Violence begets violence?

Matters such as "violence" and our response to it as humans, as children of God, as Jews or as Christians, is a constant "battle" in our minds. And how ironic, our minds must battle thought in order to quell our troubled actions. I believe "violence" was an evolutionary necessity that got us to the point of evolving from animal to human, where now as humans we can look at all other creatures yet cannot condemn them for their every moment of their life of violence, for violence is survival -- the tiger brings down the gazelle, the hawk takes the hare, the trout the caddisfly -- it is God's way for creatures to survive. But by the breath of God we became human with minds that are self aware and imaginative and are capable of figuring out how not to live violently. Yet here we are, with some of that DNA that still carries the violence of the animal kingdom, yet stamped with the image of God that gives us the potential to be peaceful humans. And so with that war within us the question becomes, will we be guided by our genes, or by God's want for us?