Are killing-free societies possible? Evidence suggests that by working with committed organizations, leaders and individuals like you we can signficantly reduce and eventually eliminate human killing. This goal belongs to everyone, across political, religious or ethnic affiliations. The development of truly civil societies, and nothing less than the future of humankind, depends on our joint success.

Join us today:
  • Sign the affirmation to work toward a world where human killing is stopped,
  • Take our survey on how we can work together to end killing now,
  • Download a free book to gain additional insights into creating killing-free societies, or
  • Email us your ideas.

    • A Nonkilling Paradigm

    Assuming a nonkilling society is possible implies the refutation of violence-accepting science from politics to biology. Paradigm shifts, as Thomas Kuhn (1962) explained, are not simply the result of empirical or conceptual debates, but are greatly conditioned by social and psychological factors. As a new paradigm, nonkilling has its own basic principles, language, scientific values and methodological criteria. Violence-accepting science –especially Weberian political science– has largely ignored progress made by nonviolent science, impeded by assumptions hindering the development and acceptance of new ideas.

    The nonkilling paradigm implies a four-part logic of analysis, focusing on the causes of killing; causes of nonkilling; causes of killing-nonkilling change; and the characteristics of killing-free societies. Unlike political science that is unreceptive to hypothetical theoretical imagination, knowledge derived from nonkilling analysis must be explored to create practical transforming alternatives. Paige identifies five zones in which these alternatives must be developed: the killing zone (place of bloodshed); socialization zone (where people learn to kill); cultural conditioning zone (where acceptance of killing as unavoidable and legitimate is predisposed); structural reinforcement zone (providing socioeconomic relations, institutions and material means predisposing and supporting killing); and the neuro-biochemical capability zone (comprising physical and neurological factors that contribute to both killing and nonkilling behaviors).

    Thus, a normative and empirical shift from the killing imperative to the imperative not to kill must occur through a cumulative process of interacting ethical and empirical discoveries. A normative ethical progression would move from ‘killing is imperative’, to ‘killing is questionable’, to ‘killing is unacceptable’, to ‘nonkilling is imperative’. In parallel, an empirical progression shifts from ‘nonkilling is impossible’, to ‘nonkilling is problematic’, to ‘nonkilling is explorable’, to ‘nonkilling is possible’.

    See Nonkilling Global Political Science (2002; 2009).