Juan Pino Wednesday post

Today’s discussion revolved around the idea that mankind has over the years grown more violent than the classic primitive man. Although Dostoyevski believes that we have become more violent, I don’t believe the matter is as simple as Dostoyevski has made it seem. Perhaps unlike the primitive man we do in fact kill another simply for “disagreeing with an idea”, but then again the primitive man did not rationalize like the modern man does. I do agree with the idea that the primitive man would only kill another man if he felt endangered or wants something that the other man has, but I disagree that the modern man kills only to fulfill instinctual desires. I believe that we have suppressed our instincts to kill because we have grown more rational. With this rationality we also developed the ability to agree and disagree, leading to the root of today’s violence. Thus, the violence stems not from our instincts, but from our rationality.