Why is violence so prevalent in Western culture?

[Lateralus]

here is a link with info on violent crime statistics in the US since 1960. a bunch of charts for individual crimes too. while it's great things have gotten better since the peak in the 90s if we go back a few decades we can see crime has increased quite a lot overall.

You're not looking at all of the data. There was an uptick in violence starting in the 60s, through the early 90s, but I'll get that in a bit. The likelihood that someone will be murdered (murder includes war for the purposes of this post) in their lifetime is less than 10 in 100,000. That varies from country to country. It's obviously a lot higher in places like Iraq, but in Sweden, the number is about 1 in 100,000. In the US, it's something like 4 in 100,000. This murder rate has been steadily falling for the last 5,000-10,000 years. The murder rate in prehistoric societies (hunter-gatherer types) is estimated to be around 500 in 100,000 based upon based upon skeletal remains from that time period. Medieval societies had a murder rate of around 50 to 100 per 100,000. If you look at the general trend of violence throughout history, there is a clear decline. It hasn't always declined. Just like there are "warm years" in the temperature record, there are periods where violence did increase, but those were temporary. If you're interested in some explanations for why this is happening, I recommend Steven Pinker's book: The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined. It's not a perfect book, but it puts forth some pretty good ideas as to why violence is declining.

As for the uptick in violence in the mid-late 20th century, leaded gasoline is the culprit. The evidence for this is overwhelming. I won't go into the details in this post because there are a couple articles on the subject that explain it better than I ever could.

How Lead Caused America's Violent Crime Epidemic - Forbes

America's Real Criminal Element: Lead | Mother Jones

 

[Thalassa]

Even L.A. is considerably less violent than the 90s. It astounds me occasionally when people who (and I have lived here less than five years myself) live in some 90s gangsta rap fantasy of our dangerous L A....it's like wtf bro that was twenty years ago...not to say there is not violence here, but it seems to mostly be related to hit and run pedestrian fatalities, the stupid police, and those two losers whose names should be forgotten just to spite them who shot up Santa Monica and the airport. And the population of Los Angeles has actually grown, even while seeing a decrease in both violence and pollution.

I do think the internet and DNA testing and cell phones are partly to thank for less dark creepy places to do things like randomly kill. People think twice about getting caught.

 

[Kullervo]

I don't think it is something only to Western society... but rather just plain old over crowding. Too many people making trouble, causes anger. (fighting over territory, you know)

But this guy did a study on it, John B. Calhoun. Further reading for more detail by reading this: Behavioral sink.

Oh and this too Genetics of aggression

Aggression and the "Warrior gene"[edit]
A version of the monoamine oxidase-A gene has been popularly referred to as the warrior gene. Several different versions of the gene are found in different individuals, although a functional gene is present in most humans (with the exception of a few individuals with Brunner syndrome).[16] In the variant, the allele associated with behavioural traits is shorter (30 bases) and may produce less MAO-A enzyme.[17] This gene variation is in a regulatory promoter region about 1000 bases from the start of the region that encodes the MAO-A enzyme.

The frequency distribution of variants of the MAO-A gene differs between ethnic groups.[17][18] 59% of Black men, 54% of Chinese men, 56% of Maori men, and 34% of Caucasian men carry the 3R allele. 5.5% of Black men, 0.1% of Caucasian men, and 0.00067% of Asian men carry the 2R allele.[6][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25]

Hmm...

 

[Thalassa]

Im pretty sure that's what ISTP was talking about ^^^^^

 

[draon9]

Violence is so prominent because we love violence we.do not know how to talk to people right and also because of the people we look up to

 

[Jaguar]

Violence is so prominent because we love violence we.do not know how to talk to people right and also because of the people we look up to

"We" do?

 

[draon9]

When I mwan we you should know I do not mean wveryone but un the back of a lot of peoples mind even my own we love violemce we love hatred and it seems that a. Lot of us will do anything to get what we want to happen it scares us but we love chaos