The Desire To Kill

The desire to kill seems to lurk right beneath the surface in many people and to be quite easy to stir up in others.  Murder is a subcategory of killing, so it is not as if it would follow from murder being wrong that all forms of killing are murder, but it is commonly decried as the allegedly worst moral offense by many Christians and non-Christians alike while still being one of the things almost everyone admits or acts as if they would certainly do, if only it was not for moral concerns or social obstacles.  At the very least, in spite of murder often being the default example of depravity cited by many people, it is also what people are usually more willing to joke about than many other forms of violence and something they tend to just selectively oppose; when it comes to murders in prisons or inflicted on the unborn or various other categories of people, there are entire groups who think murder is justified (impossible because murder is morally illicit killing or else there is no distinction between murder snd manslaughter, killing in self-defense, and so on) or at least trivial if they approve of the circumstances arbitrarily.

Murder is trivial, yes--by comparison to certain other deeds that inflict more pain and degradation than murder alone ever could.  It is not exactly rare for the typical non-rationalist to hold to the false assumption (though assuming it regardless of its truth is asinine) that murder is the most severe or harmful kind of action and then, at random moments or perhaps very predictable ones, betray that they actually wish they could murder certain people or that they do not care, in an emotional or ideological sense, if certain people are murdered.  This is hypocritical at best and intentionally irrational at worst.  Someone who says that they wish to kill non-rationalists for their uttermost disregard for the only truths that could possibly underpin and encompass all things would be hated or feared by the masses, even though a rationalist might have the desire to kill and yet perfectly restrain himself or herself because they know that their desires do not shape logic or morality.  Someone who wants to kill someone in a prolonged or dehumanizing manner out of emotionalistic spite, though, is likely to be acknowledged with sympathy by a great many people.

The desire to kill cannot be evil either way, to be sure.  A subjective desire that is involuntary, as a great many impulses like this might be, are neither chosen by everyone who experiences them nor able to make a person believe or act irrationally in any way.  Someone who rages with the desire to kill, and to murder at that, has not erred even by Biblical standards, not if they do not believe that their feelings or preferences legitimize believing that killing on a whim is just and do not act upon that specific desire.  In the presence of non-rationalists, though, the only admission about wanting to kill that will be welcomed is when someone says they want to kill a person from a group that listeners subjectively dislike, with perhaps none of them realizing that their desires are incapable of establishing how they should act or in revealing anything about reality other than that they have the urges.

Now, plenty of non-rationalists who really would murder in the right situation will easily give away which kind of people they think can be "justifiably" murdered.  When they shun murder in a general sense only to call for everyone with significant wealth to be guillotined or for a criminal who offended or hurt them to be murdered in prison, they have expressed the desire to kill.  They might not call it murder, but what they describe is murder all the same.  One does not have to like that murder, if wrong, is always wrong.  That is not even what makes someone rational or just with regard to this matter.  The hypocrisy of erroneously thinking that murder is the worst behavior possible and vehemently condemning murder or the desire to kill all while harboring that desire is a condition many people seem to be in.

That more people are reluctant to joke about rape than they are about murder or to speak about sexual assault in front of children instead of murder show that alongside this, there is a massive contradiction between what many people say they believe about the alleged supreme evil of murder and what their other words and actions suggest.  For all the objections to general violence in visual entertainment, moreover, it is things like sexual violence or graphic torture as opposed to mere killings that people often shield children from, as if they already recognize on some level that this more cruel, more vicious, and more brutal than mere killing.  Additionally, the fact that so many people, if given the chance, seem ready to literally murder at least someone in their lives strongly suggests that they would certainly kill if only they could get away with it or be emotionally at peace over it.