In debates over the Ten Commandments it is typically mentioned at some point that they are the basis for our current laws. It has been pointed out on these boards and elsewhere that not very many of the Big 10 have actually been codified into our laws. In fact only two are clearly proscribed - don’t kill and don’t steal.
Fine. But laws against killing and stealing seem to be universal. I don’t know of a single country or even culture where it is OK to go around killing and stealing. Often the rules my seem a little weird by our standards, but there are rules.
So my question is this - are there now or have there ever been cultures that were advanced enough to have anything resembling laws that didn’t prohibit killing and stealing?
I realize that this is treacherously close to GD, but I thought I’d start it here in GQ.
Indeed our rules against killing and stealing are quite complex and allow for all sorts of exceptions, levels of crime, etc. But the Ten Commandments don’t have that complexity, certainly not the versions chiseled on granite and set up in the courthouse lawns: “6. Thou shalt not kill… 8. Thou shalt not steal”
Even in our civilized societies where we allow murder and theft under certain circumstances, the basic rule is “Murder is bad; theft is bad.” That is the basic starting point - that’s the *basis *for the laws, and exceptions are added from there. Lord knows, the folks in the Bible had no problems coming up with exceptions to these two rules.
Anyway, to wander a bit from my own OP, I would suspect that the more advanced a society becomes, the more exceptions it adds to its rules against murder and theft. Still I’m waiting to hear about some culture that is so primitive (or evil) that it doesn’t have *any *rules against these two things.
My recollection from my long ago undergrad anthropology degree is, in short, no. There may be widely varying rules about property rights and what belongs to whom, and who it’s okay to kill and who it isn’t and under what circumstances, but no culture has mores that would allow the completely indiscriminate taking of property or the completely indiscriminate killing of those within one’s own culture, although doing so to those outside one’s own culture is frequently acceptable.
I am by no means an expert in history but the first thing that came to mind was the Roman culture where they had a set of laws but watched people kill eachother for entertainment.
In thier system of laws it was iligal to kill someone for no reason, but for example:
Then there is the Caste system in India where at one time it was perfectly acceptable for a person in a higher caste to kill a lower caste member with no repercussions
http://adaniel.tripod.com/untouchables.htm
But in both those cultures there was laws in place for killing people in the same social level. It was illigal to randomly kill, but it was ok to kill certain people. I guess it is similar to our modern definition of self defence, so really this does not help you at all
My understanding is that the word used refers to killing for personal gain. It does not include killing in self-defence or judicial executions. But to answer the OP, maybe not so much today, but in ancient times there were any number of cultures where the ruling class held power of life & death over the peasants, or where a parent could kill a child who was unwanted. (In China, today, it is not uncommon for fathers to kill baby girls so that their one child can be a boy. It’s illegal, but apparently is normally swept under the rug.)
Also, there’s the whole concept of family honor, where if you soil my family’s good name I’m obliged to kill you. That’s a very widespread idea which the commandment against murder prohibits.
“stealing” from anybody outside the immediate hunting group is just fine and dandy. Theft and interpersonal dishonesty in dealings outside the immediate hunting group is a matter of pure expedience not proscription.
We have a perfect parallel today in boxing. It’s illegal to batter another person senseless, except in a boxing ring where one is encouraged to do so for a very handsome payment.
Killing was in a sense not prohibited by the state in early Germanic societies, but the family of a murdered man was entitled to avenge itself on the family from which the murderer came, or to demand were-gild, or monetary damages. The damages varied widely depending on the importance and prominence of the victim. At some point what government there was began to regulate these practices, and eventually came to the point of declaring murder illegal pure and simple. But we still have were-gild today, in the form of wrongful death actions and the ensuing damages awarded in case of victory.
[Slight nitpick] People always say only two Commandments are recognized in most statutes, but there are at least three: Perjury, or giving false testimony, is considered a crime everywhere, I imagine.[/SN]
I’d assume that depends on whether the society in question interprets the word “murder” as including honor killings. It’s kind of arbitrary where you draw the line between murder and killing that is not murder.
Actually, the very words “murder” or “theft” – or “perjury” or “adultery” represent the society drawing the line – murder is the unlawful intentional killing of another human; if under your specific circumstance the society allows you kill that person (take that property, tell that lie, sleep with that woman) then it’s not murder (theft/perjury/adultery), legally speaking, in that society. Every culture has drawn the line somewhere but I don’t know that there has been any sort of known culture bereft of ANY law regarding when and where and whom it is right or wrong to kill/steal/cheat. What would be rare IMO would be any culture wherein the proscription against taking life or property from others is truly ABSOLUTE with no exception or special circumstance.
No. While the peasantry was of a lower social class than the samurai, it wasn’t carte blanc for the samurai to abuse the peasants “with no cause whatsoever.” At a minimum, the peasant had to first do something that the samurai considered an insult/slight before the samurai could react. Furthermore, in practice, the response of the samurai was expected to be in proportion to the misdeed; killing a peasant just because he accidentally swept some dust on a samurai’s sandals would have been seen as petty and dishonorable.
I think the commandments are simple rules or principles that one should follow if member of a society; and also Moses presented them when he was about to establish a new society in a way.
Everybody knows that if it’s generally acceptable to steal, kill and sleep with your neighbour’s wife, you won’t have much of a society left in a few years. That’s why the commandments apply to just about any society; without them, there is no society to speak of.
That’s the basis, but people have to get killed sometimes, it seems, and so a society agress that some people are allowed to kill some people under certain conditions, and so the police was invented.
But the police have to be of higher moral value than the rest of us, and only kill people with acceptable reasons. Some police forces, or rather those who control the police, can’t handle that, and that’s when fascism is invented.
So the samuraj is generally accepted to be a higher moral being, and may kill a peasant or two, if it servers society. When the samuraj starts to kill people in a way that’s not serving society, revolution is invented.
After the revolution, the commandment stays: Don’t go around killing people.
To elaborate, the petty and dishonorable might not seem much to our eyes, but it was worse than losing your social standing as a gentleman in Victorian society. There would probably be serious social repercussions. People above you might refuse to sponsor you and peers might not receive you as a guest. You might lose your commission or be transferred to an out of the way province if you became an embarrassment to your liege.
Peasants, or farmers, were ranked just below samurai, above artisans and craftsmen, and traders. Killing a merchant might not be as hard to explain, but killing a farmer was endangering rice production, and rice was the currency of the day. So, if you had killed a farmer, you’d better have a damn good reason for endangering the local lord’s tax revenues.
Re: the OP. I am unaware of any cultures that don’t have some limit on killing and stealing among the members of the in-group. Interestingly, marriage and provisions for divorce are pretty much universal too.
