Perhaps one of the most basic decisions that we all make is just how aggressive we will be about getting what we want. I.e., just how much damage are we willing to do to others in order to satisfy ourselves. In this matter, no one is an angel. We all have to injure someone else every now and then in order to survive. On the macro scale, if you drive a car, as I do, you help to choke people with lung diseases and you’ve sent soldiers off to die in order to obtain petroleum. On the micro scale, you can’t have a stable marriage without sometimes manipulating and taking advantage of your partner in order to meet your basic needs. If a man and woman can’t accept this fact, they are a bit too idealistic for real-world marriage (unspoken romantic idealism, which society encourages in its pop culture, is probably a bigger factor in divorce than you would think; most love songs aren’t written about real people).

But beyond this base level of violence and exploitation, we all decide just how much more force and aggression we’re going to use to satisfy our desires. Obviously, some people go so far in their use of aggression as to attract a response from the government. They call it crime. But short of that extreme, we still make decisions about how demanding and forceful we’re gonna be in life, and how much we’re gonna care about hurting other people’s feelings, bodies, and economic interests.

To me, this is what philosophy is all about. Or should be.

Of course, we all know people (or maybe groups of people) who don’t care too much about what they do to others. These are the “caveman” types. Their brains seem to be wired to give they joy whenever they beat someone else and seize the booty. (You see them most every day at traffic lights, zooming around you on the right so as to get ahead of everyone once the light turns green). What’s even worse in my book is when people like this combine their aggression with intelligence, talent and charm. What you get then are politicians and corporate executives. And also, conservative talk show hosts . . . however, don’t think that the liberal, politically correct academians who the talk show hosts hate so much aren’t often wolves in sheep’s clothing. And as to priests and ministers and other religious leaders . . . don’t even get me started.

But what troubles me even more are the mostly average people who don’t get any particular thrill out of defeating others, who don’t believe that everything is a winner-take-all-game, but who give in to aggression in the name of security. Ah yes, security. A very seductive mistress, who I myself have succumbed to many times. Ancient historians claimed that the Roman Empire never fought an aggressive war. In their eye, Rome conquered Europe and North Africa and Palestine solely for security’s sake. Unfortunately, one man’s legitimate security needs easily becomes another man’s oppression.

I myself don’t have any answer to the problem of security war. The best security would come if we could all communicate and cooperate and be fair and open-minded. But it only takes one person who isn’t fair or won’t cooperate or can’t communicate his or her needs and understand the needs of others to tear apart the fragile web of trust. They we all go back to our fall-back position, i.e. independent action in order to obtain personal security. (We do often group together in taking such actions, e.g. through families and tribes; but such affiliations are fluid and are mostly based on circumstances. With a shift in the winds, we easily go to war against those who share our blood or our tribal colors).

Until humankind figures out some way to vastly improve communication and understanding and sell people on the long-run benefit of fairness and cooperation, then war, crime, neo-conservative anger, and a society where aggression is the unspoken norm (even, and perhaps especially, amidst liberals) are gonna be with us for a long, long time.