Violence in the World

In Pinker's lecture/essay a passage that caught my eye was "If ignoble traits are innate, such as selfishness, violence, prejudice or, rape, that would make them unchangeable, so attempts at social reform and human improvement would be a waste of time. Why try to make the world a better place if people are rotten to the core and will just foul it up no matter what you do?" To consider this we must first assume that these certain traits are simply possessed from one's first breath. He continues with: "But this, too, is unsound. Even if people do harbor ignoble motives, they don't automatically lead to ignoble behavior, as we saw from the ubiquity of homicidal fantasies, which needless to say rarely result in homicidal behavior. That disconnect is possible precisely because the human mind is a complex system of many parts, some of which can counteract others, such as a moral sens, cognitive faculties that allow us to learn lessons from history, and the executive system of the frontal lobes of the brain that can apply knowledge about consequences and moral values to inhibit behaviors."

I agree wholeheartedly with this statement simply because I believe we, as humans, are responsible on our own actions and should not be allowed to blame wrongful actions on the traits we are born with (again assuming we are born with certain traits that define the rest of our lives either for the good or evil). Pinker points to the fact that the mind is more complex than a single primordial tendency, this postulate for me makes the effects of the plea of 'temporary insanity' most appalling for me because you can take a proven murderer and put him in a cushy hospital with a high probability that he/she will be walking our streets and breathing our air in just a few years time. Instead I strongly feel that this piece of crap should be locked away for good as a bare minimum. I feel this way, and I cannot stress it enough, because I believe we are responsible for our actions and we wholly deserve any and all consequences that stem from such actions, even and especially good actions.

In further thinking about some of the more obscure consequences of these emotions I can see why/how some of these innate traits can rise to the surface and become a problem. This pondering reminds me of a good friend's childhood experience he was so kind to share and I shall to the best of my ability recount now. This friend of mine came to this country when he was around ten years of age and he found himself a bit more mature than many boys in his class when he found himself at the age of about 12. Because of this he found that he naturally related to the girls in his class more than the guys this led him to be pick on and teased periodically. Now he had been training with his father in martial arts since the age of say 6, mainly in ken-do I believe. It was in the mist of a bad day that one of these kids started picking on him and one of his good friends, a girl, was with him and the two were doing the best to ignore him, when all of a sudden my friends eyes which are naturally blue turned to grey. After this point my friend has no personal recollection of the events following. What happened was he basically beat the shit out of the kid that was harassing him, to the point where he overwhelmed this kid who had about 2 years on him with in seconds and began wailing away at him before the teachers at the school reacted probably just in time to save the kid from having a concussion. From my friends account he 'woke up' some 15-20 minutes later in the principle's office. Now I am not a lawyer so I cannot attest to if this could be construed as temporary insanity. For the purposes of this post this story made me think that there can be some circumstances where the no matter how well tempered a person is no matter how well disciplined there can be weak points where those primal traits can fight their way through even the most well mannered consciousness. The contrasting of these two ideas brings in the science wars. What can be done these two thoughts seem, at least to me, equally valid?