hit people’. The Semai do, on occasion, disagree with each other, i.e., a person declining to fulfill a desire of another, of which they were capable of doing. This would put the ‘victim’ in a state of Punan, that is, their heart becomes unhappy, and they become accident prone. In order to leave the state of punan, they will either endure, receive compensation, such as a gift or fine, or they will take compensation, for example, taking clothes of the offender whilst the offender bathes, then explain they did it as compensation for a certain act. The offender will rarely resist, as they knew their previous actions caused hurt. If this does not lead to forgiveness, and the discord is still present, the case will be taken to the more respected elders in the community, who will help to solve the argument. With these ways of solving disagreements, there is no need for violence and aggression to have a place.
If there are communities in the world that can live without violence and aggression, it is therefore logical to assume that violence and aggression is not an inherent trait in humans, but rather a learned one. However, in many societies and communities, it has become learned and so deeply ingrained that it has become a norm to see and perform acts of violence, aggression, and brutality.
