Man is a unique being in his bifurcated and mysterious nature: the noblest and most sublime of his qualities combined with the lowest and most brutal natures. Moreover, within him are clashing contradictory and conflicting tendencies and instincts, so the tendency of the love of life matched by the instinct of revenge, the love of destruction and death, and the tendency of altruism and selfishness and its antagonism.
This phenomenon of human uniqueness is not surprising, whether we discuss it in accordance with religious principles or nature-related theories. Because man is the most prestigious being among other beings, and the most worth distinguishing among them. Understanding and accepting this depends on a majority judgment; not a comprehensive and general judgment of the human reality from the dawn of time until the present day. Because the qualitative human distinction has not made him the best performer, especially the modern person who has harmed the lives of those around him, spreading fear and tampered with the environmental balance after being stable for millions of years, which was not satisfactory. Rather, he turned into the biggest killer of his kind in the past 100 years, especially in the two world wars, in addition to the wars and conflicts that followed, and then successive waves of violence that claimed millions of lives around the world.
Human Nature
Watching this world fluctuate with types of extremism and violence, in all their forms and manifestations, individually and collectively, always brings us back to the great philosophical question about the nature of this unique being, is it good or evil? Are the actions that are carried out on a person’s behalf related to his form and nature, or his origin and upbringing? People have divided sects in favoring this or that opinion or standing between them.
The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes asserts that the nature of man is inclined to evil and the use of violence towards others whenever the opportunity arises, by his famous saying: “A man is a wolf to another man”; Since the normal state according to Hobbes is the state of war; it is indeed much worse than that; as he envisions it to be the war of all against all, where he makes this idea a point of departure to establish his concept of man’s need for a social force that curbs this evil nature and protects humanity from its destructive effects. That concept is the social contract theory, developed by a group of philosophers, resulting in different types of power in its various forms, and its interpretation of the individual’s relationship to this power.
The philosopher John Locke, on the other hand, asserted that man is good and at peace by nature, but the accumulated economic conditions have created a state of violence and a desire to use force against his fellow man. As if violence is nothing more than a foolish reaction with which man faces the contradictions of social life, as well as the pressures of social institutions that constantly impose their own logic and vision on individuals and groups.
Susceptibility to criticism
The issue of human nature will remain a rational exercise of judgment that is subject to criticism and review, despite the tendency of the Islamic theory to the idea of charity in the origin of human nature, starting from the principle of fitrah (human nature), as inferred by the saying of God Almighty: “Allah's Fitrah with which He has created mankind.” [Al-Rum: 30]. In the noble Prophet’s hadith: “Every child is born with a true faith.” A wider reading of the texts reveals the evil tendencies of the human soul if they do not follow the divine guidance. The Almighty say: “Woe to man! What hath made him reject Allah?” [Abs: 17].
Whatever the preponderant opinion we choose, it will not change the educational vision of the human being that drives him towards good and righteousness to bring him to the state of human perfection, which is the goal of education. Achieving this goal is not easy, its difficulties are not due to restrictions that a person lives and cannot escape from. Rather, it is because man has a long childhood, slow maturity that lasts for years, and because he has a divergent nature, in which his instincts, tendencies, ideas and perceptions interact.
The building of the human personality starting from a newborn, reaching adulthood and carrying responsibility, are successive stages in which the effects overlap, and for which the various institutions work, but urgent questions in this context must be answered. How does the state of violence arise in the human personality? When is it dormant in him? How does this phenomenon become obvious and visible so a society can monitor it after it has experienced the scourge of its harmful behavior?
Socialization
Social upbringing, including the transmission of values from one generation to the next, allows an individual to think, act and correct things in ways that imitate what members of society do. It is the gist of education and its ultimate goal. Therefore, society uses its institutions to achieve this, starting with the family, ending at school, through the media, social relations, and others; and as life becomes complicated, the effects vary and their influence overlaps, making tracking the impact to reach the influencer a process similar to searching for a needle in a haystack.
Attempting to explain the phenomenon of violence according to one approach is unsuccessful intellectual restrictiveness. Because it is not possible to trace back this phenomenon to a single cause that is easily identified and addressed, and, therefore, there are many theories explaining it, some of which are based on social reality, others on economic explanation and its impact on the extent and intensity of violence. There are theories that are in favor of biological instinctive aspects, while others explain the phenomenon by the cultural factor. All this shows the extent of complexity facing attempts to explain the phenomenon of violence and identify its roots, and in order not to distract the reader, we will confine this article to an educational view of violence and its roots in the human character.
There is no doubt that violence in the human character is not a sudden or incidental situation. Rather, it is a process whose steps continue to be carried out until it reaches the state of no return, following the practice of violence and its bad effects on the individual and society. The phenomenon of violence is inevitably one of the results of the accumulated and continuous errors practiced by educational institutions from which the problem emerges and exacerbates. Then its effects are manifested and spread in societies, and there is considerable evidence for this in the past few decades. We will attempt to find out the roots of violence in the human character by tracing educational errors, how they affect the creation of violence and its practice in the future.
There must be a realistic and rational treatment of the phenomenon of violence. Because the idea of eradicating violence from people's lives is ideal and impossible to apply due to the nature of life, and to what man has experienced throughout history. Therefore, we must move towards demarcating the phenomenon, minimizing the intensity of violence and reducing it to its minimum levels, in a way that guarantees decreasing its destructive effects on both private and public life, which education always tries to achieve.
The Ability to Criticize
The most dangerous of violence roots in the human character is the weakness of critical thinking, which is the most important of all. Nevertheless, the least importance has been attached to it, due to educators’ neglect of young people’s mental development, their failure to provide higher thinking skills along with critical thinking, their adoption of wrong educational methods, and the actions of which are practiced consciously. Many of these are practiced in situations at the subconscious, such as the fearful authoritarian practice of the child, and systematic indoctrination on the pretext of preserving the cultural heritage prevailing in society. All of these effects form a trenchant personality that is not able to accommodate the normal disparity between human beings, and the importance of this disparity in the integrity of the general human image.
Despite the importance of criticism and the mental skills related to it, which has recently been adopted on a large scale through teaching critical thinking especially at universities, it is not sufficient to provide our children with thinking skills and instilling and enhancing them in their personalities. Therefore, they must be trained on them and practice them in various educational situations extending along the timeline of the educational process, so that they are able to use those skills and improve their use and adoption in all areas of their lives.
Critical thinking as defined by professionals is a rational, contemplative thinking based on making decisions about what to do in a situation. A researcher explains that the importance of critical thinking is in immunizing the individual from wrong ideas, extremism and ideological intolerance, by making the person open and receptive to others who differ from him in doctrine or thought.
The formation of the child's personality in accordance with the concept of absolute obedience requires reducing his ability to criticize, express his ideas, and adopt his convictions to be docile; easing the ability to direct and control his personality, which facilitates and accelerates his adoption of ideas of any kind and of an extreme nature, because it is not built upon foundations of mental convictions or contemplative thinking, which is evident among most of the followers of violent groups around the world.
Mind Exclusion
The manifestations of violence in all its forms and levels are similar in excluding the mind and overriding the logic of power. This strictly applies to the definition of violence adopted by the World Health Organization (WHO): “intentional use, or threat of use, of physical force against oneself, another person, group of persons or society as a whole, which results in or could greatly lead to injury, death, psychological harm, ill-development or deprivation”.
The absence of mind leads to reliance on force, which is violence, whether it is individual or collective violence, in a narrow circle such as family and individual relationships or in general as political violence and violence committed by fundamentalist groups.
Although in this brief article we couldn't investigate and track educational applications and practical practices which have weakened critical thinking among young people in educational institutions and social life, we have identified some of the root causes of the problem and reviewed some of its causes and solutions. It is indeed one of the priorities of educational work. Educators, particularly in formal educational institutions which assume major responsibility of education in society, must take care of this issue and address it on the basis of scientific principles, practical applications, and rigorous educational programs.