Studying genocide

What is a positive side of a genocide?

Tired said:

What is a positive side of a genocide?

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I can’t think of one but clearly various people find them useful. People who dehumanise others.

Masaniello said:

I can’t think of one but clearly various people find them useful. People who dehumanise others.

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If you write it from that side - I would like to read it.

I don't think genocide is in any way morally defensible, but I can see selfish reasons for engaging in it. However, I doubt they would fit the criteria as a positive for genocide in an academic setting.

I think genocide tends to be fuelled by hate, so it can be personally satisfying to utterly destroy something you despise (no matter how illogical the hate), and it can also permanently get rid of a competitor.

It's just a behaviour. It may have positives for some and negatives for others, but in itself it's simply evolved human behaviour crafted by evolution and environmental pressures. Moral judgement is an abstraction of behaviour. It's only right or wrong from a subjective viewpoint. Those whom see it as in their interest will justify it (usually after the fact with emotive language, not as a primary initiator), those who don't will see it as indefensible. It's not new, the only thing new is we are able to kill more in a shorter space of time due to technology - we've been sacking cities since we invented cities.

It often occurs when one group desire or require more resources than another, often adjacent, group has (or are perceived to have). Other species will fight for territory (resources), but usually have evolved less destructive though equally aggressive behaviours.
Our unique ability to make tools that give us far more power over our environment have amplified what used to be manageable into what we call genocide, but we still apply that overt aggression. Like many human behaviours, it's the distortion of old evolved but now unsuitable instincts.
e.g. We used to be able to get angry with another and maybe knock them to the ground or simply dominate them into submission through aggressive displays. Now we do it in cars and end up killing someone because a car is a lethal weapon (or read 'gun' instead of 'car', etc).

Humans are also very good at justifying their behaviour by emotion and biases instead of rationality. Left to our evolved instincts we are very irrational creatures (a very readable book on psychology by Dr Stuart Sutherland called Irrationality that shows how this has been demonstrated - recommend if the subject is of interest - also google the famous Milgram experiments on the psychology of genocide from the 60's, very revealing of human nature in this area).

We live in an over pressured over populated world and have done for some time. So we struggle all the more in competition for the fewer and fewer resources available. A global society predicated on growth will reach a brick wall eventually, and bounce back off it back into itself. We're run out of prey, so prey on ourselves and can now do it in an industrialised fashion.

I had a thought: what if I did the required work and wrote the essays from a pro-genocide perspective?

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Good luck with that. <chuckle>