Homo Homini Lupus. Addressing Violence and Power Within Societies
HOMO HOMINI LUPUS
Addressing Violence and Power within Societies
“The problems of violence may be cardinal to a proper understanding of political life, yet the concept of violence remains elusive and often misunderstood”[1].
Scientists are asked to explain, define and describe the object of their studies, make questions and give answers helping people to be less scared about the various “world mysteries”.
In social sciences, to define, to give an objective, almost scientific, brief description of something, is always a challenge. Nevertheless social scientist are in charge of explain, define and describe as well as their fellows. The tendency is to operate a sort of categorization of the main key concepts of social sciences, applying a scientific scheme that pushes to extract the core meanings from those concepts and then to express them in terms of pure objectivity. In this way concepts become universally understandable so they contribute to the enrichment and enlargement of knowledge. This procedure belongs to the human nature, it has been taken in consideration since the most ancient time when early philosophers questioned about the way of thinking, perceiving and defining the “cosmos”.
Human beings are used to simplify, objectify and categorize the reality in order to be able to relate themselves with all the surrounding. Today neuroscientists talk about taxonomy[2], explaining in few passages how our brain works.
«For instance, if you hear purring and feel fur rubbing against your leg, your brain knows to associate that sound and feeling with the fluffy four-legged object you see at your feet – and to group that whole multisensory chunk under the heading of “cat.” What’s more, years of cat experience have taught you that it makes no sense to think of a cat as if it were a piece of furniture, or a truck, or a weather balloon. In other words, an encounter with a cat carries a particular set of meanings for you – and those meanings determine which
Addressing Violence and Power within Societies
“The problems of violence may be cardinal to a proper understanding of political life, yet the concept of violence remains elusive and often misunderstood”[1].
Scientists are asked to explain, define and describe the object of their studies, make questions and give answers helping people to be less scared about the various “world mysteries”.
In social sciences, to define, to give an objective, almost scientific, brief description of something, is always a challenge. Nevertheless social scientist are in charge of explain, define and describe as well as their fellows. The tendency is to operate a sort of categorization of the main key concepts of social sciences, applying a scientific scheme that pushes to extract the core meanings from those concepts and then to express them in terms of pure objectivity. In this way concepts become universally understandable so they contribute to the enrichment and enlargement of knowledge. This procedure belongs to the human nature, it has been taken in consideration since the most ancient time when early philosophers questioned about the way of thinking, perceiving and defining the “cosmos”.
Human beings are used to simplify, objectify and categorize the reality in order to be able to relate themselves with all the surrounding. Today neuroscientists talk about taxonomy[2], explaining in few passages how our brain works.
«For instance, if you hear purring and feel fur rubbing against your leg, your brain knows to associate that sound and feeling with the fluffy four-legged object you see at your feet – and to group that whole multisensory chunk under the heading of “cat.” What’s more, years of cat experience have taught you that it makes no sense to think of a cat as if it were a piece of furniture, or a truck, or a weather balloon. In other words, an encounter with a cat carries a particular set of meanings for you – and those meanings determine which