Murder
dr_d
Join Date: 2003-03-28 Member: 14979Members
Join Date: 2003-03-28 Member: 14979Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Natural?</div> "So tell me. How can you look at an ordinary person, an innocent guy with kids, and then shoot him to death. I mean, how can you bring yourself to do that?"
"Innocent? Who-who's innocent, Wayne? Are you innocent?"
"I'm innocent? Yes I am. Of murder? Definitely."
"It's just murder, man. You know all God's creatures do it in some form or another. I mean, you look in the forest, you got species killing other species. Our species killing all species including the forest, and we just call it industry, not murder. But I know a lot of people who deserve to die."
"Why do they deserve to die?"
"I believe they got something in their past, some sin, some awful secret thing. A lot of people walking around out there already dead. They just need to be put out of their misery. That's where I come in. Fate's messenger."
"You just said an instant of purity was preferrable to a lifetime lie. I don't understand. What's so pure about forty-eight dead bodies?"
"You'll never understand. Me and you, Wayne, we're not even the same species. I used to be you...then I evolved. From where you're standing, you're a man. From where I'm standing, you're a ape. I'm here...I'm right here... and you...you're somewhere else, man. You say why? I say why not? "
What do you think, are we just natural born killers indoctrined by society and our parents to resist our natural urge to kill?
Discuss.
edit: Maybe the quotes are confusing people, they are from Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, the point being human beings have a natural tendency towards homocidal urges, and yes I thought some people would be willing to discuss something outside the realm of relegion or politics. (Thanks Nemmy <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> )
"Innocent? Who-who's innocent, Wayne? Are you innocent?"
"I'm innocent? Yes I am. Of murder? Definitely."
"It's just murder, man. You know all God's creatures do it in some form or another. I mean, you look in the forest, you got species killing other species. Our species killing all species including the forest, and we just call it industry, not murder. But I know a lot of people who deserve to die."
"Why do they deserve to die?"
"I believe they got something in their past, some sin, some awful secret thing. A lot of people walking around out there already dead. They just need to be put out of their misery. That's where I come in. Fate's messenger."
"You just said an instant of purity was preferrable to a lifetime lie. I don't understand. What's so pure about forty-eight dead bodies?"
"You'll never understand. Me and you, Wayne, we're not even the same species. I used to be you...then I evolved. From where you're standing, you're a man. From where I'm standing, you're a ape. I'm here...I'm right here... and you...you're somewhere else, man. You say why? I say why not? "
What do you think, are we just natural born killers indoctrined by society and our parents to resist our natural urge to kill?
Discuss.
edit: Maybe the quotes are confusing people, they are from Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers, the point being human beings have a natural tendency towards homocidal urges, and yes I thought some people would be willing to discuss something outside the realm of relegion or politics. (Thanks Nemmy <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo--> )
Comments
Also on the issue it not serving a purpose, many animals kill among their species to protect territory and establish dominance. There are still lingering instinctual emotions in people, that's why we still release adrenalin when we feel in danger. Who's to say that that feeling of rage you get when someone pushes you, insults you, or threatens you isn't just a natural urge to keep dominance even if it is over your own personal space.
Nope, I said that I consider killing with the purpose of nurishment natural. There's very little example for animals killing for other reasons - the deaths you cited, for example, are in the very majority of cases 'accidents' as members of the same species, especially mammals, usually engage in ritualized fights that do not aim on killing or severely injuring, but scaring the enemy away.
<!--QuoteBegin--></span><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td><b>QUOTE</b> </td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'><!--QuoteEBegin-->but if we weren't naturally inclined to be murderers why is there so much focus in our society on teaching us to not be violent<!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
There's a difference between violence or agressiviness, which is a part of human nature both due to our roots as hunters and our ancestors need for self defense, and murder, which is one of the most extereme effects of agressiviness. Our societies put so much emphasis on teaching us not to be violent because they are not comparable to the environment our instincts are based on in so far that physical agression is by far less often necessary.
I can not agree with your assumption that it is easy to be driven into killing a fellow human. Few people, and this is independent from social or cultural background, are capable of killing another human with no extraordinarily significant reason to do so. We have an instinctive emotional blockade against murder, although not against killing in general; most of us are perfectly capable of killing animals for food, but for redundances sake, this is not comparable to the murder of another human being.
I can not agree with your assumption that it is easy to be driven into killing a fellow human. Few people, and this is independent from social or cultural background, are capable of killing another human with no extraordinarily significant reason to do so. We have an instinctive emotional blockade against murder. <!--QuoteEnd--></td></tr></table><span class='postcolor'><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I can't agree with you here either, I would think someone who was deprived of all exposure to modern society or someone who decided to completely reject it's teachings would be much more prone to being able to kill a person than someone who wasn't. For examples I will use the stereotypical uncultured island man and a serial killer.
If you were to land on an island and walk onto the village grounds of a people who had never had any sort of exposure to other societies there is a good chance they would see you as a threat, or at least be insulted at your intrusion, and would very likely react with violence. Putting the same island man in a city like LA would probably induce a great deal of panic in him, and would cause him to be incredible defensive and likely to inflict violence on someone he saw as a threat. Now as he has no real understanding of what murder is or why it is wrong it would be more of a reaction than a choice.
Now take a convicted serial killer who has no remorse for his crimes. This person has consciously rejected the ethics of society and gone against the popular belief that killing is wrong, if you ask him he enjoyed it and didn't hesitate the first or last time. Did he stop being human as soon as he stopped adhering to society's ideas or did he simply stop being a civilized human?
Anyway, my mother is social worker in the highest security prison Baden-Würtemberg (the second biggest federal state of Germany) has to offer, she's especially trained in working with sexual and violent criminals, and she has yet to meet the stereotype mass murderer with 'no remorses'. There are serial murderers, but those are in the most cases impulsive (their crimes are often connected to sexually abnorm tendencies). Most of them even despise themselves for the urge that makes them kill, others have built rationales 'justifying' their deeds, but those are usually nothing but an attempt of veiling their emotional-impulsive true motives.
One could now argue whether they are thus not following their very own 'natural' way of living which collides with societies basic rules.
This would however include the idea that a wide array of indiscutably wrong sexual practices (think pedophily) are 'natural'. If we're going to include these into the term, I'm going to accept that murder can be natural to some humans in some cases, but this would also completely and utterly discredit nature as any kind of standard by which to judge an action, which in turn would rob this thread of its implicated point.
It is natural to kill something if you are forced in a situation, where killing is required. Slaughtering a flock of sheep for food can be justified, because it is necessary for our survival, and please, don't bring religion into this, thanks.
Ever had the urge to jump off a 100 ft cliff or the top of the mall, 4 stories up? This happens to me all the time. Whenever I near the edge of something high and dangerous, my mind tells me to jump off. My friends call me crazy, but I know this is all normal, because people go sky diving all the time.
This has no true correlation to what the topic is about, but it proves that our human instincts still work. If someone wanted to kill me and I had a rifle, would I blast him? Of course.
I don't think anyone here would go around, methodically planning ways to kill someone, because it is their nature, or going around blatantly killing children. Humans have higher intelligence, which differentiates us from the rest of the food chain. We have developed morals and thus figure that killing is wrong.
I am sure someone else can elaborate on what I have said with better examples.
That being said, I believe it is natural to kill, we have just been trained not to do it. A few experiments on the topic of space and violence has been done. It goes along these lines:
Scientist took lab rats, built a large containment and let them lose inside it, in this large containment (city) they only provided enough food to feed 80% of the rats. The studied them and jotted down their tendencies, both violent and non violent.
The repeated this experiment with a much smaller enclosure (city) and 5x the amount of food needed to feed the rats that lived within it, and guess what? The rats in the smaller city were much, much more violent than the ones in the bigger one. Space has alot to do with how you react to members of your own species.
keeping that in mind, if you look at urban areas, and how cramped they are, you would realize that we as mammals (territorial by nature, everything from apes to dolphins to lions and wolves and such) suppress the urge to eliminate the other people in our space, territory, or domain. Now I wouldn’t go and put it as simply as Natural Born Killers, but dr. d has a good point.
Nem:
People who are in the prison system are more likely to be remorseful because A) they have to be in order to get out. and B) they are constantly reminded that they did something "wrong"|
As Nemesis said, please don't confuse aggression and violence. As many sociologists believe, aggression is a natural thing, built into our genes. How we channel that aggression, however, which has potential to turn into violence, is mostly an effect of our environment and our society. (E. O. Wilson, <u>On Human Nature</u>, Howard Zinn, <i>Violence and Human Nature</i>, from <u>Cross-Examining American Ideology</u>
Basically, what it comes down to is this: Aggression is the natural human response to perceived threats from outsiders (those with whom you do not share your resources). Obviously, the primitive resolution to aggression is to fight. Entire cultures were conceived around combat and the honor that comes forthwith. However, not all pre-industrial cultures thought that killing was the best solution, possibly the most well known example being the 'coup' sticks that native americans would hit their opponents with. How this developed was usually dependent on *environment*. Those societies in rather plentiful, spacious areas (like some parts of North America) were pretty calm compared to societies in more barren, smaller areas (Such as the Maori tribe in New Zealand, or like Marines and Kharaa in ns_eclipse).
So while it is definitely natural to be aggressive towards outsiders, it is an environmental influence to be violent towards them. And depending on your definition of 'natural', this influence can be either natural or natural (are urban areas natural? What about villages constrained by swampy terrain?)
However, violence towards non-outsiders, like your neighbors or if your city is small enough, people in your city, is pretty much unnatural.
On a side note, War is to humans as ritualized combat is to other animals. The problem is, also 'included' in the ritual of war are things like rape and other derogations towards women (i.e. the whole 'Superior male thing') as well as killing of civilians (Fear and intimidation factors). Sadly, it was only in 2002 when wartime rape and sexual exploitation were deemed crimes against humanity, and current statistics for modern warfare hold civilian casualties to be at around 90% (That is, one out of every 10 people killed is a trained soldier). You can bet that there were massive civilian casualties in the War against Iraq, and it's also very, very likely that militarized rape transgressed, as well.
That's something the media will never tell you. <!--emo&:)--><img src='http://www.unknownworlds.com/forums/html/emoticons/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif'><!--endemo-->
Rhuadni
The words were 'high security'. Many of these people are serving 15 to 25 years, often followed by security charges that will never let them into freedom again. If there's someone who doesn't have to pretend, it's them.
Also, D made the claim of a completely 'desocialized' serial killer on whom societies rules and taboos have no impact anymore. If they're still responsive to being told they did something wrong, they just show that this idea is truly a stereotype.
And given that no one is sadistic enough to take a child and refuse to nuture it to see what nature does, I dont think we are ever going to be able to say for sure.
Still, its a great topic to think upon....