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Violence is defined by physical force or activity used to cause harm, damage, or abuse. Based on that definition you may conclude that violence is a vile and disagreeable thing, which in most cases is directly linked with criminal activity. However, violence is not always criminal in nature. For example, if you were to say " That sound hit my ear violently." you simply stated that some noise traveled to your ear with force. The sound and where ever it came from is not going to go to prison. Violence has been around as long as time. Depending on your point of view, you may speak of the Big Bang and that it is characterized as a violent explosion that created the universe. On the other hand, violence from a sociological point of view is said to be the most destructive force in our social relations and in society as a whole. Violence is cased by a host of reasons and goes hand in hand with a lot of things. One of these is aggression. Aggression is any physical or verbal behavior intended to hurt or destroy, whether done reactively out of hostility or proactively as a calculated means to an end. Thus, murders and assaults that occurred as hostile outbursts are aggression and violence. So were the 110 million war-related deaths that took place in the last century, many of which were cool and calculated. If you are living outside of the United States, your risk of being murdered is much lower than if you are within the US borders. Why is it that some countries, and individuals and so violence-prone? The answer to this question lies down a familiar path. Once again it comes down to the questions regarding nature and nurture. Research done on aggression and violence has shown that this behavior emerges from the interaction of biology and experience. For a gun to fire, the trigger must be pulled. With some people, as with guns, it doesn't take much to trip an explosion. Biology can explain the threshold for aggressive behavior and psychology can account for the factors that pull the trigger. According to one view, that belongs to Sigmund Freud and others, humans have a volcanic potential to erupt in aggression. Freud thought that we harbor not only positive survival instincts but also a self-destructive instinct. This instinct we usually displace towards others as aggression or release it in socially approved activities such as sports.
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