Homicide in the Context of Killing (USP)
The Frequency of Homicide
Murder in the context of killing - and the question of genocide
1. Homicide is the most common cause of death - and one of the least common ones.
Most of what we know we do not know from our own firsthand experience, but from hearsay. Friends and family members are telling us things, news headlines pop up here and there in our electronic devices, sometimes we read a newspaper or watch television. All these things are mediated informations and not firsthand experiences. The world as we know it is largely an imaginary world. In this imaginary world, homicide is the most common cause of death. Think of the news: school shootings, massacres, the killing of hostages, gruesome family tragedies, murder trials, executions. Think of fiction: the silence of the lambs, serial killers, Agatha Christie, Sherlock Holmes, or think of the series Breaking Bad, Dexter, the Netflex series on Colombian drug baron Pablo Escobar, or CSI Miami, CSI Las Vegas, CSI NY. Murder is the most common cause of death in our common nightmarish conscience collective. Why is that so and what functions does that fulfill? And does it reflect the statistical truth?
Of course not. Murder is one of the least common causes of death in the real world, the world of everyday life.
According to a WHO study concerning 2016 (in Live Science) there were roughly
- 55 million deaths in 2016 worldwide. Nearly three-quarters
- 72.3 percent of those deaths were from so-called "noncommunicable diseases," or those that cannot pass from person to person, including heart disease, stroke and cancer (9.5 million of ischemic heart disease alone - diabetes 1.4 million)
- 19 percent of deaths in 2016 were from communicable diseases, maternal diseases (which occur during pregnancy and childbirth), neonatal diseases (which occur around the newborn period) and nutritional diseases (which include nutritional deficiencies)
- 8 percent of deaths were from injuries.
In 2016, the number of deaths among children under age 5 dropped below 5 million for the first time in modern history — down from 11 million deaths in 1990 and 16.4 million deaths in 1970, the researchers said. Deaths from HIV/AIDS among both children and adults have also declined, by 46 percent since 2006, and deaths from malaria have declined by 26 percent since 2006.
In addition, since 2006, the number of deaths from conflict and terrorism has risen significantly, reaching 150,500 deaths in 2016 (which is a 143 percent increase since 2006), the researchers said. This rise is largely a result of conflicts in North Africa and the Middle East, the scientists said.
"Despite progress, we are facing a 'triad of trouble' holding back many nations and communities — obesity, conflict, and mental illness, including substance use disorders." 1.1 billion people worldwide have some type of mental health or substance use disorder.
With a worldwide average homicide rate of around 6 per 100,000 inhabitants and a figure of 500,000 annual cases of death by homicide, homicide is one of the less, if not least frequent causes of death in the real world.
A different picture emerges when we single out risk groups such as discriminated minorities.
According to the CDC, homicide was indeed the No. 1 killer of black men between the ages of 15 and 34 in 2011. Accidents ranked second, and suicide third (15 and 24 years), while heart disease ranked third for men 24-34.
That said, murder is not so much a quantitative as a qualitative cause for concern. There is something in the QUALITY OF THE ACT that we see as deeply irritating and reprehensible. In other words:
2. Murder is, in other words, not only an exceptionally rare event, it is also an event that is considered as being ethically/morally exceptionally bad.
The moral condemnation of murder can be seen everywhere. The biblical 5th commandment - Thou Shalt Not Kill - expresses condemnation with the utmost authority. Murder is followed by the severest of all punishments. In many countries, a convicted murderer will be murdered by the State, i.e. executed. In moral philosophy, there is little regret about this. Philosopher Immanuel Kant argued that whoever kills must die (and it is a categorical duty, not a hypothetical one) and 'no possible substitute can satisfy justice. For there is no parallel between death and even the most miserable life, so that there can be no equality of crime and retribution unless the perpetrator is judicially put to death. Thomas Aquinas: Criminal offenses can be broken down into two general categories malum in se and malum prohibitum. The distinction between malum in se and malum prohibitum offenses is best characterized as follows: a malum in se offense is "naturally evil as adjudged by the sense of a civilized community," whereas a malum prohibitum offense is wrong only because a statute makes it so. Murder is, of course, a malum in se.
3. The reason why homicide is exceptionally bad does not lie in the fact that it is a "killing" alone.
While the 5th Commandment says "Thou shalt not kill" - insinuating that the very act of killing is what makes it reprehensible - this cannot be the real reason. To kill means to end the existence of a living organism. We can kill people, but also animals like cats, dogs or sheep or pigs or cattle or cangoroos, or trees or plants or any other living organism. Thou shalt not kill does not contain a qualification or restriction.
If the mere act of killing were what makes murder so extremely reprehensible a behaviour, than all of the mentioned examples of killing would have to entail a similar judgment by society. But that is evidently not the case. In spite of the 5th commandment, we do not rate all killing behaviour as morally bad.
We kill a lot:
There might be a few people who condemn murder because it is an act of killing and because they find killing as such unethical. Like the Jain. Or like Albert Schweitzer.
Normally, though, societies do not show this degree of respect for life in general. So the reason of singling out murder as an extremely reprehensible act must be found somewhere else, and not in the high value of life as such.
4. The reason why homicide is seen as something exceptionally bad does not even lie in the fact that it is the killing of another human being - i.e. an intraspecies act of aggression
It is true that human life has a higher value than other lives. This is not necessarily a natural order of things, but we have learned - since the stoneage revolution and the rise of monotheistic religions - to devalue the living environment of human life, and to cherish human life as having some innate higher value. Harari. In that sense, humans are behaving like a Band of Brothers. Against the rest.
We could even explain why societies scandalize the loss of human life through homicides. Accidents and diseases also kill people, as do predators, but the killing of a human by another human seems avoidable and scandalous, since it undermines trust and the very conditions that have to be fulfilled to guarantee the very possibility of living together in one society. This is why the murder of one person is a crime not only against that individual, but against everyone. Kant.
On the other hand, there are so many other cases - cases not scandalized - in which humans kill other humans, that even this explanation of the scandalous nature of murder fails to convince.
While estimates are ranging all the way from one to three billion, it is an undisputable fact that the intra-species killing of humans by humans in wars has cost so many lives in the course of human history that it is simply impossible to maintain the thesis that what makes murder so exceptionally "bad" is the general respect for human life. And while there are many animals that would never ever kill other members of their own species, the human animal does not have such a barrier in his behavioral repertory. Military, mercenaries, militias, violent gangs, police, euthanasia physicians, and others do kill with a license to kill under certain conditions.
5. The reason why homicide is seen as something exceptionally bad resides in its disobedience with respect to enforceable group interests.
We are living in an age of ethical and moral universalism. We have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and universal claims of religions. But when we look at the moral boundaries between allowed and prohibited killings, we soon recognize that there are two different evaluations concerning killings. Killings in the name and interest of the collective are good and laudbale, but killings in just one's own selfish, egotistical interest are forbidden and scandalized.
Examples for moral boundaries along these lines:
- The Jain proscribe all killings, but when it comes to warfare, they require obedience to the commanders
- Intragroup killings are regularly considered reprehensible and severely punished. This goes for illegal groups as well as for legal ones. For PCC as well as BOPE.
6. While murder is dysfunctional for the collective, killing in coalitionary intergroup aggression including war is good for the survival of the dominant sub-population of that species (and indirectly for the species itself at the expense of its peaceful segments). Insofar, there are important remnants of phylogenetic roots and parochial altruism as well as xenofobia.
- Intergroup violence enhances survival chances of those best at it - developing over time both a strong parochial altruism and equally strong xenophobia.
7. At present we are witnessing a renewed increase in deaths by political violence from above and below, including extrajudicial killings and social cleansing, terrorisms, and wars. With universalism (ICC) retreating, parochial altruism (in-group coherence) and xenofobia are drawing new moral boundaries between the Rich and Poor, Races, Nationalities, Cultural segments. While the criminal code condemns all murder, law-in-action follows a second code. Definition. The second code is unwritten. It could be written after deciphering the distinctions made in reality.
- Police can execute "bad guys" like Police killings Stephon Clark who can be considered to constitute a latent risk in a risky situation
- Police can execute suspected drug dealers (and users) - Philippines
8. Genocide can be explained. It can be explained as a specific kind of coalitionary intergroup aggression that occurs when attackers are able to kill at high gain and low cost to themselves. Examples.
9. The decrease of homicides over the course of history (Steven Pinker, The Better Angels of Our Nature) is an unquestionable fact. That is a good sign. Pinker's stages and causes.
10. On the other hand, the polarisation of income and life-chances begets its own violence to come. Groups will increasingly compete over key resouces, access to which will be scured also by weapons and aggression. With the USA remaining the world's only superpower, large-scale wars will become a thing of the past as long as there is no alternative power or coalition of powers to dethrone the USA. Instead of war, there will be permanent world policing focussing on terrorist threats and the like. With living conditions worsening in relative and absolute terms for the 99%, and with no economic function of those 99%, global misery and sporadic revolt wil be as common as police interventions in those areas dominated by restless helotes with their reduced living conditions in terms of housing, water, food, education etc., and reduced rights for property, freedom of speech, and the like.
Washington Post headline Israel response to peaceful protest
A legal perspective on killing
Starting from the legal perspective on killing we find the law-abiding citizen who does not pose a legal problem, at least not in criminal law, and we find the disobedient citizen who violates a law by either negligence or intent or error of judgment and whom the law tries to lead back on the right track - if necessary, by some more or less benevolent sanctions. He might also be a denizen or a non-citizen or an outright enemy bent on destroying the community. In his case, the sanctions might be really severe punishments designed to incapacitate the offender and to neutralize or eliminate the danger flowing from him.
There are, of course, a lot of behavior types defined as criminal offenses - from property crimes to murder. The act of murder has always been considered a very serious breach of the very social contract, since it always entails the risk of retaliation and a spiral of violence endangering the very foundations on which social life is built. No wonder, then, that murder has attracted much attention in both theory and practice, and that the most spectacular trials are murder trials and the most spectacular punishments have always been the public judicial executions of murderers.
From its very beginnings, criminology has also been interested in - we can even say focused on - the phenomenology of murderers. Just think of Cesare Lombroso's criminal anthropology and subsequent works of etiological criminologists all the way to Robert Ressler's work on sexual homicide and the mutual interest of criminologists and the larger public in the phenomenon of serial killers, profiling, and the like.
From the legal perspective, killing are problematic to the extent that they are illegal. For legal scholars it is evident that prevention and prosecution of all kinds of Illegal killings - from manslaughter to first degree murder - must be done, and that the prosecution of homicide has to be a priority of criminal justice. From this perspective, the human being as such is basically a good and peace-loving citizen, but there are some individuals who for whatever reasons get out of control and have to be dealt with accordingly in order to protect the public peace, law, and order. This order is seen as something inherently peaceful and non-violent.
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.
A cool observers' perspective on killing
A cool observer might be surprised to see that things are not quite what they seem, though. The observer may start with the assumption that human societies are rather peaceful and non-violent, because they have this double safeguard against killings: 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. The most important reason, why people kill other people, is not deviance and non-conformity, it is not an anti-social personality disorder, but rather the contrary. The most important reason to kill is obedience. There are, of course, the so-called crimes of obedience (Kelman), but those only account for a minority of killings. Most killings are legal killings of obedience. From a legal point of view, they are not worth mentioning, because they are juridically unproblematic. From a cool observer's perspective, though, the legal killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians and of combatants in wars and civil strife is remarkable.
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, a great killer.
An evolutionary perspective on killing From an evolutionary perspective, animals compete over key resources, and in group-living species groups of the same species also compete over access to resources for reproductive benefits. While aggression is commonly not lethal, species with fission-fusion grouping dynamics (which create imablances between groups), tend to show more lethal violance. This is because killings tend to occur when (numerical) advantage enables attackers to kill at low cost to themselves. Evolutionary history of intense intergroup aggression selected for psychological mechanisms such as parochial altruism and xenophobia. Reproductive benefits from intergroup aggression are high in humans, but primarily accrue to males. 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. Not all animals kill also members of their own kind, but the human animal does. In that sense we humans are "bad". But we are not the worst. A study published in the journal Nature found modern humans to be pretty dangerous, killing each other at a rate of about 13 in 1,000. At least we're not the worst. That title goes to, surprise, the meerkat. "Almost one in five meerkats, mostly youngsters, lose their lives at the paws and jaws of their own kind (José María Gómez et al. 2016). The meerkats were followed by two types of monkeys and assorted lemurs. The New Zealand sea lion, long-tailed marmot, lion, branded mongoose, and grey wolf round out the top 11. Not surprisingly, violence was more common among mammals who share territory than among loners like bats and whales.
A historian's perspective on killing Early humans killed each other at a rate of about 20 in 1,000, but got more violent during the Middle Ages when the rate shot up to 120 in 1,000. After studying 600 human populations from the Stone Age to the present day, the researchers concluded that "lethal violence is part of our evolutionary history but not carved in stone in ‘our genes,’” lead author Jose Maria Gomez tells the Guardian. Levels of violence are influenced by societal pressures and have "decreased significantly in the contemporary age," says Gomez. - Still, the study published in the journal Nature found modern humans to be pretty dangerous, killing each other at a rate of about 13 in 1,000. "Our study suggests that the level of lethal violence is reversible and can increase or decrease as a consequence of some ecological, social, or cultural factors," says Gomez. (A study found early humans may have killed off real-life hobbits.)