Inclination to violence is part of the human condition?
does this help explain the violence of the youth gangs? Since they tend to be uncivilized, easily angered, ready to get even for all slights, real and imagined, with violence? A culture in which being “dissed” is the worst thing that can happen to someone, and someone who is “dissed” responds with violence?
There is somewhat disturbing precedent for these attitudes. Until the last 150 years or so, a man who wished to be accepted as “a gentleman” in western societies was obliged to “resent” any slur on his honor. IOW, if somebody “dissed” him, he was obliged to challenge him to a duel.
If he did not, he would often be excommunicated from polite society as being by definition “not a gentleman.”
This super-touchy attitude can be seen in full flower in Romeo and Juliet, where the groups of young upper-class men were ready to fight each other quite literally at the drop of a hat. Or the bite of a thumb.
These same attitudes, obviously greatly corrupted, have visible parallels in the ghetto of today.
does this help explain the violence of the youth gangs?...Actually, the idea of tribalism explains it.