"Michael Ragland"  wrote in message
news:c9b74o$19f$1{at}darwin.ediacara.org...

> I'm looking for any resources arguing aggression is
> not evolutionarily adaptive anymore and theoretical
> proposals of what to do about it.

As you are deliberately asking the question rather broadly,
it is probably unfair to ask you to clarify.  Nevertheless,
I have always been a little uncomfortable with your talk
about "aggression" because it is such a vague concept.

Just what behaviors are you classifying as aggression?  Making
distinctions is probably useful, because some components
of aggression are primarily genetic, whereas others are mostly
cultural.  Are you talking about physical aggression exclusively,
or do you want to include the kinds of bad behavior that is
exhibited in this news group?  Is someone who doesn't give a
damn about other people's welfare aggressive, or does he also
need to be exploitive?  To what extent can aggressiveness be
separated from a belief that the world is a competitive place?

It also might help to clarify if you were to describe more
clearly what is intended by the "anymore" in "aggression is
not evolutionarily adaptive anymore".  Since when?  Since
agriculture and dense populations?  Since the industrial
revolution?  Since nuclear weapons?  Not disputing what you
say, exactly, but I happen to be a member of an ethnic group
(western European descent) living in a region (US) that was
acquired fairly recently by "aggression".  So, how is that not
adaptive?

Regarding "theoretical proposals of what to do":

Serious normative theory should probably be ignored until
we have in hand a serious descriptive theory.  One might
argue that more harm is done by premature application of
ideas based on bad theory than is done by aggression.  The
past century offers many examples, and they are not uncommon
even further back.

In any case, my proposals of Y-extinction and partial
Y-extinction were semi-serious, in that I believe that they
would be beneficial, though I doubt that they would be
accepted if imposed from above.
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