Violence in the World Increasing or Decreasing?
- Overall, is violence in the world increasing or decreasing?
Violence remains one of the contentious issues in the modern world as its manifestations take relatively varied forms. Currently, nations come together in coalitions to defend their interests, a phenomenon that fans violence immensely. Such aspects emanate from the fact that multiple elements in humans influence aggression in humans in different ways. Ahluwalia & Toby (2019) notes that in countries like Colombia, systematic violence has seen people below 75 years, not knowing what peace entails. The feeling that a group is marginalized through underdevelopment and other essential aspects have translated to multiple instances where group violence thrives, and an example of peace is unheard.
Again, Ahluwalia & Toby (2019) highlight that due to the increasing poverty and the widening gap between the rich and the poor, instances of violence continues to heighten. Compared to previous years, different societies have found themselves much impoverished and marginalized, a new issue that pushes individuals to engage with group gangs to fend for themselves. A typical example is that of the Northern parts of Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela, where the homicide rates are relatively high as 30.8 out of 100000 people, are killed due to homicide attributed to poverty (Ahluwalia & Toby, 2019). Thus, group violence is a significant aspect that continues to exacerbate violence in different parts of the world.
Additionally, the manifestation of violence through non-physical means continues to soar globally. The definition of violence has taken a different dimension as it goes beyond physical violence and incorporates aspects of verbal violence. These verbal acts of violence manifest through hateful words that subsequently provoke violence as perpetrated demagogically and interpersonally (Ahluwalia & Toby, 2019). With the rising populism and phobia globally, violence in the current world continues to surge high.
However, Klasios (2019) notes that violence permeates through an aggressive behavior that could be anchored on different phenomena. First, Klasios (2019) highlights the concept of violence via honor to be a motive towards aggressive behavior. The idea of honor is grounded on the existing empirical evidence and agent-based model that concluded that honor is an evolutionary phenomenon that offers individuals with a fitness advantage across different institutions within a cultural context (Klasios, 2019). Save for the influence of the media and video games, Klasios (2019) ties the aspect of war and the rise of gangs to a Darwinian perspective. Such an explanation is anchored on the observation that a group of chimpanzees would systematically and gradually kill off male members of a rival troop that veers off from the rest of the troop. Such a phenomenon is a perfect example of the evolutionary coalitional violence that humans still exhibit. Thus, since these group and coalitional violence exists, violence will continue to surge exponentially as evident currently.