Homicide in the Context of Killing (USP): Unterschied zwischen den Versionen

'''4. Intraspecific intragroup violence is at the core of the homicide question.''' Violence of the human animal is much like violence of the non-human animal. Animal violence is usually interspecific: The predators practice offensive violence, whereas their victims practice defensive violence to prevent being eaten. Intraspecific competition is usually ritualized and related to fight for access to food, water, and sex. On the other hand, intra-specific killings are not as rare as once believed. Konrad Lorenz, On Aggression, 1966, still believed that that intra-specific killings like homicide and warfare only occurred in humans. Fact is that human violence is normally interspecific, but regularly also intraspecific. Intraspecific violence has proven to be useful in evolutionary terms. Especially for males: Reproductive benefits from intergroup (intra-specific) aggression are high in humans, but primarily accrue to males. - Intraspecific violence of the human animal normally takes the form of intergroup violence which tends to reinforce parochial altruism and improved survival chances. Human patterns of warfare, especially risk-taking, require private incentives or sanctions to solve the collective action problem. This is especially true for humans, and within human groups it is more common in cultures with greater risk-taking and elaborate cultural institutions and complex social organization. In more recent evolutionary times, variation in war practices reflects cultural group selection. Features of more successful groups spread within and between populations. Warfare can enable the rise of ultrasocial normals and complex societies. Groups that contain more individuals willing to behave altruistically towards in-group members, and act parochially towards outgroup members may achieve greater evolutionary success in warfare driving the evolution of human parochial altruism. Self-sacrificial behaviour in war is thus associated with improved group outcomes. - When intraspecific violence goes intragroup, there is a higher likelihood of negative social reactions (definition as homicide and intensive sanctions).

For one thing, there is the religious taboo - "Thou shalt not kill" - very strong, very clear, and quite intimidating; and then there is the legal prohibition to kill, similarly strong, clear, and intimidating, considering that the sanction for violations of this norm are the most severe ones, and in some cases it is tit for tat - whoever kills must be killed.  

But how will a cool observer proceed? He will look at the exact meaning of the word "to kill", and she will then search for phenomena that fit this meaning. To kill, of course, means to put an end to the existence of an organism. We can kill humans, animals, and plants, not stones. We kill plants, like, e.g., trees, by chopping them to sell the wood and to make place for farm land, but we also kill plants by harvesting potatoes, cereals or other food-stuff. We kill animals mostly for producing food for us humans, and we kill humans for many reasons. We kill humans in self-defense and in anger, jealousy. We kill because of greed and hate, and sometimes people kill themselves. We also kill because we are told to do so, because we are members of a hierarchy, a cartel, a gang, a militia, a group of mercenaries, or regular soldiers.  

 

Add to this the killing of animals in slaughterhouses and the killing of trees and plants, and find out that the human animal is not as peaceful as it seems, but that the position on top of the food chain means to be a killer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

To a certain extent, we are all jurists, and we all believe that most people observe not only the letter of the law, when it comes to killing, but also the 5th commandment: Thou shalt not kill.