I wonder why???
Posted on 05/29/2005 8:04:20 AM PDT by Dog Gone
>>As my research continued, I became convinced that we all have the capacity to become murderers. <<
Stopped reading after this comment.
See 'Original Sin.'
Not me. My shrink says I'm a very cold, detached person who likes to start fires. 8>)
LOL!
Well, duh! Either we control our impulses, or we don't. Some of us think we don't have savage impulses....but they are indeed there, even if we have not yet suffered just the right miserable life experience to trigger it.
Wow, all of mankind is born with an inate capacity to commit evil and sin. The author could have saved some time by reading Genesis...
I wonder why???
Kill the shrink....
Ahhh. . .you too?
It's those of us who don't recognize and accept this that really scare me.
I'd agree with that; and it's contingent for a civilized society to hold one responsible for when one does this.
If a mother kills an intruder who theatens her child; this is justifiable. The intruder had not business in the home, and the woman has every right to defend her child.
But, if someone is jealous; it is up to that person to control his impulses; unless you are Muslim, then you can kill 17 people after reading an un-confirmed statement in a news magazine.
Everyone of us is a murderer. We've all hated at some point.
Moral/Social/Personal restraints keep us from imagining further or acting upon the hatred we all have or had in us.
Bzzzzzzt! Wrong! Nice read, but killing one of your own species is counterproductive. In nature, species who do battle with a conspecific purposefully hold back to avoid fatally injuring the opponent (e.g., deer, crabs, snakes, just about everything else).
Usually, scientists peg the reason for this as "it's for the good of the species." This assertion has no basis in reality--that's one thing this article got right; we fight for our own selfishness.
However, to NOT to kill has a selfish basis in it too: if we went into competitive battles fully expecting that one rival will die, well, we stand a good chance of dying ourselves. So nature has evolved such that conspecific rivalry very rarely results in death.
In terms of game theory, the best strategy to adopt is not either the Hawk or Dove approach, but rather to be peaceful unless someone comes to you with the intent to kill, in which case killing in the name of self-defense is perfectly acceptable.
We're all animals.
Keeping our instincts in check is what makes us human.
No one is ever a murderer until after his first murder.
I'm not sure about that. There are many examples of cannibalistic species in nature. For example, the Black Widow spider is aptly named.
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