International Conferences on Conflict and Agression

Dalai Lama’s comments on the SSV (1998)

from The Art of Happiness: A Handbook for Living, by the Dalai Lama and Howard C. Cutler, M.D., 1998, Riverhead Books, page 58 (1998)

In recent years… the tide [of philosophical, psychological and other scientific evidence] appears to be turning on this [previously described] profoundly pessimistic view of humanity, coming closer to the Dalai Lama’s view of our underlying nature as gentle and compassionate. Over the past two or three decades, there have been literally hundreds of scientific studies indicating that aggression is not essentially innate and that violent behavior is influenced by a variety of biological, social, situational, and environmental factors. Perhaps the most comprehensive statement on the latest research was summarized in the 1986 Seville Statement on Violence that was drawn up and signed by twenty top scientists from around the world. In that statement, they of course acknowledged that violent behavior does occur, but they categorically stated that it is scientifically incorrect to say that we have an inherited tendency to make war or act violently. That behavior is not genetically programmed into human nature. They said that even though we have the neural apparatus to act violently, that behavior isn’t automatically activated. There’s nothing in our neurophysiology that compels us to act violently. In examining the subject of human nature, most researchers in the field currently feel that fundamentally we have the potential to develop into gentle, caring people or violent, aggressive people; the impulse that gets emphasized is largely a matter of training.