Murder is very much a natural inclination of humans.
I don’t think this is true, for most values of “natural inclination”.
Indications are that it’s very hard to reliably convince people to kill. First-world militaries base quite a bit of their training methods and tactics on working around this; training reforms suggested by S.L.A. Marshall and contemporaries took the US Army from about 25% of front-line soldiers firing their weapons in WWII (!) to a ratio of around 55% in the Korean War, and near 90% by Vietnam. But modern tactics still lean quite heavily on indirect fire and other less personal methods of killing enemies.
Even more tellingly, research into PTSD and related conditions seems to point to a stronger link with responsibility for violence than with exposure to personal danger. Granted, shooting strangers in warfare is rather different from, say, knifing someone in a bar fight; but the evidence seems to suggest that people without sociopathic traits need to overcome substantial psychological barriers before killing’s considered as an option.
Yes, I would expect that most people need to overcome substantial psychological barriers before they are willing to kill someone, especially before they are willing to kill complete strangers. If that is inconsistent with something being a natural inclination, well, OK, then I’ll agree that murder isn’t a natural inclination.
As you suggest in your first sentence, this has more to do with the meaning of “natural inclination” than with anything related to my original point.
Trying to get away from the purely semantic issue… do you disagree with any of this? If so, what?
I don’t think this is true, for most values of “natural inclination”.
Indications are that it’s very hard to reliably convince people to kill. First-world militaries base quite a bit of their training methods and tactics on working around this; training reforms suggested by S.L.A. Marshall and contemporaries took the US Army from about 25% of front-line soldiers firing their weapons in WWII (!) to a ratio of around 55% in the Korean War, and near 90% by Vietnam. But modern tactics still lean quite heavily on indirect fire and other less personal methods of killing enemies.
Even more tellingly, research into PTSD and related conditions seems to point to a stronger link with responsibility for violence than with exposure to personal danger. Granted, shooting strangers in warfare is rather different from, say, knifing someone in a bar fight; but the evidence seems to suggest that people without sociopathic traits need to overcome substantial psychological barriers before killing’s considered as an option.
Yes, I would expect that most people need to overcome substantial psychological barriers before they are willing to kill someone, especially before they are willing to kill complete strangers. If that is inconsistent with something being a natural inclination, well, OK, then I’ll agree that murder isn’t a natural inclination.
As you suggest in your first sentence, this has more to do with the meaning of “natural inclination” than with anything related to my original point.
Trying to get away from the purely semantic issue… do you disagree with any of this? If so, what?