Violence; does it work?

[Leanne]

And actually if you look at history people were relatively peaceful before agriculture/civilization, and in many places of the world where tribes still live people still are peaceful compared to our bigger societies. Battles happened when food was scarce and people needed more territory. We became more violent as we became more civillized for a variety of reasons.

Oh please. There is NO evidence to support any argument that agriculture or "civilisation" caused or even escalated human tendencies toward violence. On the contrary, there is a good deal of archaeological/anthropological evidence to indicate that humans have been violent since they first walked upright and probably before -- including your "peaceful" Nubians. According to Keeley's "War Before Civilization", over half the Nubians found buried in a cemetery from 12000 years ago had died of violence. Remains found of prehistoric people of all continents show signs of violent behaviour -- some rituals, some massacres, some just the result of a fight.

That there is an "outlet" to "let off steam" indicates, as Touchstone says, that there is a need for such a thing -- which says rather clearly that "peace" is less a natural state than one engineered through behaviour control and ostracism.

I tend to take any site that quotes Quakers as their main authorities with a few grains of salt.