Research Paper - Natural Selection to Rebel

Olimpia Blanco

P.6 AP Eng

Ms. Derdzinske

6/9/11.

Natural Selection to Rebel

Flipping casually through an old newspaper you come across an eye-catching headline, MURDER OF THE BLACK DAHLIA, below is a black and white image of what appears to be a dismembered mannequin. Tiny print under the picture reads "the severed limbs were drained of blood then laid out for display", a shiver runs down your spine you keep reading sickened, but / for some reason you simply cannot look away. The murder of the black dahlia is simply one of many murder cases which have grazed the cover of magazines. "People are fascinated by the exceptional, the unusual, the abnormal."(Meyers)

Every year countless articles, headlines, and films about murder are produced, highlighting the audience's insatiable fascination for blood, gore, and grizzly mutation. Human beings have always maintained an attraction to death and murder, as has been shown throughout history. This fascination has allowed for the developmental growth of abnormal psychology, and successful discovery of a relationship between humans and murder. Murder and aggression are a part of human nature, so why do we condemn it? Politics, government, and a self-created code of morals are all tools to suppress the natural aggression and violence of human beings. Yet it is within these very hierarchical organizations that we see the most hypocrisy and mass violence a higher level, as they strive to maintain peace and control. Modern society looks down on murder because it is an ideal which has been implanted into our minds so we may ignore our aggressive nature, even so we continue to have a very noticeable attraction to violence, aggression, and death. Is it not best to behave naturally?

Throughout history humans have both been intrigued by aggression and repulsed by it. In early cultures such as the Aztec the idea of mass murder during bloodletting rituals was often celebrated and thought to be holy. Consequently at the same time in Europe such practices were seen as barbaric although the justice system made frequent uses of the noose and the guillotine, people from villages gathered in anticipation anxious to watch the executions hiding behing the man made shroud of government and politics. By definition, a murder is a homicide (the killing of one human being by another) that is committed intentionally, or with malice aforethought. In that case murder, or homicide, has been the basis of development since the beginning of time. From the first established settlements until now empires have emerged from the seizing of land and eliminating whatever might keep the strongest force from reaching its goal. Indusrtialism began from the exploitation of small third world countries by world powers. Inventions which changed history such as the cotton gin were brought about in response to the popular slave industry.

Over the years the field of abnormal psychology has gained much popularity and support from various medical and scientific fields. A particularly well known term is psychopath often associated with monstrously tall people and large bloodstained butcher knives. According to psychology textbooks "...generally however, mental health researchers in Western cultures attribute the appearance of psychopathology to three other causes: biological factors, psychological processes, and sociocultural contexts."(Bernstein, Nash) Meaning the psychopath or murderer is naturally apt to kill, as a biological factor, but whether he or she chooses to do so relies on their own mental processing, as shaped by society, and how we react with our surrounding in that society. This combination is called the biopsychosocial model and has been adopted by many researchers. It consists of the neurobiological model where mental disorder is seen as a result of physical illness or an imbalance of bodily processes including disturbances in the anatomy and chemistry of the brain. Examples of changes due to physical abrasions include the case of whom after having an iron stake crash through his frontal lobe, had changes in his personality and moral views. Spectators and close family friends claimed that he went from being congenial and polite to ill-tempered and offensive. The psychological model theorizes that mental disorders arise from inner conflict. And the sociocultural model which states that mental disorder is directly associated with age, era, location, and culture values.

Aggression is a part of human nature as is violence, it is not only a necessary part of our natural lives, it is also something human beings seem to enjoy. Studies demonstrate how the human mind is by natural design aggressive and violent. Many people would argue that we are not naturally aggressive; we learn aggression from observing our role models and our peers. Many might cite the Bandura experiment in which children who were not aggressive at first became aggressive towards a doll after seeing adults hit the doll. Even though some saw the adult punished, and others saw the adult rewarded or treated neutrally, all the children seemed to have learned something about aggression from observing the adults. It was a form of observational learning defined this way because "Bandura found that after observing an aggressive model, many children imitate the model's acts precisely, especially if the model's aggression was rewarded." (Meyers). The results support skeptics ideas of

Political and government structures are created as an attempt to maintain control and repress our natural urges to rise up and rebel. One example of organizations attempting to discourage and sneer down at murder and aggression is religion. Religion often preaches against the act of murder and dictates for followers to heed to strict moral codes on the subject. As is stated in the Oxford Companion to the Body;

"The act of murder is unique to humanity. While animals kill outside of their own species for food, and may fight, wound, or very occasionally kill within species for territory, it is only within mankind that one person -- out of malice or rage, for gain or revenge -- takes another person's life by violent means. Though most religions and cultures have gone out of their way to define murder as unnatural (the very use of the words 'cold blooded' denotes our need to see it as less than human), its continued presence within our history might, if we were more honest, suggest the opposite."(Blakemore, Jennet)

For example in Christianity one of the 10 commandments is "Thou shalt not kill" it serves as an unspoken rule