[Radone]

Well murder is cross cultural, which means that it pretty much has to be in our genes. And censuses taken of preliterate tribes show a death by violence rates ranging from 15-66% among males. The fact is that you live in an exceptionally peaceful time, perhaps unprecedented in our species' history.


How does one take a census of preliterate tribes with any degree of confidence? The statistic cited of death by violence is not surprising, nor is it unique to preliterate tribes. The number one cause of death in Western society among young men, is murder (in the ghettos) and suicide (in the 'burbs).

Agreed, murder is cross-cultural, but is killing someone (not necessarily murder) an expected behavior of all people or a majority of people? Is it acceptable behavior, even if it isn't murder? And of those who kill, are they all remorseless?

[Leiali]

How does one take a census of preliterate tribes with any degree of confidence? The statistic cited of death by violence is not surprising, nor is it unique to preliterate tribes. The number one cause of death in Western society among young men, is murder (in the ghettos) and suicide (in the 'burbs).

Agreed, murder is cross-cultural, but is killing someone (not necessarily murder) an expected behavior of all people or a majority of people? Is it acceptable behavior, even if it isn't murder? And of those who kill, are they all remorseless?

One takes a census of preliterate tribes with the same amount of confidence as one would take it of literate tribes. I understand that Jedi is the fastest growing religion in the UK, because a lot of people wrote it down as their religion in the last census. A lot of my friends did and most I would consider well educated and sensible people (obviously they weren't then!). As long as a reasonable level of interpretation is to be had I don't see the problem. And note the figure ranged from 15% to 66%, indicating some consideration for the reliability of man.

Your sweeping generalisation on suicide and murder needs to be clarified Radone. Are you saying that there are more murders in poorer areas than richer, and more suicides in situations that are vice versa. That does not seem right to me....

I think the point about what motivates people to murder is interesting but again with the sweeping generalisations. You cannot state that all murderers are remorseless without interviewing each and every perpertrator.

And I'm confused by your question on the acceptability of the behaviour. Do you mean is murder in itself unacceptable but that humanity as a race has to accept that it happens? That's what I think you see! I don't think this means we should give up punishment for crimes or preventative work or rehabilitation of criminals. Murder is not that common and it is usually attributable to a narrow range of causes. What I think you are thinking about is how many psychopathic people are out there - those without remorse who accept murder as it is based on motives your average person is not liable to understand. If so then I think we are in the tiniest percentages of society.

I've lost my train of thought here....

[Steven Savile]

Not wanting to hijack the thread - I just wanted to say I am reading The Darkness That Comes Before for review at SFRevu.com this month, and it makes a change to read a genuinely thought provoking fantasy! Enjoying it immensely... I've got Warrior Prophet for next month as well... I'll let you know when they go live...

[Scott Bakker]

By hard-wired i thought you meant like a computer is hardwired. A computer has to have certain attributes (literally) hardwired or it is no longer a computer. I certainly agree that humans can be genetically predisposed to violence (and males possibly in particular, although i wouldn't be shocked to find that that is due to their traditionally dominant role in society, which is itself due to their physical strength - so back to biology ), but i also think some humans are genetically predisposed to be peaceful, which makes hard-wired the wrong adjective (for the way i'm thinking about it).


I see what your saying, though the more we learn about the brain, the more problematic using computers as an analogy seems to become. I usually qualify by saying 'hardwired tendencies' and the like, but I'm prone to slip up from time to time. I hope the books are worth the wait, Yobmod!

How does one take a census of preliterate tribes with any degree of confidence?

Fair question, and the truth is, I have no idea. The particular one's I mention I came across reading Pinker (I think it was The Blank Slate, though it could have been one of his other books), where he dismantles the romantic notion of the 'noble savage' that's saddled our popular imagination since at least Rousseau's time.

Agreed, murder is cross-cultural, but is killing someone (not necessarily murder) an expected behavior of all people or a majority of people? Is it acceptable behavior, even if it isn't murder? And of those who kill, are they all remorseless?

Like Leiali, I'm afraid I'm not sure whether to read these queries as rhetorical criticisms or as literal questions. And like her, I'm not sure of the relevance of 'acceptability' here. What are you driving at?

Not wanting to hijack the thread - I just wanted to say I am reading The Darkness That Comes Before for review at SFRevu.com this month, and it makes a change to read a genuinely thought provoking fantasy! Enjoying it immensely... I've got Warrior Prophet for next month as well... I'll let you know when they go live...

If only all hijackers had such impeccable tastes! ;)

Cool beans, Steve - especially with regards to TWP, which because of the crashed publication schedule missed the review cycle here in Canada and the US and so really didn't see much ink. I hope you enjoy!

[Radone]

Your sweeping generalisation on suicide and murder needs to be clarified Radone. Are you saying that there are more murders in poorer areas than richer, and more suicides in situations that are vice versa. That does not seem right to me....

Clarification: this is true in the U.S. In the ghettos, most of the deaths that occur are among young men, often in brutal murders thanks to the drug trade. In the suburbs, most of the deaths that occur amongst the young are due to suicide. This is based on statistics that I picked up in sociology class, med school, psychiatry rotations, and parsing of the census by various magazines. I don't have them immediately at hand, so you can take them for what they are worth. It doesn't seem that hard to believe, though, since young people are the healthiest cohort of the U.S. population. The fact that when they die, they die by violent means seems self-explanatory. My statement on this statistics is just to point out that death by violent means is probably the way young people, particularly men, have always died (and always will die), since they are otherwise healthy and shouldn't otherwise die. The definition of "violence" also needs some clarification. Does this mean hunting accidents and getting gored by a boar or actual murder?


Like Leiali, I'm afraid I'm not sure whether to read these queries as rhetorical criticisms or as literal questions. And like her, I'm not sure of the relevance of 'acceptability' here. What are you driving at?

Simply this: your statement that murder is 'hard-wired' into the human psyche seems incomplete. To say 'hard-wired', to me, seems to mean that it is an action that is not under any voluntary control, almost as though it is just an expected state of affairs. And you already answered my poorly worded questions when you answered Yobmod. I don't think we're in any danger of unlocking the human psyche, though. We are at extremely gross levels of understanding, so gross, that I don't think we'll see a 'microscope' to help us understand our own minds in my lifetime.

[Scott Bakker]

I don't think we're in any danger of unlocking the human psyche, though. We are at extremely gross levels of understanding, so gross, that I don't think we'll see a 'microscope' to help us understand our own minds in my lifetime.

Actually, we've learned a tremendous amount, and if anything, the pace is quickening. Much too quickly for my tastes, anyway. When it comes ot the human psyche, 'debunking' is a much more apt analogy than 'unlocking' though.

[Radone]

Actually, we've learned a tremendous amount, and if anything, the pace is quickening. Much too quickly for my tastes, anyway. When it comes ot the human psyche, 'debunking' is a much more apt analogy than 'unlocking' though.

I know we've learned a tremendous amount, and the pace is quickening (something that makes my job more difficult and easy at the same time), but the amount needed to learn before we start unlocking (and by this I mean understanding at the NT receptor, second messenger, and nuclear level) the human psyche is by many orders of magnitude larger.

[Radone]

Just a clarification:

In the US between the ages of 15-24, the number one cause of death in males is accident (usually motor vehicle), with homicide and suicide coming in 2nd and 3rd. Between 25-34, accident still is number one, while suicide is 2nd and homicide is 3rd.
In just whites, between 15-24, accident is 1, suicide is 2, and homicide is 3. Between 25-34, accident is 1, suicide 2, and malignant neoplasms is 3 (homicide is 4).
In blacks, 15-24, homicide is 1, accident 2, suicide 3. Between 25-34, homicide 1, accident 2, HIV 3, heart disease 4, and suicide 5.
This is from 2002 data from the CDC.

[saintjon]

When I said religion, I was not excluding the religion of National Socialism or of the Russian Revolution. I don't see these movements as anything other than worship. The object of worship is of course different, but the willingness to suspend belief, and often logic, and to be cruel to further the ends, which always have this righteous, fervent holier than thou attitude supporting them, is common. The ability to be cruel to attain the goal is what seems to run through them all. When tolerance is no longer part of the belief system, when there becomes only one way, humans become murderers.

I'd like to add Gangsta to the list.

This discussion is interesting though. I'd ask which came first though, the violence or the respect. Like when someone is conditioned to do violence, is that giving them something new or giving them something back that was conditioned out of them earlier? (Edit: it occurs to me that Matt Stover would have some interesting input on this one based on what he's written about how you only really see the real truth of a person when there are no rules.) Kids can be pretty cruel after all, and when I hear about some kids doing some crazy violent act I'm always thinking to myself "Didn't their parents teach them better?"

Maybe it's the fact that we've removed ourselves from the natural order of things. Animals come fully armed into the world with instincts about what to care about and preserve and what needs to die and how to do it. Since we don't have to wage the war for survival (well, the fortunate among us) we basically have to learn the distinction for ourselves, and I think some people get muddied up along the way.