Aggression: The Muscle and Alterable Objects

Abstract

The purpose of life is to stay alive. The generic need of the human individual as well as all of his other needs and drives can be explained in this way. His most basic need is for survival, both immediate and ultimate; and it is a need which can be reduced by aggression, by changing a material object against its resistance. Hence all other drives are species of aggression, of efforts to achieve survival: immediate needs for food, sex, and shelter; ultimate needs for knowledge, activity and a greater share in existence. The individual’s immediate needs must be reduced before he can seek the reduction of his ultimate needs. But in order to pursue these aims he must be to some extent at least master of his environment; he must dominate it and be able to alter it in whatever way he requires. Toward this end, then, the individual directs all of his behavior, transforming material objects by constructing or destroying something, constrained to cooperate in these efforts with a few of his fellows and to compete with others.