Why Does Violence Happen?
Why Does Violence Happen?
Why? Why did they do it? Why would two teenagers deliberately plan and methodically carry out a murderous attack on their classmates? Why didn't anyone see this coming? Why didn't anyone intervene and prevent them from killing? How can we prevent anything like that from happening again?
Experts in crime, mental health, education, and social sciences have all been trying to understand the pathways to school violence. A few common observations emerge. The first, and most disturbing, is that human beings, like few other species, are pervasively aggressive, violent and murderous to each other. The major predators of humans are other humans.
The second important point is that all violence is not the same. Some violence is due to impulsive behavior, some due to the disinhibition by drugs or alcohol, some due to serious mental illness, some to hate, revenge, or retribution. How any individual comes to kill is a complex combination of circumstances, and it is almost impossible to know exactly "why" for any given act of violence. We will never really know the full answer to "why" for the murders at Columbine.
Yet this should not stop us from trying to understand and prevent violence. We know that not all humans kill. And some societies are more violent than others. So what do we know about the conditions that increase violence? What observations are common across cultures and through history when violence emerges?
