"Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence" - James W. Prescott (neuropsychologist)

[dreamache]

"Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence" - James W. Prescott (neuropsychologist)

This is a study from 1975.

A neuropsychologist contends that the greatest threat to world peace comes from those nations which have the most depriving environments for their children and which are most repressive of sexual affection and female sexuality.

A lack of sensory pleasure particularly in the form of cuddling and physical affection as a baby, *and* sexual pleasure as a young adult.. is the principal root cause of violence.

In other words, if you accentuate the experience of pleasure, you diminish the desire for violence.. and vice versa: If you accentuate your desire for violence, you diminish your capacity for pleasure.

They found a near perfect correlation (98%) between societies that are affectionate towards babies and allow for premarital sex, and cultures that have very low rates of violence. And the converse is true.

Another way of looking at the reciprocal relationship between violence and pleasure is to examine a society's choice of drugs. A society will support behaviors that are consistent with its values and social mores. U.S. society is a competitive, aggressive, and violent society. Consequently, it supports drugs that facilitate competitive, aggressive, and violent behaviors and opposes drugs that counteract such behaviors. Alcohol is well known to facilitate the expression of violent behaviors, and, although addicting and very harmful to chronic users, is acceptable to U.S. society. Marijuana, on the other hand, is an active pleasure-inducing drug which enhances the pleasure of touch and actively inhibits violent-aggressive behaviors. It is for these reasons, I believe that marijuana is rejected in U.S. society. For similar reasons heroin is rejected and methadone (an addicting drug minus the pleasure) is accepted.

The actual website seems down that I initially found the study on (violence.de), but here's a copy: BODY PLEASURE AND THE ORIGINS OF VIOLENCE By James W. Prescott

It's quite a long ass read, but this is a video from Stefan Molyneux in which he narrates it.

For TL;DR: Here's a video with Stefan Molyneux and Adam Kokesh in which Stefan explains the premise of the study:
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpHbcKDQbwU]BODY PLEASURE AND THE ORIGINS OF VIOLENCE - YouTube[/ame]


I found it interesting, especially being a father. /end random ass thread.

 

[chatmasta]

If this interests you, you should read Demonic Males ([ame=http://www.amazon.com/Demonic-Males-Origins-Human-Violence/dp/0395877431]Amazon.com: Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (0046442877435): Dale Peterson, Richard Wrangham: Books[/ame]). I took a class on almost exactly this topic. It's really interesting.