While we have a common perception that humans have the potential to be mindless, bloodthirsty killers (think serial killers, overzealous soldiers and suicide bombers), there is always another side to every story.

In scenes of war, we are immune to the fields of raging soldiers who fire indiscriminately. Interestingly, only fifteen to twenty per cent of fresh soldiers aim to kill. The rest aim high, don’t shoot at all, or pretend to be busy doing something else. It is not only the distaste for taking human life that stops these newbies of battle from aiming to kill. Geneticists have discovered something that is common to all creatures on the planet with DNA: We will all give our lives, or take another life, in the interests of the greater good.
This basically means that we are genetically programmed with a strong sense of justice. If we believe strongly enough that what we are doing is right, and good, for the human race as a whole, we will invoke death to make it happen – whether it is our own or someone elses.

It is this kind of genetic programming that allows for religious fanaticism, terrorism that leads to huge numbers of deaths, and yes, even suicide bombings by the faithful. It is not the pursuit of death and destruction that necessarily motivates these people, but the pursuit of a higher good – a better way of life for all humanity.

There is also the natural defense mechanism. We defend our own lives, and the lives of our children. In some cases, defending our children is even more important to us than defending ourselves. This argument was brought to bear in an Italian court room when the father of a raped child was tried for the brutal murder of the suspect in the child’s assault. The defense didn’t know about our genetic quest for justice, but they certainly knew about self-defense, and pleaded this in an interesting argument that essentially boiled down to a simple equation: Child-rapist equals threat. Threat must be eliminated. Simple biology at work, no matter how far in advance the murder was premeditated. In the end, the jury didn’t buy it, but thousands of other parents did, and a massive protest was mounted, with protesters arriving from all over Europe, renting apartments in Milan for the duration of the protest, eventually helping to lead to the father’s release.