If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training

"If it's natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how?" These piercing words, spoken by the renowned Joan Baez, ask a profound question that challenges the instincts and nature of humanity. Baez, a voice of peace and human rights, recognized a truth that many choose to overlook: the act of killing is not something that comes naturally to humans, but is instead a learned behavior, shaped by societal forces, ideology, and the machinery of war. The very fact that men are put through rigorous training to take another life speaks to the unnatural nature of this act. If it were truly natural, if it were ingrained in the deepest fibers of our being, there would be no need for the conditioning that war and violence require.

In the ancient world, the question of violence was often explored through the stories of gods and heroes. Consider the Greek myth of Achilles—a great warrior who was revered for his strength and prowess in battle. Yet, despite his honor and glory, Achilles was not born with the instinct to kill; rather, he was trained in the art of war. His mother, Thetis, dipped him in the River Styx to make him invulnerable, but his ability to take lives was something learned on the battlefields of the Trojan War. The brutal reality of war is that it demands more than physical strength—it demands that one become accustomed to violence and death. Achilles' tragedy is that, despite his incredible power, the act of killing became a curse, something that stripped away his humanity rather than elevating it. Through his story, the Greeks warned that violence is not innate, but rather a force that must be taught, cultivated, and perfected—and in the process, it destroys the soul of the one who wields it.

This idea is reinforced by the modern world, particularly in the context of military training. Soldiers, from the ancient Romans to the present-day American soldiers, undergo rigorous preparation to condition their minds and bodies to kill without hesitation. The basic training camp is a crucible where young recruits are molded into warriors, taught not only the skills of combat, but also to suppress the emotions and morality that would normally hinder the act of taking a life. In World War I, for example, soldiers were subjected to grueling training regimens to prepare them for the violence of trench warfare, where fear, cowardice, and remorse had to be overcome for the soldier to perform his duty. The natural instincts to preserve life were replaced by a systematic program of obedience, dehumanization, and fear—a process that turned human beings into instruments of death.

If killing were truly natural, we would not need to train for it. Consider the way animals behave in nature—predators hunt for food, but even in their hunting, they do not kill out of hatred or revenge. There is a natural order to life and death, a cycle that is driven by necessity and survival. Humans, however, have moved beyond that natural order, creating systems of conflict that are driven by greed, power, and ideology. The fact that men must be trained to kill speaks to the unnaturalness of war, the fact that it is a social construct that demands human sacrifice, often for causes that have little to do with the true needs of humanity. The violence of war is not an extension of our natural instincts, but a perversion of them.

This insight into the unnaturalness of killing is essential to understanding the moral and psychological toll that war takes on the individual. The question Baez poses is not just rhetorical—it is a call to examine the human cost of the training required to take a life. In the Vietnam War, soldiers returned home with deep psychological scars, struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder and the moral burden of the deaths they had caused. The toll of war is not just physical; it is emotional and spiritual. The violence that men are trained to carry out in war leaves them scarred, for the act of killing is not something that can be easily reconciled with the natural compassion that is ingrained in human beings. The soul is wounded by what it is made to do—by what it is taught to do.

Baez’s words serve as a moral challenge to the nature of war itself. If killing requires training, then we must ask: what is it that war demands of us? It asks for the sacrifice of our most basic and natural instincts, those of compassion, empathy, and the sanctity of life. It asks us to replace the instinct for preservation with the compulsion for destruction. The price of war is not only in the lives lost, but in the degradation of the human spirit. The call to arms is a call to turn away from the best parts of ourselves, to embrace the worst. To understand this is to realize the true cost of war—and to seek alternatives, whether through diplomacy, understanding, or peace-building efforts.

The lesson that Baez offers is one that calls us to be mindful of the reality of violence and the moral responsibility we must take in our actions. Killing is not natural; it is something we are taught, something we must unlearn if we are to preserve our humanity. In our own lives, this may not mean literal war, but it calls us to examine the violence we accept in society—whether in our words, our actions, or the systems we support. We must reject the glorification of destruction and instead seek paths that preserve the dignity of all life. Let us walk the path of compassion and peace, knowing that true strength lies in our ability to resist the call to kill, whether in war or in the lesser conflicts we face in our daily lives. By doing so, we honor the natural goodness within us all.