2013 Social Psychology: Is it true that we all have the potential to kill?

A question i would ask myself here is - what makes a killer? In other words: To what extend does the environment shape, form, define and determine who a being is in word, thought and deed?


I think we can all agree that, whether mostly defined by 'nurture' (cultural/environmental programming of the mind) or 'nature' (genetics/reflexes/instincts) - the human being is a 'program'/'organic system' of which the entirety of the 'Who I am in this world' is a combination of predetermined/predesigned/preprogrammed factors (considering we leave out the belief in a 'Soul' - as such a thing cannot be scientifically underbuilt), which the scientific community would term 'nature' and 'nurture'. This essentially implies that none of what/who a being that is born in this world becomes, is or can be anything other than a result/consequence/product of the 'variables' that make up 'who' the being is (>as so determined by the predesigned/preprogrammed factors of 'nature'/'nurture').

Thus - yes, we all have the 'potential to kill' as we could have ourselves been born into a 'life path'/'constitution'/'environment' of which the 'variables' of the 'input' that make up the 'who' the being is in this world result in us killing another being, for whatever reason that may be. In this, there really exist no such thing as 'free choice', an excuse that many people use to make themselves believe that they are 'better than' the 'killers'/'criminals' in this world - as 'free choice' would imply that we ever had any say what so ever in the 'input'/'variables'/'factors' that constitute all of who we believe ourselves to be and how we experience ourselves. And considering that human beings do not in any way understand where exactly their mind/thoughts/feelings/motivations/reactions comes from or what the mind actually really is or how it was created and by whom - it would even be sheer arrogance to compare oneself to any other being in this world and state that we would not walk the same life and make the same decisions as them, without firstly investigating and understanding how the mind and the physical reality as that which constitutes all of who we are works exactly.