Blue Lives Don't Exist

[Anomalocaris]

The biggest deterrent to murder, is that people aren't murderers.  If a thing being illegal actually stopped people from doing it there would be no crime in the world.

not really.  The biggest deterrent to murder is the credible system that Clearly defines it as some equivalent of illegal, and demonstrates the Reliable capability to  Incur a cost for doing illegal things that would be out of proportion to the gains that would have motivate the illegal thing

Only after the credibility of such a system have become so long I nternalized That accommodating It became part of the reflexive framework inside which people seeks to explain the world do people Begin to make lemonade out of lemon by proclaiming  “I am not a murderer”.

If you were born into system where murder had never been vigorously punished, the frame work to make murder “Bad” wouldn’t exist and you would not be a murderer If you had the opportunity only If you were murdered first. 

There wouldn’t have been something like its prohibition in the 10 commandments had murder not already been so thoroughly discouraged by  long established convention Of social judgement and punishment that it would not have seemed strange And presumptions to have restriction against It hoisted upon the recipients of 10 commandments.

We are moral creatures only because it has long been accepted the price of immorality is too high.   All other reasons for being moral creatures are flaky self-justifications for operating within a practical constraint that In general will fall away within a relatively short time, say a few years, A generation at most, if it is convincingly demonstrated the constraint doesn’t exist, ie the price is not going to Be too high.