This distinction divorces human aggression from animal aggression, in opposition to the widely accepted myth that 'malignant' human aggression has its roots in an animal past. — ZzzoneiroCosm

Don't know much about Fromm, but his distinction between types of aggression doesn't make sense to me. Many social animals have hierarchal communities with structures of dominance enforced by aggression and submission. In people, that drive for dominance may take on odd and dangerous permutations because of how complex our society has become in order to handle all these dozens and hundreds and thousands and millions of people.

My aim here is to take a deeper look at Fromm's The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness.

...his distinction between types of aggression doesn't make sense to me. — Clarky

Possibly because this sort of aggression:

Many social animals have hierarchal communities with structures of dominance enforced by aggression and submission. — Clarky

...doesn't seem to fall into category one or two. I agree it doesn't fit.

Certainly, "structures of dominance enforced by aggression and submission" would fail to meet the criteria for malignant aggression, as Fromm understands it:

... “malignant” aggression, i.e., cruelty and destructiveness...has no purpose, and its satisfaction is lustful. — ZzzoneiroCosm

If I unearth a clue in regard to the categorization of this type of aggression, I'll post it.

Wolves are notorious where I live for killing cattle without eating it. Killing for the sake of killing, it seems.

This distinction divorces human aggression from animal aggression, in opposition to the widely accepted myth that 'malignant' human aggression has its roots in an animal past. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I would say, it's human intelligence which is the reason of "malignant" aggression.

Wolves are notorious where I live for killing cattle without eating it. Killing for the sake of killing, it seems. — Tzeentch

Also there is a kind of dogs who kill a rat but do not eat it.
Also cats who kill a mouse but do not eat it.

I had both, such a dog and a cat.

Wolves are notorious where I live for killing cattle without eating it. Killing for the sake of killing, it seems. — Tzeentch

Would you say these wolves are being cruel?

Would you say this dog and this cat were being cruel?

Wolves are notorious where I live for killing cattle without eating it. Killing for the sake of killing, it seems. — Tzeentch

No they have a reason-- training for hunting. If cattle is made available, that's where they're going to practice.

This distinction divorces human aggression from animal aggression, in opposition to the widely accepted myth that 'malignant' human aggression has its roots in an animal past. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I agree. No maliciousness in animals, except what's programmed into them such as being head of the pack, scarcity of food, training the youngs to hunt, etc.

Would you say this dog and this cat were being cruel? — ZzzoneiroCosm

Yes and no.
Yes because they had fun killing the mouse or a rat, not because they were hungry.
No because it's nothing in comparison to what humans are capable to do to other people, like skinning someone a live or burning someone on the stake, animals don't do such horrible things.

So it's intelligence what makes people more cruel than animals.

Would you say these wolves are being cruel? — ZzzoneiroCosm

Possibly?

I tried to draw attention to why such an act is considered malignant when a human does it, but not when an animal does it.

No they have a reason-- training for hunting. If cattle is made available, that's where they're going to practice. — L'éléphant

Why is it that when an animal exhibits such behavior we excuse it, but when a human does it we label it as malignant, though?

To name an example; a human being cruel to animals is probably something we'd label as malignant. But we could just as easily argue this person is "training" for rough times that may be ahead, which isn't even that far-fetched.

I tried to draw attention to why such an act is considered malignant when a human does it, but not when an animal does it. — Tzeentch

Fromm's position is that malignant aggression, as exhibited by humans, is "virtually non-existent" in the animal kingdom. I accept your example of cattle-poaching wolves as a possible exception.

Why is it that when an animal exhibits such behavior we excuse it, but when a human does it we label it as malignant, though? — Tzeentch

So it's intelligence what makes people more cruel than animals. — SpaceDweller

I agree the fact of higher intelligence makes this kind of behavior seem more cruel, and more reprehensible, when perpetrated by a human.

Why is it that when an animal exhibits such behavior we excuse it, but when a human does it we label it as malignant, though? — Tzeentch

So humans need to practice to hunt to survive? What happened to farm animals, manufacturers, distributors, and supermarket stores?
No, I don't see that what the wolves are doing applies to humans.

So humans need to practice to hunt to survive? — L'éléphant

It's not inconceivable that during our lifetime there will come a point where we must fall back on such things - during a war for example.

So I ask again, why is it when an animal is cruel we excuse it as practice or instinct, but when a human does it we label it as malignant aggression?

Animal aggression: An offering to Thanatos (execution)
Human aggression: An offering to Thanatos (execution) + An offering to Algos (cruelty/torture)

The X factor: Intelligence!

If you can be cruel, necessarily that you've got brains! :chin:

Contrapositively, if you're an idiot, you can't be cruel!

Thus, innocence is associated with naïvety (inexperienced, lacking in worldly knowledge). Hence, God's preference for childlike innocence (re A&E's banishment from paradise).

if you're an idiot, you can't be cruel! — Agent Smith

So we might say: Thank god there's so many idiots about. :smile:

So we might say: Thank god there's so many idiots about — ZzzoneiroCosm

Yeah, in a way, on target! Fun fact: Predators are more intelligent than prey (dolphins, chimps, octopi, dogs, cats (small & big), etc.

This distinction divorces human aggression from animal aggression, in opposition to the widely accepted myth that 'malignant' human aggression has its roots in an animal past — ZzzoneiroCosm

I don’t think ‘innate programming’ is a helpful way to understand aggression in humans , and frankly, I think it covers over complex cognitive attributions taking place in animals as well. We become hostile and angry when a standard or expectation has been violated and we perceive there is a way to modify the others behavior. This is a cognitive assessment , not an instinct. Cruelty and destructiveness is not an inherent feature of anger and hostility. First of all, it is in the r eyes of the beholder , and secondly, the central goal of hostility is the amelioration of the perceived violation , not destruction or cruelty. If the others motives are perceived as deliberately cruel and destructive in their aim , that is generally a function of our own hostility toward them.
We dont see how they can justify their actions to themselves , so we assume their motives are gratuitous.

why is it when an animal is cruel we excuse it as practice or instinct, but when a human does it we label it as malignant aggression? — Tzeentch

It's not cruelty when animals hunt. Humans hunt for entertainment. Farm animals supply the food.

Why are hunters entertained by hunting? Why do some animals play with their food?

We've already established that there needs to be no strictly rational reason behind the act of killing in order for animals to be excused, as per the example of wolves killing lifestock for no reason. So why the double standard?

Hi Tzeentch, I've maxed my limit on disgreeing post, unfortunately. (As a self-imposed rule on my posting habits, when I disagree with a post, I limit my posts to two and that's it.)

Edit1: This is due to the fact that I've been accused twice of picking a fight when my posts had gotten more aggressive. And I already agree that at that point, my post did sound aggressive, though not intentionally. So, here we are now.

Fromm spends a good deal of time and space dressing down On Aggression by Conrad Lorenz:

Perhaps Lorenz’s neoinstinctivism was so successful not because his arguments are so strong, but because people are so susceptible to them, What could be more welcome to people who are frightened and feel impotent to change the course leading to destruction than a theory that assures us that violence stems from our animal nature, from an ungovernable drive for aggression, and that the best we can do, as Lorenz asserts, is to understand the law of evolution that accounts for the power of this drive? This theory of an innate aggressiveness easily becomes an ideology that helps to soothe the fear of what is to happen and to rationalize the sense of impotence. — Fromm, Ibid

Konrad Lorenz’s On Aggression (K. Lorenz, 1966) became within a short time of its publication one of the most widely read books in the field of social psychology...[On Aggression] appeals to the thinking of many people today who prefer to believe that our drift toward violence and nuclear war is due to biological factors beyond our control, rather than to open their eyes and see that it is due to social, political, and economic circumstances of our own making. — Ibid

Lorenz’s assumption of forty thousand years of organized warfare is nothing but the old Hobbesian cliché of war as the natural state of man, presented as an argument to prove the innateness of human aggressiveness. — Ibid

Fromm's thesis: Malignant aggression..."is due to social, political, and economic circumstances of our own making."

Fromm contra instinctivism - Lorenz's and others'.

Paleontology, anthropology, and history offer ample evidence against the instinctivistic thesis: (1) human groups differ so fundamentally in the respective degree of destructiveness that the facts could hardly be explained by the assumption that destructiveness and cruelty are innate; (2) various degrees of destructiveness can be correlated to other psychical factors and to differences in respective social structures, and (3) the degree of destructiveness increases with the increased development of civilization, rather than the opposite. Indeed, the picture of innate destructiveness fits history much better than prehistory. — Fromm, Ibid (bolds mine)

We couldn't have made it this far without a mean streak: aut neca aut necare (kill or be killed). It's only after we managed to claw our way to the top of the food chain that our innate killer instinct became a major concern (we were turning on each other without an iota of mercy).

Fromm's thesis statement:

My thesis—to be demonstrated in the following chapters—is that destructiveness and cruelty are not instinctual drives, but passions rooted in the total existence of man. They are one of the ways to make sense of life; they are not and could not be present in the animal, because they are by their very nature rooted in the “human condition.” The main error of Lorenz and other instinctivists is to have confused the two kinds of drives, those rooted in instinct, and those rooted in character. — Ibid

Fromm links the spirit of capitalism to instinctivist accounts of human destructiveness:

The instinctivist movement based on Darwin’s teaching reflects the basic assumption of nineteenth-century capitalism. Capitalism as a system in which harmony is created by ruthless competition between all individuals would appear to be a natural order if one could prove that the most complex and remarkable phenomenon, man, is a product of the ruthless competition among all living beings since the emergence of life. — Ibid

An aside on Freud's transition from a libido-centered theory to a theory centered on eros and thanatos:

Freud himself never claimed that the libido theory was a scientific certainty. He called it “our mythology,” and replaced it with the theory of the Eros and death “instincts.” It is equally significant that he defined psychoanalysis as a theory based on resistance and transference—and by omission, not on the libido theory...Freud’s revolution was to make us recognize the unconscious aspect of man’s mind and the energy which he uses to repress the awareness of undesirable desires. — Ibid

Aggression-producing circumstances - for example, crowding - are more prevalent in human than in animal habitats.

...animals, too, exhibit extreme and vicious destructiveness when the environmental and social balance is disturbed, although this occurs only as an exception— for instance, under conditions of crowding. It could be concluded that man is so much more destructive because he has created conditions like crowding or other aggression-producing constellations that have become normal rather than exceptional in his history. Hence, man’s hyperaggression is not due to a greater aggressive potential but to the fact that aggression-producing conditions are much more frequent for humans than for animals living in their natural habitat. This argument is valid— as far as it goes... — Ibid

.

But...

But the fact remains that man often acts cruelly and destructively even in situations that do not include crowding. Destructiveness and cruelty can cause him to feel intense satisfaction; masses of men can suddenly be seized by lust for blood. Individuals and groups may have a character structure that makes them eagerly wait for— or create— situations that permit the expression of destructiveness. — Ibid

From Fromm's thesis statement (quoted in full above):

The main error of [the] instinctivists is to have confused the two kinds of drives, those rooted in instinct, and those rooted in character. — Ibid

So the question of character has become central. How does Fromm define character and why do some human beings have a destructive character?

(If I recall correctly, Fromm deploys the phrase "unlived life" as an explanation for the existence of a destructive character in man. But all in due time.)

The first sign of an answer to this question:

The sadistic person is sadistic because he is suffering from an impotence of the heart, from the incapacity to move the other, to make him respond, to make oneself a loved person. He compensates for that impotence with the passion to have power over others. — Ibid