Human societies are cybernetic and morphogenic systems operating as part of a larger ecological system. As societal violence increases, intrafamily violence tends to increase. In fact, as intrafamily violence increases, societal violence tends to increase. There is a link between violence in one family role with violence in other family roles, which is also a positive feedback relationship. Reasons for this include the tendency to respond to violence by violence, role-modeling, and generalization of behavior patterns learned in one role to other roles. Intrafamily violence contributes to a kind of system-maintaining dynamic, as illustrated in the emergence of 'protest masculinity' on the part of young men whose sexual identity is made problematic because of household structure or other circumstances of childrearing. It is also illustrated by the use or threat of physical force to maintain the structure of male dominance. The tragedies of the Ik and the Yanomamo show how a society can change from a nonviolent to a violent structure of interaction as an adaptation to critical changes in the subsistence basis of the society. Finally, as actors adapt to the new behaviors required by the changed structure of interaction, there are changes in personality, which, in turn, bring about changes in other spheres of intraction. Footnotes and 71 references are supplied.