I Made a Website About Not Killing People

I want to tell you about a side project I've been working on, because I think it's important, and also because it's quite funny.

It started, as most of my ideas do, with the news. I have a complicated relationship with the news. I wrote a while back about taking a break from it, and honestly that break didn't last. The relentless cycle of war, destruction, and people doing terrible things to each other gets to me. I find it genuinely upsetting. And for years I've had this nagging feeling that I should be doing something about it, without quite knowing what.

Then one day I had an idea. A stupid idea. A stupid idea that I couldn't stop thinking about.

The idea

What if we just... didn't?

Not forever. Not as some grand utopian project. Just for one day. One Monday. What if the whole of humanity agreed, collectively, not to intentionally kill one another for a single 24-hour period?

I know. But hear me out.

In approximately 300,000 years of human history, there has probably never been a single murder-free day. Not one. Every day, without exception, someone somewhere has been deliberately killed by someone else. That unbroken streak has been running since before we were even fully human.

That felt worth pointing out.

The campaign is called No Killing Day, and the date is Monday 3rd March 2031. We've given five years notice, which I think is reasonable. The website is at nokillingday.com.

Why Monday?

Nobody wants to do anything big on a Monday anyway.

Is this serious?

Completely. Well. Mostly. The killing part is serious. The rest I'm flexible on.

The tone of the campaign is deliberately deadpan. I'm not standing on a soapbox demanding world peace. I'm not naive enough to think that governments are going to stand down their militaries because some bloke in Valencia made a website. What I am doing is holding up a mirror and pointing at the sheer, staggering, unbroken continuity of human violence, and suggesting, very politely, that perhaps we might like to try something different for a day.

The FAQ on the site asks questions like: "What if I've already made plans?" (We recommend rescheduling. Most calendars have a drag-and-drop feature.) And: "What if it's for a really good reason?" (Everyone thinks their reason is good. That's sort of the whole problem.)

Yes, there are lots of complicated extenuating circumstances and thorny moral issues, but everyone understands the basic sentiment. It's not about finding loopholes, it's about agreeing with the principle.

What I actually want

I'm under no illusions about the measurable impact of a campaign like this. The US government is (probably) not going to stand down its military on a Monday because I asked nicely. But I think there's real value in a campaign that simply names the thing — that points at humanity's unbroken streak of violence and says, out loud, look at this. Look at what we just do. Every single day. Without even really thinking about it.

At the very least, I want it to make people laugh, and then make them think. In that order.

If you want to help, here's what I need:

1. Sign the pledge at nokillingday.com
2. Tell one person. That's genuinely it. Tell one person who you think will find it funny.

That's all. You've now done more for world peace than most governments will all year.

We'll see you on the other side. Alive, ideally. All of us.