Take That!

What happens in the brain, when you grow up in an environment that celebrates violence? This was a question that Michael Portillo asked tonight in a programme where he was attempting to explore the motivation in the human psyche that causes some of us to revel in violent behaviour. Is it because aggression is "hard-wired" into us? Despite other cultural influences, despite education, laws, and the conventions of other social controls, some of us still enjoy taking part in bloodshed and conflict. And even if we don't enjoy doing it, some of us just enjoy watching it. Is this true? Are we really programmed to become excited – even uplifted – by brutality?

If it is true that we are programmed because of our origins to be aggressive, why are so many of us repulsed by violence? Why is it that so many of us refuse to engage in acts of gratuitous aggression? Where did this self-control (for that is what it must be) come from? We are sometimes told that people with a history of violent behaviour have a different level of a certain enzyme being released into their pre-frontal cortex; as if it were not exactly the fault of the perpetrator; more of a chemical disorder. But Michael Portillo's investigations suggest something different – that the majority of murders, for example, are committed by people who weren't acting on impulse, who weren't subject to a sudden rush of malevolent biological juices; but by people who made a conscious decision to kill.

Is this correct? What about people who have been subject to the horrors of some savage trauma and who – although would not normally see themselves as vengeful or aggressive by nature – find something being released in themselves which causes them to lash out in some iniquitous act of brutality? I wonder which theory is true.

Likewise, I wonder what kind of motivation caused my Great Aunt Dolores Mackliskey (the one who was run down by a lorry and yet survived, and who later took up playing the xylophone) to commit the most appalling act of violence against yours truly one day? We'd been on safari in South Africa and Dolores thought it would be a good opportunity to take in a bungee jump. I told her that I have a morbid fear of heights, but she wouldn't hear of anything so "girlish" in her "favourite great-nephew", so we made our way out to Mossel Bay where she signed us both up for the famous Bloukrans jump off the old Gouritz bridge. I was shitting myself to be honest, but all my protestations were met with a thump around the head from her crocodile-skin handbag, and repeated cries of "Cissy!" I had no other choice but to get strapped up and eventually launch myself from the parapet (Dolores, in characteristic chivalry towards my younger generation, opted to go second).

I'll tell you how horrifying the actual jump was on another occasion, but for now I'll let in you on what I consider to be my great-aunt's murderous intentions. When I'd finished the (admittedly exhilarating) bouncing, and was waiting to be hauled up by the somewhat hunky short-clad blonde South African young student, Dolores thought it would be amusing to pick up a nearby machete and slash the cord holding me aloft. Imagine my terror as I was suddenly plunged 35 metres, head first, into the swirling river below. As I thrashed my way to the shore, convinced that I was on the very brink of being avenged by relatives of my great-aunt's handbag, I assumed some technical hitch had caused my demise. Only later, when she laughingly slapped my water-soaked back and declared that she hadn't had as much fun since the time she'd shot her fourth husband by "by accident", did I realize what a truly psychopathic travelling companion I had become saddled with.

Her excuse? She'd been traumatised, she claimed, by being forced to eat sago pudding at boarding school. Well (and steam still comes from my ears at the thought), weren't we all?