Kyo

First, I think that if people really looked in themselves, the capacity to kill - for any reason at all - is there. Over the years, we build up a shield, or container, if you will, over this capacity, either out of fear, denial, or social pressure (after all, nobody likes a serial killer).

My point is that everyone can kill, for any reason. It is my belief that this is not a special quality, but a trait intrinsic in all living things. It is simply another animal instinct that we have tried to hide and supress, as opposed to the instinct of lust, which we have allowed to flourish.

Therefore, there is nothing extraordinary about the ability to kill random people without guilt or conscience. Actually committing the act complicates things, but simply have the ability to do it, without actually doing it, means little.

As for your second comment, it depends on what you mean by civilization, a distinction which I admittedly failed to address. People who are unable to kill are unable to defend themselves and therefore unfit to live. The only reason people can manage to live without committing such acts against each other is the structure of laws and the universal moral brainwashing of our children. We are taught that killing is wrong, therefore we are less likely to do it, even when the urge is upon us. We are told that murder will result in incarceration or death if we are caught, therefore we are less likely to do it. So in one sense, today's society does indeed weed out murderers and other deviants.

However, consider the other side of the coin. Serial killers routinely prey on helpless, innocent individuals. They will not, for instance, go after mafia bosses or professional bodyguards. They go for the little 12 year-old boy living next door, the housewife down the street, or the petite 18-year old girl at the local mall.

If you take everything into account, you will find that society, and those within society, have a way of 'weeding out' all manners of people - the only difference being the method in which they are extracted.

And even then, we are talking about modern society - if you consider societies in both distant and near history, might makes right is not uncommon. Not so long ago, arguments were solved with duels, in both hemispheres of the world, and perfectly legal killings in the streets for what we consider today to be trivial things were commonplace. On a larger scale, wars are a direct measure of a country's ability to fight and destroy another. To paraphrase a fairly well-known quote, the West is dominant today not because of the superiority of its morals but because of its ability to apply organized violence. Therefore, we have applied our western morals and beliefs on those that we have defeated, and demanded that they acknowledge our superiority in all matters.

Quite simply, we are here today because of our collective capacity to kill one another.

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Sure I have a heart; it's floating in a jar in my closet, along with my tonsils, my appendix, and all of the other useless organs I ripped out.