The Oxford Companion to American Military History | Aggression and Violence
Aggression and Violence. To understand the nature of aggression and violence on the battlefield, it must first be recognized that most participants in close combat are literally “frightened out of their wits.” Once the bullets start flying, most combatants stop thinking with the forebrain (that portion of the brain that makes us human) and start thinking with the midbrain (the primitive portion of our brain, which is indistinguishable from that of an animal).
In conflict situations, this primitive, midbrain processing can be observed in the existence of a powerful resistance to killing one's own kind. Animals with antlers and horns slam together in a relatively harmless head‐to‐head fashion, and piranha fish fight their own kind with flicks of the tail, but against any other species these creatures unleash their horns and teeth without restraint. This is an essential survival mechanism that prevents a species from destroying itself during...
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