I'll believe it's ideologies that kill people when someone comes up with an effective countermeasure.
Conversation
It's a lot easier to accept "hurr durr bad ideology make people kill", than that ideologically "motivated" genocide is a natural confluence of technology and Just Sapiens Things.
Replying to
"Turns out, sapiens really do kill each other quite a lot, and always have.
The recent increase in the scope & intensity of mass fucking murder must be attributable to some neologism, though."
1
If all of us monkeys could just get together and agree that we are easily-frightened, violently territorial creatures... we'd probably feel cramped for space and start killing each other.
1
If I make it to 75, I wouldn't be surprised to hear of the acausal attribution of human group violence to bugbears like "ideologies" and "religion".
Y'know, kinda like labelling personality disorders as demonic possession.
1
We thought communism and capitalism would see human habitation reduced to rubble.
But in the end, the various close calls have all come down to whether or not some dudes in a room thought it'd be a good idea to fire some nukes and watch the world burn.
1
1
"So that's it, that's your 'explanation', we just do it because that's who we are?"
Yeah, basically. I'm sure science better than what's extant can atomize or syncretize explanations as much as you'd like. We're already starting to see glimpses of it now.
1
But basically, People Just Kill Things, Man is a much more true and accurate explanation than "people kill others for these particular reasons".
The idea that it's the modern state or ideologies that cause genocides boils down to 'well, A preceded B by some years, so...'