"dkomo"  wrote in message
>
> Let's see.  Suppose that 1 million people died or were wounded > in 2003
from all acts of violence.  That's a number that is
> probably way high, but let's err on the side of overestimation.  1
> million people is 0.017% of 6 billion people.
>
> Point is, although acts of violence like civil wars, terrorism,
> homicide, executions, and violent repression by authoritarian
> regimes are on the news every day and grab our attention, only
> a very small percentage of the total human population falls victim
> to it.  In fact, the vast majority of human beings neither commit
> violence on other human beings nor are victims.  We control our
> violent aggressions quite successfully as a species.
>
The problem with this is that you are extrapolating peacetime homicide rates
in Western countries to the human condtion as a whole.
In fact typical hunter-gather homicide rates are quite high, and fighting
may even be the factor that controls the population size. In the West,
homicide rates are quite low, probably because such incidents are always
investigated and police techniques are very good. However when you look at
violence which isn't prosecuted as rigorously you will see that the fear of
mugging, or of drunken brawling, is still very significant.
The other thing you have forgotten is that though homicide rates are low in
peacetime, even modern Western societies have frequently been at war.
>
> What is this either/or crap?  Aggression is both part of our
> biology and culturally fueled.
>
I agree with you here. There are no "biological determinists", though there
are "cultural determinists", people who assert that genetic differences
between people are not a factor in different behaviour.
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