[michaelchisari]

It's not semantics at all. "Human nature" implies a universal, inherent state. If we have peaceful, pacifist civilizations regularly cropping up throughout history, then saying that human nature is violence just simply isn't true. It doesn't matter if the violent civilizations come to dominate. That the peaceful societies exist at all (let alone are abundant and common) means that argument falls apart.

[alex_sf]

> universal, inherent state

It's not a universal, inherent state in any humans that survive. It's an aberration.

That being said, I'm not actually aware of any of these abundant/common peaceful/pacifist societies you're referencing. It's entirely possible I'm ignorant of them, but I'm suspicious that they weren't actually 'peaceful'. Can you name a few of them?

[michaelchisari]

| It's an aberration.

It's common enough to disprove the statement "Human nature is inherently violent". It shows that understanding humanity is simply too complex to boil down to pat remarks like that.

| I'm not actually aware

Anthropology has documented plenty. The Kung! come to mind. And this is not the early-days "noble savage" anthropology, the perspective that there have been many civilizations that operate through cooperation and peaceful negotiation is not controversial in modern anthropology.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-00692-8

[alex_sf]

> It's common enough to disprove the statement "Human nature is inherently violent". It shows that understanding humanity is simply too complex to boil down to pat remarks like that.

If we accept every aberration as disproving human nature, then there is no such thing as human nature. There are exceptions to any possible definition of it. Suicide disproves self-preservation, childless adults disprove reproduction, laziness disproves innovation.

I'm not actually opposed to that argument, but it is, as mentioned and in context, semantics.

> Anthropology has documented plenty. The Kung! come to mind. And this is not the early-days "noble savage" anthropology, the perspective that there have been many civilizations that operate through cooperation and peaceful negotiation is not controversial in modern anthropology.

!Kung society absolutely had violence and homicide[1][2]. It's very much noble savage anthropology. They did not operate through cooperation and peaceful negotiation: they were just isolated hundreds of kilometers from anyone else, so the scale was smaller.

If anything, the !Kung disprove your argument. They spoke the same language, had the same beliefs, had a fair division of resources, were geographically isolated, and still killed each other.

[1] https://www.jstor.org/stable/680660 [2] https://ourworldindata.org/ethnographic-and-archaeological-e...

[michaelchisari]

I'm not arguing any societies were completely void of violence, obviously. There is a significant difference between a society where violence occurs and one in which violence is the defining principle and method of organization. Yet even in societies organized around violence and domination, the majority of people are not violent and do not commit acts of violence.

At this point, it's not worth continuing the conversation here. You'd be best served engaging with anthropological sources themselves since your perspective has been well addressed by the field. "Humankind: A Hopeful History" by Rutger Bregman was suggested below. I haven't read it myself, but I've heard good things and it's sources might serve as a good jumping-off point. "The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity" by David Graeber I have read and it is a light read and works well as a starting point, despite it's issues.

[alex_sf]

Those are certainly interesting books, but Graeber's work in particular has been widely criticized by his peers[1]. Dawn of Everything was a naked attempt at (further) politicizing the field, and was riddled with logical and historical errors. Much like his other writings.

> One review it’s known that he did read, because he wrote a response to it, is Kwame Anthony Appiah’s in the New York Review of Books. Entitled Digging for Utopia, it accuses the authors of making ideologically driven arguments at variance with the studies they cite.

> [historian David A Bell] referred to “an astounding collection of errors” and accused the authors of coming “perilously close to scholarly malpractice”.

You would be best served by not basing your opinions on fringe material.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/12/david-wengro...