Writers on pacifism and nonviolence share an implicit assumption that to become nonviolent, as societies, groups or individuals, is actually possible. However, the dominant narrative of human history has focused on violent actions—what historian Francisco A. Muñoz termed “violentology” (Gay 2016 ). This dominant historical narrative is unremittingly deterministic. In other words, that humanity might choose a pacifistic or nonviolent future is unlikely based on human history. As with all deterministic ideologies—whether religious, biological, sociological or historical—free will, the ability to make choices that might result in differing future outcomes that are not predetermined, is a chimera. If the narrative is true, and if it can be demonstrated that the human animal is, in fact, determined for violence rather than nonviolence or pacifism, then the work of nonviolent philosophy and activism is futile.

Historical determinism has been buttressed by biological positivistic frameworks that have suggested that the human animal is, in fact, hardwired for aggression and violence and no amount of wishful thinking will change that fact of nature (Wilson 1975, 2015; Dawkins 1989). I will offer, below, a more hopeful prognosis. I suggest that the possibility of becoming nonviolent is a warranted assumption based on recent studies in the psychology of peace (Christie et al. 2001, MacNair 2003), that humanity has the potentiality and resourcefulness for empathy and nonviolence (Midgely 1995; Rifkin 2009; Pinker 2011; Krznaric 2014) and that a spiritual practice of the habituation of nonviolence suggests a realistic hope for a nonviolent future (Simpkins and Simpkins 2011, 2012). This is, however, not a deterministic viewpoint, and the future remains open. I will not suggest that a nonviolent future is inevitable—humanity may yet destroy itself, and much of the planet with it—but rather, and more modestly, that humanity has the potentiality for nonviolence that is often obscured by the dominant violentological narratives.

However, before that I look briefly at the sometimes conflicted findings of sociobiology, and the more recent field of neurophilosophy, that have presented the most serious challenge to the assumption that humanity might choose nonviolence over violence.