The Anatomy of Killing

Perception is illusion – or delusion – and, despite its ethereal quality, it provides us with the motivation to believe and act in ways that keep us moving forward in life.

The importance of perception can be observed in the way that human beings assiduously attempt to forgive murder, or the killing of another human being, if you will, by carefully defining motives and ticking through a whole checklist of exemptive emotional and psychological states of being – invented mostly for events like this.  After all, killing connotes the appearance of uncivilized.  Killing also happens to be very common among members of the human race.  So, we need to make killing okay, sometimes, or, at least kind of okay.  Appearing to ourselves to be civilized is very important to us. Finding a way to excuse the various kinds of killing becomes imperative. 

So there are crimes of passion where the jilted lover is seen as having temporarily lost their mind and, in a fit of rage, takes the life of their unfaithful partner.  A civilized human being is in full charge of their faculties.  Only someone who has lost their mind, and thus the ability to remain civilized, would be capable of killing.

And then there is manslaughter, where one human becomes reckless resulting in the killing of another because of anything from a moment of indiscretion, to temporarily insane behavior blamed on drug or alcohol consumption.  Again, the killer human is not civilized anymore because he or she was made temporarily insane in some form.

Premeditated murder is defined as, perhaps, the most outwardly heinous version of killing, and provides an excuse not to forgive. After all, the killer was in full charge of his or her faculties. There are the elements of knowing, planning, plotting and stalking.  The killer becomes the predator, the victim, the hunted – the prey, if you will.  Highly uncivilized behavior only found among lower animals.  So, in order to satisfy our craving to appear civilized, we condemn the killer to permanent banishment or death.  After all, only the civilized get to remain at large.

But then, trying to defend the appearance of civilized gets more complicated.  There are types of killing – the taking of another human life – the reconciling of which requires more sophisticated illusionary skills.

Terroristic killing, with sub-categories like active shooter and suicide bomber, where hundreds may lose their lives simultaneously, dying for some imaginary cause that exists only in the mind of the murderer.  One might say that the killer, or killers, are almost always in some kind of trance and might fit the definition of temporarily insane if it weren't for the often lengthy premeditation. To confuse things further, terroristic murderers are forgiven by sympathizers who make them appear not only civilized, but supremely so.

In a twisted irony, the victims of an iatrogenic killing unswervingly place their full trust in their perpetrators.  In this scenario, the ones doing the killing are always regarded as the very epitome of civilized behavior:  medical professionals with academic degrees and impressive power over life and death.  In this latter glow, it's easy to represent oneself as the trustworthy source of remediation – the only competent source of relief from disease and trauma. Can there be any reason to believe that doctors would not make good on these promises, and their unwavering assurance of competence?  After all, our entire system supports their activity:  insurance companies, the legal system, and the esteemed universities that graduate them.

Needless to say, doctors, hospital administrators, medical researchers, and CEOs of big pharmaceutical companies are themselves the template for civilized. They are the torch bearers, the avatars, and standards bearers of civilized behavior that we all aspire to.  They live in big houses, in nice neighborhoods, join clubs and give to charities.  Their kids go to good schools and they treat their help well.

Killings of various definitions, up until now, have the word heinous embedded in them.  For some reason, iatrogenic killings are not considered heinous at all, despite the deceit intrinsic to misrepresentation and the broken promise of competence.  In fact, after the victim has been killed in this way, the perpetrators are rewarded.  They are paid their full due, and then allowed to turn on one heal and proceed to the next trusting patient – as if nothing of any real consequence had just happened. It doesn't matter that the victim would have otherwise lived had he or she not trusted.  The killers here are seen as so civilized as to be above recrimination – the very thought of the words doctor and criminal in the same sentence is uncomfortable to us.  Iatrogenic murders occur at the rate of hundreds of thousands per year. This, in fact, would be the third leading cause of death in America.  Non-lethal iatrogenic injuries may number in the millions.  All at the hands of the beacons of civilization.

The culturally filtered perception of passing away due to illness, old age, or disease obscures the notion of killing as an act of passive euthanasia.   Passive euthanasia is, after all, the killing of a human being by deliberate neglect. There can be any number of iterations of this phenomenon.  Sometimes, this is done in the medical industry as a way of concealing incompetence. Other times, it is done at the request of loved ones, because the seriously infirm has created an overwhelming emotional and financial burden and the prospect for recovery seems dim – at least, according to the medicine that is presiding over the patient.  Interestingly, this 'burden' might be felt by doctors too, who have sometimes, through wrong decisions and ignorance, created an impossible situation that leaves no path back to wellness.  The only solution remaining, of course, is that the patient 'passes quietly into the night,' with a little help, of course.

Passive euthanasia is rarely, if ever, defined as heinous, despite the intentions of those in control.  In fact, magically, passive euthanasia does not exist in the world of hospitals and doctor's offices. Passive euthanasia, by its very nature, is perceived as a blameless act.  And would we, after all, want to blame those at the highest levels of civilization for killing in this way?

Iatrogenic murder  and passive euthanasia have, in fact, managed to transcend completely the argument that killing is uncivilized.  After all, these are the results of attempts to repair humans who are suffering, one might say, and the 'doctors did their best.' That those in charge were fully responsible for the suffering and the death of the victim, in the very first place,  becomes muted, and in this silence we are wondrously civilized once again.