Ladies and Gentlemen, speaking for the opposition, the point that I would like to begin with involves the environment in which children are raised. I do not believe that all Humans are born with a natural instinct to inflict pain and/or cause death, but that these feelings are dependant on the social upbringing of a child.
If for instance a child has been raised in a particularly unstable background, where expressions of violence and hatred are common, then these emotions are passed on to the child, who then believes that they are normal and perfectly acceptable. Said child, who had grown up with these feelings would then find them compelling in adult life and cause them to act savagely.My second point is that, although regrettable bouts of savagery can occasionally take place, civilisation is always the priority. A prime example is that of war.
Before declaring war on another country, all other means of resolving the problem or dispute have to have been attempted and proven to fail before we can resort to using a violent solution, which is the only one available. This shows that savagery is not an innate desire, but one which humans will try to stop themselves from having, because it is wrong.Continuing from that point, I would like to stress that all humans always have a conscious choice, regarding the decisions that we make and any actions that we carry out based on those decisions and choices. Our minds do not subconsciously go straight to violence whenever any problem occurs. We make choices every day to resolve issues, but are hardly ever violent.
This again shows that we subconsciously try to live our lives in the least savage way that is possible.Another reason to oppose the motion concerns religion. A vast proportion of the worlds population follow a religion, and almost every single religion teaches that its followers should remain calm and civilised at all times, even in the unlikely event that another person is being violent towards yourself. Most of the religious followers choose to believe in a certain religion, because they think that it has the best guidelines on how to live your life; on how to live a peaceful life. This does not at all demonstrate that humans wish to live violent lives, but that they want peace, they want to live a life where violence is not seen.To conclude, the motion that we are discussing states that every single human being is born with a desire to cause pain and death, if that were the case, why would we be using a civilisation to cover up that desire? If everybody felt that way, then why would we be sat in a room now, having a reasoned and rational debate?
