Member-only story
5 Destructive Behaviors Hardwired Into Human Genes
It’s weird we’re all like this
Human beings are weird creatures.
We’re the most advanced species on the planet in terms of our highly evolved reasoning capability. But we’re also incredibly hardwired to do stupid things.
A substantial amount of research have uncovered a variety of behaviors that appear to preprogrammed into our brains.
Unleashing violence on each other
Humans started doing harm to one another long before they had time for anything else.
The oldest evidence of human warfare dates back some 10,000 years ago. And it’s stayed that way ever since.
We love to fight. We innately crave violence just like we do sex, food, or drugs. This isn’t just some quirk, it’s a fundamental aspect of our biology.
Researchers have found that we all have violence in our DNAs and that up to 40 genes are linked to violent conduct.
Inter-human conflicts cannot stop. As Sean Kernan points out:
Every time we get closer to peace, some big thing is threatening to pull us in again.
It all comes down to how violence impacts the reward centers in our brains. In response to an…
