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Imagine if we took the commandment "Thou shall not kill" to heart. Imagine if instead of killing those men on the roadside, it was the job to the soldiers to in

Imagine if we took the commandment "Thou shall not kill" to heart. Imagine if instead of killing those men on the roadside, it was the job to the soldiers to incapacitate them but take them alive. Is it possible? Of course it is possible. Perhaps harder, but possible. Here's the funny thing about killing. Somehow we continually find excuses for doing it. And the easiest excuse of all is that the other guy did it first. And so it goes round and round and never stops, forever escalating. And it won't stop, until we stop making excuses.

maxerickson 12y ago
Most people have not killed anyone. (This is probably more true for people alive today than it is for all humans that have ever lived)
- entrop13 12y ago
  It's true that as society progresses it off loads the killing work onto fewer people - executioners, soldiers, drones, etc. These killings are presumably justified by the will of the larger society otherwise these men wouldn't be paid to do this. So a smaller part of the population does an increasing porportion of the killing, but does the overall number of people killed decrease?
  - gus_massa 12y ago
    Currently, the drones are only supersized RC planes with weapons. Someone still has to pull the trigger.
  - krschultz 12y ago
    We are certainly living in the most peaceful period since the start of the 20th century. For example, look what was happening exactly 100 years ago today: http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/firstworldwar/index-1915.html http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/firstworldwar/index... When was the last time there was a battle with thousands of causalities anywhere on earth? War hasn't gone away, but it has definitely declined. Surely it would be better if it were gone completely, but things are moving in the right direction.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > We are certainly living in the most peaceful period since the start of the 20th century. Well, no. We're living in a period with less frequent very-high-casualty battles than WWI, WWII, and the Chinese Civil War, to be sure, but that's true of all the parts of the 20th century before, between, and after those wars, as well.
      - bjelkeman-again 12y ago
        Some research shows that we live in an unusually non-violent time period. "Violence has been in decline over long stretches of time", says Harvard professor Steven Pinker, "and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence" There are a bunch of nice graphs showing this here: http://ourworldindata.org/VisualHistoryOf/Violence.html#/title-slide http://ourworldindata.org/VisualHistoryOf/Violence.html#/tit...
        meric 12y ago
        If that's true, I'd mark the start date for such a period at the end of the Cultural Revolution. List of conflicts with over 1 million deaths: 1850-1864 Taiping Rebellion: 20 million deaths. 1914-1918 World War 1: 37 million deaths. 1917-1922 Russian Civil war: 9 million deaths. 1928-1936 Chinese Civil War: 2 million deaths 1937-1945 Second Sino-Japanese War: ~25 million deaths. 1939-1945 World War 2: 60 million deaths. 1945-1949 Chinese Civil War: 6 million deaths. 1950-1953 Korean War: 4 million deaths. 1966-1971 Chinese Cultural Revolution: 30 million deaths. 1955-1975 Vietnam War: 3 million deaths. 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War: 1 million deaths. 1998-2003 Second Congo War 1-5 million deaths. Defining a non-violent period as "a period in which there are no conflicts with more than 1 million deaths", The previous violent period lasted from 1914 to 1971. The current non-violent period has lasted 54 years since 1971. The previous non-violent period close to this long lasted from 1864 to 1914, which is 50 years. Sure, as the world population grew, the size of conflicts haven't been growing to match, but in absolute terms I think there is good chance there will be at least several million+ deaths conflicts upcoming in the current century.
- dredmorbius 12y ago
  Not directly. Indirectly, we all kill, all the time. It's an inevitability of life.
  - Kiro 12y ago
    > Indirectly, we all kill, all the time. How?
    - dredmorbius 12y ago
      Resource deprivation. Competition. For a number of major nations, foreign wars. For those in any of the member states of the "Coalition of the Willing", the illegal and unjustified war of aggression against Iraq has resulted in as many as 600,000 deaths (Lancet). That's one for every 512 Americans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Overview._Iraqi_death_estimates_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Ove... And that's merely human deaths. If you include animals slaughtered or killed in the name of humans (for food or as a consequence of human activity) it's tremendous. It's about 35 million cattle. 116 millon pigs. 9 billion chickens. 271 million turkeys. http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Practical/FactoryFarm/USDAnumbers.htm http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Practical/FactoryFarm/U... And that's for food production. If you look at wild birds, the numbers are pretty crazy. 100 - 120 million by hunters. 175 million by power transmission lines. 365 million to 1 billion by windows and buildings. Again: hundreds of millions to a billion creatures killed by what is effectively static structures. 200 million to 3.7 billion by domestic cats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_wind_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_wind_p... I'm not condemning this, actually. As I said, it's a fact of life. But yes, we kill. All the time.
      - maxerickson 12y ago
        If we are going to discard the contextual meaning from above (people killing people) we should include the billions of yeast I baked alive the other day. And all the microorganisms I'm digesting incidentally.
xvedejas 12y ago
Well, when it comes to firearms, incapacitation doesn't work quite like the movies show. You can't just hit someone in the arm/leg every time (aiming is harder than that), and even if you do it will fairly likely kill them anyway. If you really want to priorize incapacitating enemy soldiers, you're going to have to use different weapons than firearms, weapons that are probably shorter range and slower. That isn't a practical option when the enemy soldiers have guns themselves. I'm all for peace but telling your own soldiers not to kill could be a very good way to get many of your own soldiers killed.
- TeMPOraL 12y ago
  We could use some serious development in non-lethal weapons, but I'm afraid it might not solve anything - non-lethal weaponry is by definition more complicated by lethal, and thus any technology designed to stun could be repurposed to kill with more effectiveness than the bloodless variant. We'd probably need to reach the level when there would be no practical difference of effectiveness between the two types.
  - bane 12y ago
    One of the fascinating things to come out of the widespread distribution of non-lethal weapons to police has been two effects: 1 - police are more likely to use non-lethal weapons, even in cases where no weapon at all would work fine, because the long-term consequences of using a non-lethal are minimal 2 - in cases where people do die due to being attacked by a non-lethal weapon, there's generally quite a bit of moral outrage that the weapon was used at all, even if it was well warranted I suspect if soldiers were issued stun weapons tomorrow, we'd see both of these come true and people would still cry foul when some percentage of targets inevitably died as the result of the use of the non-lethal weapon, and rules of engagement would be vastly changed to virtually eliminate the idea of escalation of force, just go in shooting and sort it out later.
    - Bahamut 12y ago
      It's tough to say - the public generally doesn't like talking about military engagements of war. I suspect they would generally remain apathetic.
deleted 12y ago
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superuser2 12y ago
The Bible very unambiguously does not prohibit killing, it prohibits unjustified or unlawful killing. If we took it to heart, we'd continue doing exactly what we're doing, which is killing people when we feel justified in doing so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_not_kill#Justified_killing:_in_warfare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_not_kill#Justified_k...
mentat 12y ago
As I'm sure the theologically informed will say, it is "thou shall not murder" which is to say not socially endorsed killing.
deleted 12y ago
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maxerickson 12y ago

Most people have not killed anyone. (This is probably more true for people alive today than it is for all humans that have ever lived)

entrop13 12y ago
It's true that as society progresses it off loads the killing work onto fewer people - executioners, soldiers, drones, etc. These killings are presumably justified by the will of the larger society otherwise these men wouldn't be paid to do this. So a smaller part of the population does an increasing porportion of the killing, but does the overall number of people killed decrease?
- gus_massa 12y ago
  Currently, the drones are only supersized RC planes with weapons. Someone still has to pull the trigger.
- krschultz 12y ago
  We are certainly living in the most peaceful period since the start of the 20th century. For example, look what was happening exactly 100 years ago today: http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/firstworldwar/index-1915.html http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/firstworldwar/index... When was the last time there was a battle with thousands of causalities anywhere on earth? War hasn't gone away, but it has definitely declined. Surely it would be better if it were gone completely, but things are moving in the right direction.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > We are certainly living in the most peaceful period since the start of the 20th century. Well, no. We're living in a period with less frequent very-high-casualty battles than WWI, WWII, and the Chinese Civil War, to be sure, but that's true of all the parts of the 20th century before, between, and after those wars, as well.
    - bjelkeman-again 12y ago
      Some research shows that we live in an unusually non-violent time period. "Violence has been in decline over long stretches of time", says Harvard professor Steven Pinker, "and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species' existence" There are a bunch of nice graphs showing this here: http://ourworldindata.org/VisualHistoryOf/Violence.html#/title-slide http://ourworldindata.org/VisualHistoryOf/Violence.html#/tit...
      - meric 12y ago
        If that's true, I'd mark the start date for such a period at the end of the Cultural Revolution. List of conflicts with over 1 million deaths: 1850-1864 Taiping Rebellion: 20 million deaths. 1914-1918 World War 1: 37 million deaths. 1917-1922 Russian Civil war: 9 million deaths. 1928-1936 Chinese Civil War: 2 million deaths 1937-1945 Second Sino-Japanese War: ~25 million deaths. 1939-1945 World War 2: 60 million deaths. 1945-1949 Chinese Civil War: 6 million deaths. 1950-1953 Korean War: 4 million deaths. 1966-1971 Chinese Cultural Revolution: 30 million deaths. 1955-1975 Vietnam War: 3 million deaths. 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War: 1 million deaths. 1998-2003 Second Congo War 1-5 million deaths. Defining a non-violent period as "a period in which there are no conflicts with more than 1 million deaths", The previous violent period lasted from 1914 to 1971. The current non-violent period has lasted 54 years since 1971. The previous non-violent period close to this long lasted from 1864 to 1914, which is 50 years. Sure, as the world population grew, the size of conflicts haven't been growing to match, but in absolute terms I think there is good chance there will be at least several million+ deaths conflicts upcoming in the current century.
dredmorbius 12y ago
Not directly. Indirectly, we all kill, all the time. It's an inevitability of life.
- Kiro 12y ago
  > Indirectly, we all kill, all the time. How?
  - dredmorbius 12y ago
    Resource deprivation. Competition. For a number of major nations, foreign wars. For those in any of the member states of the "Coalition of the Willing", the illegal and unjustified war of aggression against Iraq has resulted in as many as 600,000 deaths (Lancet). That's one for every 512 Americans. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Overview._Iraqi_death_estimates_by_source https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War#Ove... And that's merely human deaths. If you include animals slaughtered or killed in the name of humans (for food or as a consequence of human activity) it's tremendous. It's about 35 million cattle. 116 millon pigs. 9 billion chickens. 271 million turkeys. http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Practical/FactoryFarm/USDAnumbers.htm http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Practical/FactoryFarm/U... And that's for food production. If you look at wild birds, the numbers are pretty crazy. 100 - 120 million by hunters. 175 million by power transmission lines. 365 million to 1 billion by windows and buildings. Again: hundreds of millions to a billion creatures killed by what is effectively static structures. 200 million to 3.7 billion by domestic cats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_wind_power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_wind_p... I'm not condemning this, actually. As I said, it's a fact of life. But yes, we kill. All the time.
    - maxerickson 12y ago
      If we are going to discard the contextual meaning from above (people killing people) we should include the billions of yeast I baked alive the other day. And all the microorganisms I'm digesting incidentally.

xvedejas 12y ago

Well, when it comes to firearms, incapacitation doesn't work quite like the movies show. You can't just hit someone in the arm/leg every time (aiming is harder than that), and even if you do it will fairly likely kill them anyway. If you really want to priorize incapacitating enemy soldiers, you're going to have to use different weapons than firearms, weapons that are probably shorter range and slower. That isn't a practical option when the enemy soldiers have guns themselves. I'm all for peace but telling your own soldiers not to kill could be a very good way to get many of your own soldiers killed.

TeMPOraL 12y ago
We could use some serious development in non-lethal weapons, but I'm afraid it might not solve anything - non-lethal weaponry is by definition more complicated by lethal, and thus any technology designed to stun could be repurposed to kill with more effectiveness than the bloodless variant. We'd probably need to reach the level when there would be no practical difference of effectiveness between the two types.
- bane 12y ago
  One of the fascinating things to come out of the widespread distribution of non-lethal weapons to police has been two effects: 1 - police are more likely to use non-lethal weapons, even in cases where no weapon at all would work fine, because the long-term consequences of using a non-lethal are minimal 2 - in cases where people do die due to being attacked by a non-lethal weapon, there's generally quite a bit of moral outrage that the weapon was used at all, even if it was well warranted I suspect if soldiers were issued stun weapons tomorrow, we'd see both of these come true and people would still cry foul when some percentage of targets inevitably died as the result of the use of the non-lethal weapon, and rules of engagement would be vastly changed to virtually eliminate the idea of escalation of force, just go in shooting and sort it out later.
  - Bahamut 12y ago
    It's tough to say - the public generally doesn't like talking about military engagements of war. I suspect they would generally remain apathetic.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

superuser2 12y ago

The Bible very unambiguously does not prohibit killing, it prohibits unjustified or unlawful killing. If we took it to heart, we'd continue doing exactly what we're doing, which is killing people when we feel justified in doing so. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_not_kill#Justified_killing:_in_warfare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_not_kill#Justified_k...

mentat 12y ago

As I'm sure the theologically informed will say, it is "thou shall not murder" which is to say not socially endorsed killing.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]