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02/02/2026

Every morning as I drive to Planet Fitness, in the East, a red-orange sky breaks over New Castle Road. In the winter Mall parking lot lights brighten the white snow. As night changes to morning, I pass various malls on both sides of the road which are being plowed by big, industrial contract companies with teams of men and machines. Then there is a little strip mall at the intersection of Duffy and New Castle. The roadway and parking is narrow and the land slopes gradually from the South to the North. The mall houses a nail salon, a contract tax corporation and a mattress warehouse on the main thoroughfare. You just never know what kind of drama can erupt on these pedestrian scenes.

One night, my son called me and said his friend's grandfather needed an appointment to see me and he was quite nonplussed as he had been sued. I arranged to meet him right away. This kindly, white haired, older gentleman said, as a side job, he plows the lots of a couple strip malls. and at this one mall a man slipped and fell on ice and broke his leg.

The client handed me this immense lawsuit which was long on accusations and short on supporting facts. What happened was the man who was injured in the slip and fall sued the strip mall for damages caused by the asserted negligence of the strip mall company in not salting away the black ice. The strip mall hired this giant law firm to plead it was not their fault, but my the additional defendant's fault, the contract plow guy's fault in negligently plowing snow. This law firm had 4 or 5 theories espousing the failures and faults of my client which they pleaded in this unrhymed, epic poem of a suit. They claimed the snow fell on a given day in February and ten days later, after a warming and refreezing, black ice formed on which the Plaintiff slipped and fell.

The mall alleged that the man was contracted to plow snow and that he negligently plowed it and allowed ice to form on which the Plaintiff later fell. Of course, they never defined the terms of the contract on which they relied,. As stated, this was awful for my client, the additional defendant. To make it worse, the snow plowing contract was verbal, and not in writing, and according to the prophecy, he said he was to automatically come and plow when it snowed two inches or more. There was no provision to come back and salt unless he was summoned by the management. Furthermore, he piled the snow on the low spot at the corner of Duffy and New Castle Roads, as he was directed, as plowing at any other corner would trespass on adjoining properties. He said this despite the fact the pleadings said he improperly dumped the snow in an obviously wrong location.

Later, on a coincidentally cold and snowy day, we went to a four hour deposition at the Plaintiff's counsel's firm. The Defendant strip mall LLC did not have a representative present. The victim was the owner of the nail salon. He knew the property well. But he averred he was not aware of the black ice on which he slipped as he got out of his vehicle. No one warned him and he could not find out whom to alert as to his injuries as the LLC that operated the strip mall had no employees on site. After the deposition, which was all about the Plaintiff's injuries, and not my client's culpabilities, the Original Defendant's counsel, without looking me in the eye, asked me how much I was going to pay for causing the Plaintiff's harm. I said the number was zero.

When William Penn, a Quaker, designed the legal system in Pennsylvania, he established guidelines that pleadings should be simple and clear and designed for ordinary people to participate in suits. There was no need for lawyers. Given the consequences of any outcome this is ideal. Three hundred years later, the system is filled with convoluted rules and special pleadings that would defeat any pro se litigant and the proceedings and procedures are seeded with malpractice traps to defeat lawyers who do not specialize in these now esoteric types of cases. My profession insists on making the law opaque and tendentious. Well designed, accusatory pleadings throw blame with hard, bland words and provide abstract propositions which explain nothing in obscure causation paragraphs. Defense pleadings deny the accusations with dull prose that define nothing and provide ambiguous fence sitting answers that do not directly relieve the situation or accept responsibility. This is bureaucratic obfuscation and the courts tolerate complication without requiring simple and direct pleadings. It is infuriating to read accusations that heap obligation without properly explaining the allegations and even more infuriating to read the denials which do not explain the actual facts of the defense. Pleadings admit nothing and say nothing. Every case lasts for interminably long periods and persists in raising the antagonisms of the parties under a veneer of politeness. Modern lawsuits are as laborious monstrosities as Dickens Bleak House case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce.

At this point I was pretty disgusted by the opaque and deadly anodyne pleadings fabricated by this Pittsburgh law firm. It was clear to me that they had never personally surveyed the site of the case which I had thoroughly observed. Neither had they seriously investigated or questioned their own clients to understand what happened. Furthermore, I suspected their story of events was constructed out of any general narrative of injuries and was not precisely tailored to the particular case. They referred to the contract without delineating the terms. They omitted the fact there were no on site employees and only in the deposition did I learn the LLC was harbored in Ohio. Since there were no on site employees there was no one on the property to see snow melting in a warm up and then refreezing when it got colder. No one was on site to warn tenants or visitor guests of a dangerous condition. No one was on site to summon my client to come back and salt the property.

Now why am I defending this man instead of a proper insurance defense company? Because my client was paid $50 dollars per plow job. He didn't bother to have insurance for work that would not earn enough money to cover the cost of insuring this gig work. By now I was indignant that the big Pittsburgh law firm was so arrogant that it was willing to turn my client upside down to pick his pockets. My client really did not have enough money to pay me for his defense, much less pay them. Any suit or judgment would bankrupt him. My dad taught me not to pursue suits where the defendant was relatively penniless. Also my own experience. There is no point in winning a law suit if all you get is an empty bag. So now I thought cupidity made this big law firm stupid.

The case law holds that the owner of land has a duty to tenants and visitors and is liable for foreseeable damages caused by his negligence or failure to warn. With that knowledge I could prepare my defense. At first I thought of writing preliminary objections, but why alert them to their failures? I preferred to allow the poorly pleaded complaint proceed rather than wake them up to their deficiencies which would allow them to amend the complaint and change their facts. I preferred to hoist them on their own petard. Their ignorance and arrogance would sink them in a trial. I prepared the preliminary objections as a way to consolidate my preparation of my defense, but I did not file them.

My client was not an owner of land. Now, my client could be liable on agency theory, for breaching his duty to the Owner, Original Defendant, but that obligation does not run directly to all of humanity, in the form of tenants and visitors. My client would be liable to the Owner and through him to the public, only if he failed to properly plow and dump the snow, and that negligence caused the black ice. According to my client, for years he always dumped the snow in the same place. If that was the case, that was the proper dump site regardless of an off site owner's current claims. If the owner was always off site, the owner would not be present to warn tenants and visitors. A jury would frown. Ten days had elapsed since the snowfall and plowing and no one was on site to witness the warming and refreeze. The tenant owner of the nail salon was there every day and he should have foreseen the probability of black ice, but that was his problem. The Owner LLC should have foreseen the possibility of black ice and had my client come back and salt, but they did not. My client's verbal contract contract with the LLC did not require him to automatically return and survey for warmings and refreezings. Not for single jabs of $50 dollars would he become an on site property patrol man. The owner LLC had a duty to hire someone to watch the property. They must have considered that an undesirable expense that could be ignored. That was on them.

When asked again before the final pretrial how much I would pay for my client's negligence, I replied that I would pay nothing and advised that I did not think a jury would look kindly on their pursuing a church mouse for money where the owner of land was a greedy, absentee landlord picking the pockets of tenants without earning the cost of their services and obligations to the tenants.

At the pretrial, the Plaintiff and original tenant settled for a significant sum of money. My client contributed zero.

While working on this case, I learned these gig snow plow operators are an easy target for insurance defense companies. Lawsuits beggar uninsured operators. While it seems to be easy money to plow a lot for $50 or $100 dollars, the liability and responsibility that comes with it, deprives the profit of its benefit. Even insured operators can not police the lots of giant malls as there are always slopes on apparently flat lots. It is foolish to try to offload your responsibility to a contract operator. I am sure this strip mall LLC is now paying big bucks to a big contract company to plow their small lot. There are no winners in my business.

10/02/2025

PROTECTION FROM ABUSE ORDERS aka PFAs.

I have recently had a few gentlemen in my office who tried to cross-file an intial temporary PFA against various women who had filed initial PFAs agiainst them. The Court denied all the men's initial filing and granted all the women's. This is never a good beginning.

The men claimed they had not done anything at all or absolutely nothing wrong, contrary to the women's various assertions that they had been abused and assaulted. The men claimed these women had made these charges up against them and that all the women, in various ways, had committed other wrongs against the men. Each man said an injustice was being committed against him and the outcome was unfair.

One man said he didn't deserve to be kicked out of the house he bought and invested in and remodelled. He said he had no place to go when he was evicted, and that he and visiting family were wrongfully evicted. He claimed the Plaintiff was lying and that she, in fact, had done all sorts of other things which established her as a liar. But those things, whatever they were, did not negate her claim that, in this incident, he threatened her and she was in fear of her limb and her life, whether or not her claim was actually the case.

In each of these recent cases the men denied assaulting the women, although one admitted to pushing her away when she attacked him. The women's petitions all claim some variety of assault, although no one went to the hospital.

Of course, in no case, was I given a complete story of what happened. For the sake of the cases from the men's Point of View, I assumed no man actually, struck, hit, kicked, choked or clobbered any woman. Who knows what happened, as I was not there and I do not know either player. I have no idea whose version of the truth is more accurate when I meet strangers. It is unjustifiable to just accept a stranger's word when I first meet them. Most people are trying out their spin on things for the first time, out loud, when they meet me. And I know nothing about them.

But a lawyer starts with a hypothesis based on some subjective version of events, and listens closely and watches closely. Only a foolish lawyer accepts the client's word of what happened. In the first place, bad decisons have been made. Passions are hot. A lot of consequences are arising out of the irretriveableincident and people will be separating from each other and whole familieswill be split up. With so many errors and harms occurring, the deponent will never be a reliable reporter.

Still, each of the men were fit, ranging from 5'8'' to 6'. While, in all the Movies today, women can outfight a much bigger man, even in heels, in real life only a rare woman can go toe to toe with a man and the ones I have seen look awful, afterwards. Regardless of the cliams of terminal feminism, we men are two to three times stronger than you and most of you range from 5' to 5'6". So if a man resorts to violence it is reasonable for a woman to fear for life and limb. And that's how Courts look at "He said/She said" stories.

More to the central issue of why is the Respondent being accused by the Plaintiff, Petitioner, is the fact EVERY PFA is charged after a serious and relationship breaking ARGUMENT. The man is yelling. The woman is yelling. Things go out of control. Neither remembers what incites the passions and provokes the incident. No one can ever tell me why the event happened and few are self aware enough to explain what happened. They only remember the climax. The fear. The Anger, the Fury. Everyone remembers enough to assert they are the victim.

So every time a PFA is drafted some sort of violence and fear is expressed in the information paragraph. What actually happened is to be constructively constructed in a hearing. So how are hearings arranged and argued, and what has to be proved? We look at the statute.

PFAs are governed by Pennsylvania Statute, Title 23 Section 6101 et seq. That's the book and chapter. Regardless of events, acts, arguments or circumstances which percipitate a filing, you must understand the rules established under the act itself, not your own judgments of what happened and who is at fault.

Section 6102 (a)"Abuse." The occurrence of one or more of the following acts between family or household members, s*xual or intimate partners or persons who share biological parenthood:

(1) Attempting to cause or intentionally, knowingly or recklessly causing bodily injury, serious bodily injury, r**e, involuntary deviate s*xual in*******se, s*xual assault, statutory s*xual assault, aggravated indecent assault, indecent assault or in**st with or without a deadly weapon.

(2) Placing another in reasonable fear of imminent serious bodily injury.

(3) The infliction of false imprisonment pursuant to 18 Pa.C.S. § 2903 (relating to false imprisonment).

(4) Physically or s*xually abusing minor children, including such terms as defined in Chapter 63 (relating to child protective services).

(5) Knowingly engaging in a course of conduct or repeatedly committing acts toward another person, including following the person, without proper authority, under circumstances which place the person in reasonable fear of bodily injury. The definition of this paragraph applies only to proceedings commenced under this title and is inapplicable to any criminal prosecutions commenced under Title 18 (relating to crimes and offenses).

I copy the section directly because this general and vague language is often misunderstood by the Defendant/Respondent. The man, and the accused is generally a man, although anyone can be a Respondent says "I did not push her, she just fell down... I did not hit her, she hit me, she just bruises easily and see I got a cut too...She kicked me before... she hit me in the past... I was not going to hurt her... I was not following her, I was just at the same place where she was...It was a HE SAID /SHE SAID and I am telling the truth and she is lying" And so on.

In the first place the act is drafted in favor of the accuser. There is no 'he said/she said" section where both claimants are equal in the eyes of the law. If the Plaintiff says she was hit, choked, kicked or otherwise assaulted,then the court is going to accept that testimony by a preponderance of the evidence which is a feather's weight over 50%. The standard of proof is low.

This is a civil case after all. It is not by clear and convincing evidence or beyond a reasonable doubt, nor are the parties equal in credibility so that what the Respondent claims is equal to what the Plaintiff claims. In our system, which is composed of a series of constructive fictions, the first rebuttal to the denials of a respondent is "Why would the Plaintiff lie?" A strong chain of consequences always follows from a legal claim. Courts will nbot assume a Plaintiff is fabricating events before hearing the whole case, as the Repondent wishes would happen.

It is true that many accusers are making false claims, as the system does not often punish or detect liars. It is hard to disprove an accusation made in a PFA hearing because 1) the standard of proof is low, 2) the test is subjective as in fear is defined by reasonableness which is as much a subjective claim as an objective claim so when a Plaintiff says "I was in fear of my life and limb" because a man, bigger and stronger than she is, her word alone will prove her case. A Plaintiff's testimony that the Respondent assaulted her or by theatening her put her in fear of losing her life or suffering serious bodily injury, those circular premises, will establish the conclusion that she was abused under the Act.

If the respondent denies it and says we were just arguing because I caught her having an affair or she was stealing money from him or we were both drinking, those kind of denials actaully support the claim of fear of injury as passions are aroused by all these human failings.

Now, as an argument from authority, I have been involved in hundreds of PFA cases over the years. I have won many cases on both the Respondent and Plaintiff sides and lost even more from the Respondent side. I don't recall ever losing a case where I represented the Plaintiff. The accusations are easy to establish, and as one judge said, "Well, am I supposed to put them back in the house together for dinner tonight?" Because if the woman is killed or injured, it wioll be in the paper the next day and the judge will be embarrassed. So they err on the side caution, err on the side of the accuser, not the accused. But the man or the respondent says," I really did not do it. Why am I being removed from my house? Why am I losing my kids, my stuff, my dog and the residence I built with my hands?" When a Plaintiff goes to court and says she is abused because she is in fear of her life, who is going to deny her fear, and risk the consequences if she is injured? How do the losses of the Respondent weigh against the losses of the Plaintiff? How does anyone weigh the fear of an evil happening when it has not yet occurred based on these naked accusations?

Who can judge the realities? Chances are neither the Court nor your lawyer knows either of you well. The hearings are short. And competing accusations do not negate each other in the courtroom. Character and credibility are only established over time. You can't prove how good you are in a half hour hearing and a lot of dirt and evil are swept under a wilful rug and the fog of indifference.

Now sometimes a Respondent can successfully defend against a Plaintiff's accusations. But the accused must have a defense and solid facts and evidence to prove it and the Respondent is not the best judge of whether he or she has sufficient evidence. The lawyer is. We have the experience and means to demonstrate the cases, and even to exposes lies. Most times what people call "Lies" are actually perceptual differences or meaningless lies about off topic things such as she denied she was having an affair or shetold me she had a job so I lent her money or that she was divorced or that she was on birth control. Those may be lies but they do not negate the assertion that he assaulted me or that "I was in fear of my life because he hurt me before".

So what does an innocent party do in the face of an accuser bringing subjective fears on weak evidence to the court? The answer is to negotiate a settlement. There are many ways to negotiate painful separations. You do not want to lose your employment because an employer learns (probably on information supplied by the accuser or someone accessing court records) that there is a finding of abuse against you. You do not want to lose your possessions if you can negotiate a settlement where you get time and access to your possessions. You can get a temporary establishment of custody rights pending a further custody hearing. If you lose at hearing, which is likely, you may lose contact with your children, find your possessions are gone and your finances and employment are wrecked.

Some people may disagree with what I have written here. They may say the system is not like I have described, or that evidentiary hearings properly conducted can overcome all accusations and cross-claims. Maybe. Maybe there is something to those objections. But what I am really saying here is you must carefully weigh all the risks and outcomes. You can not really be certain of an outcome before it happens. And courts are One Size Fits All. It is easy for a court to rule against a Respondent in the face of claims by a teary eyed accuser.

I am not arguing that there is no defense against naked accusations or that weak claims always prevail at hearings. I am also saying what the Respondent or Plaintiff claims is proof and sufficient evidence of the accusation or denial of it may not be on all fours or will not bear the weight of their faith in his or her conclusions. To be precise, an experienced lawyer will recognize when and where you have a meritorious defense. The lawyer will recognize when you have solid rebuttal evidence and what the elements are sufficient to establish the evidence and how the evidence must be brought out in direct and cross examination.

The lawyer should be trusted to determine whether, or IF, there should be a hearing or a negotiated settlement. Neither party has the heuristic capability to assess the risks and odds.

03/05/2024

After acquittal, the jury is dismissed. Sometimes they are hurried out. I try to thank them the moment after the verdict is announced. Sometimes the judge and prosecutor hold them in the jury assembly room and ask them why the prosecution failed. Sometimes the jurors hang around outside the courthouse to tell me why they acquitted my client. It is always a moment of high tension and many jurors want a chance to say how they reached their decision and why it mattered.

After a loss, they refuse to look at you or the defendant and are reluctant to talk although they may express an opinion. Still emotional, but cold.

What happens after that? Even though the defendant is acquitted and retains the presumption of innocence, many people in the community still believe the accused is guilty. There is no ticker tape parade. After hugs and tears the accused will often ask me how he can get his name and reputation back. He can’t. He will be despised by the victims and the district attorney. The judge will always think he is guilty, most of them anyway. Rarely does a district attorney shake my hand after I win an acquittal. They ought to, it is a contest involving human life, but few have grace or honor.

Often they ask me if they can sue the victim for lying, or the State or the judge or the prosecutor. I suppose you can, but the case will be dismissed. The court will not let the defendant pursue a revenge on his accusers. It does not happen. It was a trial. The system holds the result as final. There can never be an appeal of an acquittal. So the case is over. By the way this is why it is foolish to think you can learn how to go to trial by reading appellate court opinions. They tell you why the State wins. There is no record book of victory, except living it. It is quite an experience and when you win, your feet do not touch the ground and you are like a victorious Roman General. No one can steal victory and everyone knows what you did. People o not like challenging defense counsel who win. You have magic. You have done what is rarely done.

The defendant gets to go home. He gets to sleep in a bed in his own home or with his family. It may not seem like much, but he is free. That is a big deal. If he lost, his future is defined by spending nights confined in jail He would be owned by the system and dominated by the system’s people. So the defendant may be broke and poor and have few friends and he may have lost all his possessions, his employment, and maybe even his wife and family like Job in the Bible story. But he has a chance to recover, to rebuild. He can be in public and go anywhere. Often a person has made a bad judgment which causes a chain of events which leads to him being charged with a crime. If he has the capability of introspection, and the ability to learn, he can change his path and he will live a better life.

Mostly people are ruled by their emotions especially anger and frustration and they are impulsive. They do not learn. Maybe they think they won once, they can win again. Fortune is fickle. If she allows you to win once, she certainly not be likely to grant favor for an error again. Still, people rarely change and old habits are hard to resist. If you drink, you will do something stupid again when you are drunk. If you get away with clobbering a fool in a mutual fight, you will probably be hot enough to fight again the next time some fool insults you. Why do I say this? Because after many years of doing this I often see the man once acquitted going on trial again for something else. Some call me again . Some are ashamed and look away when they see me again at a status conference or call of the list for their new case. They have never won twice. Only I know how to win. That is my domain.

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07/11/2023

This post was once more interesting. I am still trying to fix it.

Consent. The issue is consent. May the Police and Children and Youth Services Question a minor without advising her of her right to remain silent whether she is one to be charged or a witness victim? This is important because when the police and children services are investigating a crime against a child they assume the child either wants to cooperate or must cooperate. I have had s*xual assault against minor cases where the children victims are as young as three and of course 16 to 18 years old. Some are happy and eager to talk and tell what they claim happened . Some are reluctant to talk and appear to mirror or mimic their interrogators leading questions. The issue is does a minor have the right to refuse to answer questions when asked by the state to discuss a crime.

Sometimes the State interviews a child without concerning itself with whether the child wants to participate and regardless of whether the child does not desire to participate in fulfilling the role of a victim. Of course, many times the child does wish to come forward or participate. Not every time though. Should a child be compelled to testify? Is that right, or even ethical to command participation by the child?

At the current time a minor does not have any inherent immunity or privilege for refusing questions or not making statements or maintaining silence. There is no child and friend privilege, there is no parent child privilege, nor is there child immunity..

The State now grants special people, special minors rights of privacy for s*x change operations and for abortions. State actors and agents will assist them. The children do not require the consent of their parents for these operations. The minors may consent to these operations on their own, despite the fact they are minors. If one may consent to state and private acts as a minor and have the power to consent, for one's own autonomy under many state grants, then one must have the right, when interrogated by the state, to remain silent so that nothing a minor is forced to say can be used against the child or anyone else. A minor must have the same right to remain silent against questioning by the state as an adult.

There is an irresolvable contradiction when minors are treated as being without any rights solely due to the incapacity of age to consent or decide and when given progressives' needs, minors who lack capacity to consent in ordinary circumstances to vote or have s*x or remain silent, can suddenly and specially consent and demand the right to abortion, s*xual assignment surgery and make decisions the progressive state desires. This is perverse, perverted and an obvious wrong.

01/22/2023

You can't put 300 Chimpanzees on a plane without most of them killing each other and crashing the plane, whereas you can put 300 humans on a plane most times without any incident although one human can bring a bomb on a plane and kill everyone. (This is adapted from an observation by another researcher referred to by Wrangham in "The Goodness Paradox" Page 27 and footnote.)

Mammals may appear to be cute and cuddly, but they are all are violent. Meerkats are killing machines. So are lions, tigers, cheetahs, leopards, wolves and hyenas. Primates are really violent. Monkeys, Baboons, Chimpanzees, Bonobos, Lemurs and Humans are all killers. In the early days of Anthropology and Primatology the researchers assumed we were gentle and peace-loving. They excoriated Robert Ardrey, author of the Territorial Imperative, for arguing that early ancestors of man and other primates killed each other. These scientists bought Rousseau's vision that men in nature are pure, without sin and born free. It is civilization that enslaves us in chains and makes us into killers. This is naïve and wrong.

Rather than cite a number of scientific studies in the expert literature, I will quote from a couple of summary articles.

Of the five most violent species, apart from meerkats, the top four were primates and these species killed members of their own kind at rates of between 16 to 19%. Currently we kill our own kind at about 2% per year, although the rates are presumed to be higher in prehistoric times. (Business Insider, 2016). (This study, BTW, does not analyze the presumably more numerous events of assault with and without injury, r**e and intimidation practiced by animals, primates and humans.) The study authors looked at "many types of lethal violence including infanticide, cannibalism and deaths resulting from male-male fights" and concluded: "that as long as conditions exist where some of these kinds of violence provide some benefits, death will continue to occur."

According to a National Geographic article, How Human Violence Stacks Up Against Other Killer Animals (2016), "Humans inherited a propensity for violence from our primate ancestors." Within species killing among primates is six times higher than other mammals, and estimates are humans kill each other at about a rate of 2% although at times this rate can be estimated at as high as 12% in the medieval period and below .01 percent in law abiding peaceful environments in modern America. Id. Again, these estimates do not include the rates of non-lethal assaults or abuses.

One study indicates about 60% of mammal species are not known to kill each other, although I would add, many fight for territory and females such as bulls and deer and other ungulates and others will kill other animals such as Hippos who will kill any animal that annoys them. The researcher says porcupines and pangolins feel no urge to murder. Mongooses kill about 8% of their own kind, and the meerkat variety kills about 1 in 5 of its competing brethren within and without the clan.

Richard Wrangham, a Harvard biological anthropologist who has lived with and studied Chimpanzees and Bonobos in the wilds of Africa is quoted as saying while most apes and primates kill infants, Humans most often kill adults. I am not sure that is fully true. Humans retain the right to commit infanticide and legal abortions have killed more than 30 million since 1973, which is on a par with the raw death rates of World War I and above the death rates of the Napoleonic wars. Chimpanzees are party group killers who will exterminate competing Chimpanzee groups and the numbers are only lower because the social bands are smaller.

Wrangham says: "The adult killing club is very small. It includes a few social and territorial carnivores such as wolves, lions and spotted hyenas." You will observe we humans are social and territorial animals.

Scientists used to think only humans killed members of their own species, but now we know better. Chimpanzees murder, r**e and assault their own kind as well. Pages 6 and 7, Demonic Males, Apes and the Origin of Human Violence. Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson, Mariner Books, Houghton Mifflin Co. NY (1996).

Most animals are nowhere near as violent as human beings. Page 23). Only two animal species are known to act within a system of intense, male initiated territorial aggression including lethal raiding in search of vulnerable enemies. They are humans and chimpanzees. (page 24). Chimpanzees raid and kill in party groups. A party group is a temporary group formed for a few minutes or hours by chimpanzees from a single community. A troop, by contrast, is a permanent group. Monkeys do troops, chimpanzees do party groups. Party groups defend their own and raid other's territories. (pages 13-14)

A party group must have a numerical and strength advantage. Further, to increase its edge and limit danger of injury to its own members, the party group seeks to ambush and surprise the intended victims, who may be male or female. (page 70).

As long as opposing bands are of equal numbers there is little violence. When one group outnumbers another, the weaker group is exterminated. BTW, killing when raiding creates a cycle of revenge. (Page 73.)

Primates ferociously defend territories. Only primates including monkeys, baboons and apes fight in groups. Most prefer to dominate, not exterminate, except for chimpanzees and humans. Chimpanzees and humans both engage in political murder (killing alphas and personal enemies), beating and ra**ng. (page 131). For chimpanzees, loss of territory means loss of life and enlargement of territory means more food and mates. (page 166).

Wrangham and Peterson argue Humans are cursed by demonic males using lethal aggression. The curse originates in special party gang traits such as coalitionary bonds formed among males, male dominion over territory and variable party size. Consequently, a lone neighboring competitor can be killed safely and can result in enlargement of territory. Our aggression is rooted in our pride and passion driven seeking of dominance and status.

The argument of the Goodness Paradox, The Strange Relationship between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution (Richard Wrangham, Pantheon Books, NY (2019)), is that humans are self-domesticated. This argument is comforting but not really supported by convincing evidence. In the first place, to domesticate means that a plant or animal has been adapted by selective breeding for traits beneficial to humans by humans. Animals and plants do not domesticate themselves. Humans do not domesticate themselves. We do not selectively breed ourselves for beneficial traits. Even though we wear clothes and speak in coherent languages we are still wild animals, and we are not, my opinion now, particularly good at even taming ourselves, other humans or our own children.

While Wrangham goes on and on about self-domestication and references our and other species, I consider that surplusage. Wrangham argues that Humans and Bonobos self-domesticated (47-64). Wrangham proposes Belyaev's Rule is that in captivity selection against reactive aggression causes a domestication syndrome which changes the appearance and internal nature of the tamed and domesticated animal. (Belyaev domesticated the silver fox into a doglike creature) (Page 112). Wrangham says our paedomorphic (childlike) features such as our flat faces, big eyes bones and behaviors indicate we have been breeding ourselves to be less aggressive for over 300,000 years. It is easy to assume the at conclusion. Proving actual causation that far back is preposterous and impossible.

In chapter 7 The Tyrant problem, Wrangham proposes aggressive males caused the rest of the group to kill the tyrant and since the tyrants were killed by the offended community social groups, so they did not reproduce. Therefore, our ancestors eradicated out the genetic lines that were more highly reactive aggressive. That is absurd on its face. First, there are many highly reactively aggressive males today. Killing an aggressive male in the dim past does not mean you wiped out his genetic line as he was probably killed long after he began siring children and his threat had to be eliminated. Second, killing by the group may be indicative of proactive aggression but revenge is a reactive aggressive motivation out of actual threat fear, and frustration as well. That killing does not reduce the tendency to carry on a disposition toward reactive aggression . I maintain it can not proved how we became high in social tolerance, if we did and low in reactive aggression, if we did. The most we can say is that we are low in reactive aggression and high in social tolerance in comparison to chimpanzees and other primates.

The meat of his revelations is his take on our nature. While most anthropologists and social scientists talk about our altruistic and cooperative natures enabling us to evolve into pacific and loving animals, which is nonsense as altruism and cooperation are instrumental virtues. You can't kill everyone, so it is wise to be pacific and altruistic. Cooperation is good for working together, and just as good for helping humans kill, rob, r**e assault and steal from each other.

The key fact about humans is that within our social communities we have a low propensity to fight. Compared to most other wild animals, and our close relatives, the chimpanzee, we are very tolerant. (page IX).

These key traits are resolved by recognizing that our social tolerance comes from the tendency for our urges toward reactive aggression to be naturally low or relatively easy to inhibit by self-control. I would add here that many humans are impulsive and high in reactive aggression, especially violent criminals. So our low tendency for reactive aggression is a relative thing with us. Whereas, Wrangham argues, the violence that makes humans deadly is our pronounced development of proactive aggression. (page X).

Chimpanzees are much more aggressive than humans (page 19). They are callous toward other males and will r**e and dominate females. It is a fact however that human males are a perpetual threat to human females. Humans are still violent (page 22).

Reactive aggression is defined as a response to a social threat, provocation or frustration and is strongly associated with anger. Primates, and chimpanzees and humans are especially angry beings. Found in various mental disorders reactive aggression is a transdiagnostic phenomenon which is a maintaining factor of the disorder. (it is self-reinforcing and replicating). Impulsive aggression, reactive aggression, is a response to an actual or overt threat. The threat is immediate.

Proactive aggression is instrumental aggression (a means to another end). It is designed and acted out with a purpose or goal in mind, beyond simply harming the target being. It is meant to achieve an end such as increase status, self-preservation, gain a mate, food or obtain dominance over another or others. Proactive aggression is cold planned and deliberate. Proactive aggression is enacted only when the protagonist assesses he has a high likelihood of achieving success in the near instrumental target and the ultimate end.

None of this explains gratuitous cruelty or explains our varying levels of violence. Even today our crime statistics are not fully calculated, not all crimes and violent acts of less than lethal acts are calculated. Being high in social tolerance is a virtue but t has a dark side. Being high in either proactive or reactive aggression may bring selfish individual and group benefits. What is revealing is that we are not pure pacific animals who are kind and loving by nature, you cannot trust us. We can be mean and cruel, and we can harm or kill you in a moment. We are pretty and cute but dangerous. The paradoxes of our nature are not solved.
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