"It's as likely to find a murder-suicide gene in humanity as it is to find a race gene." Eddie Evans

 Evolutionary Theory and Murder-Suicide

A theory must explain an idea if it has anything to it. These days the theory of evolution trots out often enough to explain human behavior, but not always so well.

Here's what I'm going to try and show about murder-suicide. Evolution cannot explain murder-suicide, because murder-suicide offers no evolutionary advantage to a victim-perpetrator.

For the sake of argument, we now rule out murder-suicide following head injuries or diseases of the brain. We want a genetic explanation.

Shows Craziness

What an evolutionary theory of murder-suicide does in some sense, though, it shows levels of craziness. So evolutionary theory can be used for less-than-scientific descriptions of murder-suicide's craziness.

We do find that evolution will explain a biological advantage for homicide in given group settings.

We begin with temperament.

 

1. Temperament
2. Genetics
3. Evolution's Murder-Suicide Craziness Hierarchy
4. Murder-Suicide versus Homicide Similarities
5. Denial a Major Idea
6. Kinship Murder a Greater Loss
7. Does Evolution Favor Homicidal Acts?

Temperment

An abusive boyfriend or abusive husband in the early days becomes an abusive boyfriend or abusive husband in the later days. The most important risk factors for the abusive perpetrator's murder of their partner is estrangement. Previous assaultive and controlling behavior continues beyond promises, experience shows.

We should expect the temperaments of these victim-perpetrators to show punitive and judgmental characteristics. We might expect extroversion rather than introversion.

Cleaning Experience

My suicide cleanup experience shows an abusive boyfriend may first kill or seriously hurt someone, then commit suicide. Noted below, this behavior has a depressive trigger turned to rage, as the murder-suicide scene shows. When the final incident begins, a growing cascade of traumatic injuries grows in number, if the victim has an opportunity to run. In the first stage of violence, violence begins to feed upon itself.

Fear, ironically, leads to murder-suicide in some cases. Fear resides in a victim-perpetrator's emotional background. A basic emotion for fear of disassociation and isolation generalizes to other emotions, including depression and anxiety. Our perpetrators' do not want to lose what they once controlled, or thought they controlled. Our perpetrators' do not want to live alone. They may not have the social or employment skills to live alone.

We know, on a similar thread of thought, that some suicides occur from fear of death. Soldiers in training and combat have shown us suicidal acts. Presumably, they fear excruciating pain, humiliation, or debilitating anxiety accompanied by an uncontrolled death. "Get it over with" becomes a recurring, dreadful thought.

This same character type may murder a blood relative, spouse, or others. We'll note these homicides always occurred in human history (Cain and Able, Oedipus), but their numbers remained small compared with other types of death.

Now, an evolutionary view of a disordered mind shows amusing outcomes. Consider killers committing suicide. How might such a disordered state of mind benefit evolution?

Why should nature ever select a self-reducing temperament trait? The answer, genetic evolution of murder-suicide has no future as an inherited temperament trait.

Homicide in Small Groups

In an evolutionary theory of homicide, a different outcome arises. killer's increase reproductive opportunities in small groups. Extroverted, sociopathic, strong males dominate.

 

Evolutionary Theory and Murder-Suicide

Temperament - Genetics - Evolution's Murder-Suicide Craziness Hierarchy

Three keys considered during various suicide cleanup jobs involving a homicide.

1. An evolutionary theory does not support murder-suicide's evolution.
2. An evolutionary theory does describe a murder-suicide ladder for craziness.
3. An evolutionary theory will show fitness benefits for social and biological kinship support.

If we were to look at humanity's genetics and environmental pressures, we might hope to find an evolutionary theory for murder-suicide. Such a theory would explain murder-suicide as a fitness to survive act in today's social and biological conditions. Above I discounted this idea. It lacks reproductive power, perpetuation.

 

Temperament

If temperament includes attitudes, beliefs, and opinions honed from years of socialization, family and peer pressures, we should not expect an evolutionary benefit from murder-suicide. Social forces come to resist temperaments geared for murder-suicide.

Internally, an evolved temperament for murder-suicide will not reproduce itself often. Its numbers numbers may fail to genetically spread.

Genetics

Also, finding a genetic predisposition for murder-suicide does not appeal to this writer. I'm hinting at a complex pattern of of inheritable characteristics passed down from generation to generation, genes. Put another way, an instinct for murder-suicide.

It's as likely to find a murder-suicide gene in humanity as it is to find a race gene. It's not going to happen. We might find a pattern of genetic structures allowing for loss of emotional control and other forms of emotional disorder. Finding a discrete gene or "genetic snippet" for murder-suicide seems unlikely.

Suppose such a genetic code exists in a benign state, like a virus might take years to mutate. Nothing in this biological state stops victim-perpetrators from passing on this deadly gene, given their ability to reach reproductive years.

Emotional disorder need not translate into murder-suicide. When it does, our perpetrator's suicide stops the engine of reproduction. For murder-suicide to continue in evolutionary terms, kinship murders must occur some time in the perpetrator's early reproduction years and continue to do so.

Biology tells us that other species do kill biological relations soon after mating, but they do not self-murder.

Overall, killing kinfolk contributes little or nothing to the perpetrator's genetic reproduction. We find a disordered mind arising from a murder-suicide pathology. So we must say, "It's simply crazy to kill those most likely to help a perpetrator survive."

This means social and biological limits to murder-suicide find a reversed logic in the disordered mind, according to evolutionary theory.

Evolution's Craziness Hierarchy

A hierarchy of perpetrator craziness shows us degrees of insanity in kinship murder-suicide's disordered minds.

1. Killing a biological child is crazier than killing one's step-child
2. Killing one's older child is crazier than killing one's infant.
3. Killing one's mother is crazier than killing one's father. (See Ariel in the Tempest)
4. Killing one's sister is crazier than killing one's brother.
5. Murder-suicide should benefit the perpetrator.

To repeat, In evolutionary logic, suicide should somehow benefit the suicidal temperament following the murder of one or more kinfolk. Overall, temperament once controlled by internal and external limits now exceeds social limits. An obnoxious person loses popularity quickly. A homicidal person might lose popularity as quickly, as our evolutionary pans out.

Murder-Suicide versus Homicide Similarities

Let's consider a murder-suicide temperament Will a murder-suicide temperament show more similarities to suicide victims or homicide perpetrators only? Answering this questions directs us to a default logic. By default, the murder-suicide temperament should show more similarities to a suicidal temperament.

We find evidence in white male suicides. White males account for 73% of suicides. We would expect murder-suicide temperament Logically, not evolutionarily, we expect this demographic group's temperament to show more similarities to murder-suicide temperaments. than homicidal temperaments.

Most likely in the wild, civilization in this case, murder-suicide must occur in a perpetrator-victim's older years, if it occurs as an evolutionary trait. Although the numbers go along with this line of reasoning, correlations fail to match reality more often than not.

Suicide victims, as often found in suicide cleanup activities, suffered profound depression. We should expect this order of depression among murder-suicide perpetrator-victims. As with suicide victims, murder-suicide will follow failed relationships. Time need not follow as a significant variable either. The perpetrator's fear turned to rage triggers during intoxication and/or uncomfortable, stressful moments.

Denial a Major Idea

Denial either becomes or remains a major source of perpetrator's temperament Depression masks itself in self-medicating and a perpetrator's denial of a lost relationship. "She'll take me back."

Self-medicating, alcohol and drug abuse, may occur more often in murder-suicide than homicide. The loss of kinship relations carries emotional ties not always available in homicide only acts. Self-medicating does not serve the homicide perpetrator's need for suicide planning and loss of self, self-grieving.

Kinship Murder a Greater Loss

In evolutionary terms, we look to the murder of biological children, older biological children, siblings, and parents as catastrophic, traumatic acts greater than spousal and step-child homicides. No reproductive advantage follows some kinship homicides in many cases. Murder-suicide becomes even madder.

In all cases, expect an enraged, aggressive impulse similar to that in the homicidal temperament as a "trigger" in murder-suicide. Soon after the depressive and now grieving emotions return, suicide follows. In evolutionary terms, what could be madder?

Murder-suicide need not occur as a planned event, "lying in wait" mentality. Homicidal temperaments. do plan out "lying in wait" homicides as well as acting out of rage, but the suicidal act comes about spontaneously for younger murder-suicide perpetrator-victims.

Evolution Favors Homicidal Acts

In evolutionary terms, homicidal temperaments gain an advantage. Within small communities, he who strikes first strikes last. So given the social, historical, and environmental conditions, homicide benefits reproduction. Freud would agree with this logic, as he spells out in Totem and Taboo. "The religion of the son replaces the religion of the father," not by primogenitor, but murder.

We expect men to commit murder-suicide more often than female perpetrator-victims. As noted above, men commit homicide more often than women, too. Also, women are less likely to have been drinking or under the influence of other drugs at the time of committing a homicide. Women will show more depression and less often suffer personality disorders.

Some writers say alcohol correlates to homicide about 44% of the time. Drugs come in much lower with about 10% for perpetrators and 7% for victims. These drug number do not sound high enough for my experience. Drugs seem to appear on many more suicide cleanups the 10% and 7%.

 

Ariel in "The Tempest" :

Full fathom five thy father lies:

Of his bones are coral made;

Those are pearls that were his eyes;

Nothing of him that doth fade

But doth suifer a sea-change

Into something rich and strange.