----- Original Message -----
From: "Carrol Cox" <cbcox at ilstu.edu>
> In other words, there is very little violence in the world today in
the
> sense of one person directly harming another. So where's the
problem? I
> don't see how biology or psychology enter into it, except in a
broadly
> 'permissive' way.
===============
Except violence wouldn't be violence if persons-bodies weren't extinguished. You're too far over on the agent-structure spectrum Carrol, issues of supervenience aside. It's precisely the dehumanization and the institutional and or groupthink driven denial that it takes place as a condition of inaugarating aggression that's at issue.
>
> Killing for religion's sake goes back only a couple thousand years
or
> less, with the growth of the theistic religions. "Patriotism" is
only a
> few centuries old (the word meant "subversion" in the 18th century).
> Vulgar marxism by itself does not explain modern violence so well,
but
> it covers most of pre-modern violence pretty well.
>
> I really don't think violence, by itself, is any kind of problem.
>
> Carrol
==========
There is no violence by itself. It's always relational, masochism excepted.