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Justifications Made for Genocide

Genocide is only possible because of people's ability to think of those they kill as creatures that are something other than themselves, and who are, somehow, less than themselves. There are parallels between justifications for the killing and mistreatment of animals, and the justifications people use when killing off other human groups. Since Darwin, it has been possible to see more clearly how the assumptions that people make about animals are based on the same assumptions of separateness and superiority. It is assumptions of this kind that continue to allow people to kill off those they consider to be completely different from, and less than, themselves. But, it is also possible that human beings come by their tendency toward genocide naturally. This kind of killing, which was formerly thought of as being possible only in human beings, is also found among chimpanzees. Groups of chimpanzees have been observed systematically destroying neighboring populations and then occupying their territory. It may be that killing groups that have what one group wants or needs, or who threaten what the group has, is an inherited tendency. But, human beings, who claim that their mistreatment of animals is permissible because animals cannot reason, fail to employ that reason to make it clear that their justifications for killing either animals or human beings are not based on either logic or ethics.

Diamond uses the killing of the Tasmanians and the Australian aborigines as his primary example of genocide because it is a perfect example of people who simply wanted the territory inhabited by these people. It is a perfect parallel with the case of the group of chimpanzees studied by Jane Goodall. But, in cases of human genocide, the killers feel it is necessary to offer some justification for their actions. Patricia Cobern's 1982 letter to an Australian newspaper shows how people have continued to justify that genocide. Cobern's letter...

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Justifications Made for Genocide. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 07:55, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1682786.html