No. If anything you have to radically desensitize the average person to be even able to commit violence, and in general when they can, people flee it. The whole

No. If anything you have to radically desensitize the average person to be even able to commit violence, and in general when they can, people flee it. The whole point of boot camp and military training is to make sure the individual recruit is dehumanized enough and identified with the unit enough to be able to commit violence as needed. Even then, desertion usually is epidemic in non-volunteer armies, and even in volunteer ones. And if violence is so good, we wouldn't see so many soldiers or police officers suffering from severe psychological trauma over committing it. The issue with the kinds of pagan societies described in the article is that the society has successful and mass dehumanization programs in place for their elite. They select for people to commit violence and encourage people to dehumanize the act through their religious grounding. It doesn't have to be religious...gangs can create dehumanization, or secular ideology. But in general people really are peaceable, and societies like the Mexica tend to be aberrations over the long term.