“Nobody’s innocent. Nobody.” — Agamemnon, Troy (2004)
After watching The Odyssey, I found myself drawn back to Troy for the third time. The film has always fascinated me — not only for its thrilling battles and complex characters, but also for its vivid portrayal of the ancient world. This time, however, I was compelled to focus on what it reveals about Troy and human nature.
One exchange lingers in my mind. As Troy falls, King Priam pleads with Agamemnon to spare the children, calling them innocents. Agamemnon’s reply is stark:
“Nobody’s innocent. Nobody.”
That line unsettled me. Are human beings truly born innocent? More importantly, does innocence mean that we are naturally born to love?
I am not persuaded that it does. Humans, I believe, are born with something far more primal than love: the instinct to survive. Aggression is woven into that instinct. Love, in contrast, develops later—shaped by our relationships and, crucially, through our first experiences of surrender and tenderness.
Are We Really Born Innocent?
Reflecting on Troy and human nature brought up an uncomfortable childhood memory. During summer, ants would sometimes invade our kitchen. As a young child, I once took a table knife and chopped some of them in half.
No one taught me to do it. I felt no anger or hatred. There was no sense of revenge, nor even much thought. The impulse simply arrived, and I acted on it.
Looking back as an adult, I am less concerned with excusing my behaviour because I was young than I am with questioning where the impulse itself came from. Children can hit, bite, push, and grab. They may pull an animal’s tail or lash out in frustration, all without being taught to do so.
A young child obviously lacks an adult’s moral understanding. Yet this raises an interesting distinction: is there a difference between innocence and unawareness? If we cause harm before we understand suffering or consequences, are we innocent, or simply oblivious to the meaning of our actions?
There is no easy answer, and that is partly why Agamemnon’s statement is so compelling. It challenges the comfortable idea that childhood innocence excludes destructive or aggressive instincts.
Life Begins with Survival
I have never been convinced by the romantic notion that humans are simply born to love. Before we develop affection, compassion, or empathy, our biology is already driving us to survive.
Even conception offers an image of this struggle. Millions of sperm race towards the egg, but only one usually succeeds. Of course, sperm have no consciousness, so this is not psychological aggression. What matters is the pattern: competition, movement, the will to survive—present from the very start.
Birth itself is another battle. Labour is a physical ordeal for both mother and child. Once born, an infant cries, wriggles, grasps, and demands—its entire behaviour is geared towards having its needs met.
A newborn cannot consider whether its mother is exhausted or if someone else needs attention more. Its world is immediate, its needs paramount.
This, for me, is the essence of aggression in the context of Troy and human nature. I do not use aggression merely to mean violence or hostility, but as the biological force that enables us to resist, compete, protect ourselves, and respond to threats.
Long before we understand love, the survival instinct is already at work.
How Tenderness Enters Human Development
After birth, another experience begins. A crying baby is picked up, fed, held, and soothed. Someone responds to its distress. The child feels warmth, gentle touch, and safety before it can comprehend any of these things.
This, I believe, is where the roots of love are planted. Newborns do not arrive knowing how to love. They first receive tenderness, and slowly learn from it.
Surrender is vital to this process—not surrender as defeat, but as the ability to stop resisting when safety is felt. A distressed baby settles in the arms of someone it trusts. The immediate struggle is answered by the presence of another.
As we grow, these experiences become layered with emotion. We learn trust and affection. We recognise that other people’s feelings matter, and that others’ wellbeing can be important, independent of our own needs.
This distinction between survival instinct and love is crucial. Survival is self-centred at first. Love requires us to look beyond ourselves. It is tenderness that teaches us this, and surrender that allows us to accept it.
Why Aggression Matters to Survival
For most of human history, the ability to respond aggressively to danger was essential. Humans had to hunt, defend themselves, protect children, compete for resources, and survive threats from animals, the environment, and each other.
Fear and aggression served practical purposes. A human being completely incapable of aggression would have been vulnerable.
This is one reason I find Troy and human nature so intriguing. The world depicted in Troy exposes aspects of human behaviour that modern society tries to regulate: competition, pride, revenge, status, and physical aggression.
Achilles embodies this most powerfully. He is a peerless warrior, capable of staggering violence. Yet what makes him fascinating is not his strength alone, but his capacity to stop.
Priam, Achilles and Surrender
The encounter between Priam and Achilles after Hector’s death is central to my argument. Priam cannot defeat Achilles, nor undo the death of his son. Instead, he approaches his enemy, makes himself vulnerable, and begs for Hector’s body.
At first glance, Priam’s act appears to be surrender, but it is not passive. He sets aside the pride of a king, led by the deeper force of a father’s love. His willingness to be vulnerable proves more powerful than aggression.
Priam asks Achilles to think of his own father. The appeal changes everything. Achilles is confronted not by an enemy king, but by a grieving father—a pain he can understand.
This is a pivotal moment for Troy and human nature. Priam reaches Achilles through vulnerability, not force. Achilles, for a moment, is able to set aside his rage and respond to another’s suffering.
His aggression does not vanish; he does not become a different man. What changes is his response. Through attachment and grief, tenderness interrupts aggression.
Love Requires Vulnerability
This, I think, is why love comes after survival. Aggression can protect us; love exposes us. Once we genuinely care for another person, we allow their happiness, pain, or absence to affect us. Loving is, by nature, a risk.
We begin learning this through our earliest experiences of tenderness. Someone answers our distress, and over time we learn that human contact is not always a threat—it can provide comfort and security.
With emotional growth, we begin to offer the same tenderness to others. We learn to trust, to empathise, to attach—but also to grieve. The capacity to love opens us to loss, which is one reason love always involves surrender: we make someone important enough to hurt us.
What Does Innocence Actually Mean?
This brings me back to Agamemnon’s statement: “Nobody’s innocent.” I do not interpret this as meaning children should be blamed for adult wars. Priam’s children did not cause Troy’s destruction.
What interests me is the philosophical question beneath. If children possess aggressive impulses before they understand morality, what exactly does innocence mean?
Perhaps innocence is the absence of harmful instincts. Or perhaps it is simply a stage before we understand what those instincts can do.
My childhood memory of killing ants is uncomfortable because the impulse was unlearned. What changed, as I grew, was my understanding. I became able to recognise the consequences of an action I had barely considered as a child.
This distinction—between instinct and understanding—is central to how I now think about Troy and human nature.
Born to Love or Fight?
So, are we born to love or to fight? I believe we are born to survive. Crying, grasping, resisting discomfort, and demanding food all appear before any notion of morality or love.
Primitive aggression, to me, is a tool for survival—not evidence of evil. At the same time, I do not think we need to describe newborns as naturally loving simply to avoid calling them evil. Neither label captures the reality of an infant governed by need and instinct.
Love emerges through experience. We receive tenderness before we understand it. We learn safety from human contact, and discover that surrendering our defences can build trust.
The relationship between Priam and Achilles embodies this transformation. Priam does not teach Achilles to fight more effectively; he confronts him with vulnerability and grief. Achilles, in turn, is able to suspend his rage, at least for a moment.
For me, this is the core question Troy and human nature raises. Humans do not need to be taught how to struggle for survival. What takes far longer is learning when we can stop struggling, allow ourselves to become vulnerable, and recognise the humanity in another.
We are not born knowing how to love. Love is something we learn, through tenderness given and received, and through the gradual discovery that another person can become important enough to move us beyond ourselves.
Perhaps that is what makes love so extraordinary. It is not simply an instinct that guarantees our individual survival. It is a capacity that allows us to transcend ourselves—a lesson at the heart of both Troy and human nature.
— Earl in the Unknown
