killing...

to solipsist9: oh god, what is the problem? there must be fundamental
misunderstandings for this to have gone on for so long. not that we
have to agree, but how can we disagree so completely is beyond me.
you said that i had made several assumptions:
a. killing is not natural
b. no sane human has ever WANTED to kill someone
c. only a psychopath wants to kill
d. there is an essential human nature
e. all human beings are social creatures
f. killing is essentially synonymous with rape.

yes, of course these are assumptions. almost all, if not all,
assertions are assumptions, thus arguments are full of them. consider
the six assumptions above. each of your oppositions to them are based
on your own assumptions.
so to hopefully insert some concrete starting place into our
discussion, by human nature i mean instinct. secondly, by killing i
mean instinctual killing. and to clear something up, i do not claim
that killing is synonymous with rape. my example was that rape is based
on an instinct--sex. killing is not based on an instinct. i have no
instinct that requires another person to die at my hands. just because
i may kill does not mean that i have an instinct to kill. if humans
instinctually killed one another, then an overwhelming majority of us
would do so. i do have an instinct that requires a woman to have
intercourse with me. everyday i want to have intercourse, yet i have
never wanted to kill someone. and while laws prohibit both murder and
rape, this does not make both of them instinctual just because one of
them is.
it seems that you keep thinking that laws are designs to inhibit human
"nature." if so, that's absolutely absurd. and from this absurdity,
the conclusion is that crimes, such as murder, are somehow part of human
nature that need to be stifled. the culture of a socety is an
abstraction from "nature" and not nature itself. laws are based on
morality, not instinct. humans have two influences: culture and
instinct. laws are used in cultural wars. laws are the social demands
of the dominant sub-culture.
lastly, i've been playing devil's advocate. i'm not sure that we can
even determine what "human nature" is. but granted that there is one,
it doesn't include murder. murder is the result of the culmination of
consequences from a myriad of conditions. now does that sound
"instinctual?" also, i'm not an "essentialist." i don't know of any
essential in humanity. but this does not mean that there are not
universals, which are concepts such as resemblance and society, which is
based on cooperation, not annihilation. to build a society is to build
regular, regulated relationships on a fairly large scale.

mitch.


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