If it feels good, kill him
By Capt. Fogg
The concept of punishment is inseparable in people's minds from the concept of justice. I have a hard time understanding either one. In the youth of our species, the notion prevailed that some sort of balance existed in the universe and that balance had to be maintained scrupulously lest the sun not rise and the crops fail. A more modern knowledge of the universe makes it a bit hard to believe in such things, yet we do. We do at least in as far as we talk about debts to society being paid in kind or in body part. Of course with regard to crimes of theft or property, the notion that justice prevails in the return of value to a rightful owner seems obvious, but in other cases where there is no value to be returned, such as in the case of rape or murder, the accounting model for justice runs into trouble. Does taking away a life provide a new one for the victim or the victim's heirs? Does inflicting pain and suffering or death upon the perpetrator satisfy any debt or does it satisfy the urge to kill we have inherited from our hirsute ancestors?
Being a person for whom the abuse of women and children is sufficiently loathsome that I would readily shoot someone to stop certain crimes, I still maintain that taking an eye for an eye repays no one but fictitious gods, and the universe continues to expand at the same rate and our little world goes on in the same trajectory. Yes, I would love to inflict a great deal of suffering on people who rape children. Given the opportunity I probably would, but I do not try to fool myself that I'm talking about justice. I want revenge because revenge feels good and if feels good because like anyone who reads this, I am an animal and the heir to a host of animal instincts and emotions. Instinct is expressed as the urge to do what feels good. Somehow I believe that justice needs more justification than that.
Short of denouncing judicial killings, the Court has ruled that "evolving standards" have made it less acceptable to kill someone for a lesser crime than killing someone else. While I agree, I would apply that same standard to the unnecessary ending of human life entirely. That strapping people to a cross and pumping their veins full of drain cleaner is tolerated in a nation fulsomely bellicose about its Christianity stretches the bounds of the term hypocrisy.
That's my opinion anyway, although I could be wrong. But I don't think so.
(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)
The concept of punishment is inseparable in people's minds from the concept of justice. I have a hard time understanding either one. In the youth of our species, the notion prevailed that some sort of balance existed in the universe and that balance had to be maintained scrupulously lest the sun not rise and the crops fail. A more modern knowledge of the universe makes it a bit hard to believe in such things, yet we do. We do at least in as far as we talk about debts to society being paid in kind or in body part. Of course with regard to crimes of theft or property, the notion that justice prevails in the return of value to a rightful owner seems obvious, but in other cases where there is no value to be returned, such as in the case of rape or murder, the accounting model for justice runs into trouble. Does taking away a life provide a new one for the victim or the victim's heirs? Does inflicting pain and suffering or death upon the perpetrator satisfy any debt or does it satisfy the urge to kill we have inherited from our hirsute ancestors?
Being a person for whom the abuse of women and children is sufficiently loathsome that I would readily shoot someone to stop certain crimes, I still maintain that taking an eye for an eye repays no one but fictitious gods, and the universe continues to expand at the same rate and our little world goes on in the same trajectory. Yes, I would love to inflict a great deal of suffering on people who rape children. Given the opportunity I probably would, but I do not try to fool myself that I'm talking about justice. I want revenge because revenge feels good and if feels good because like anyone who reads this, I am an animal and the heir to a host of animal instincts and emotions. Instinct is expressed as the urge to do what feels good. Somehow I believe that justice needs more justification than that.
Short of denouncing judicial killings, the Court has ruled that "evolving standards" have made it less acceptable to kill someone for a lesser crime than killing someone else. While I agree, I would apply that same standard to the unnecessary ending of human life entirely. That strapping people to a cross and pumping their veins full of drain cleaner is tolerated in a nation fulsomely bellicose about its Christianity stretches the bounds of the term hypocrisy.
That's my opinion anyway, although I could be wrong. But I don't think so.
(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)
Labels: death penalty, justice, U.S. Supreme Court
posted by Capt. Fogg at
11:52 AM
2 Comments:
I agree too.
If I remember my Foucault's Discipline and Punish correctly, in the ancien regime, executions were justified by the following reasoning: "the people"/the nation are the King's "body"-they are part of the King and in effect belong to him. Therefore, killing another human being is like killing the King himself, and is therefore punishable by death. And these executions were made public spectacle for deterrence's sake and for social cohesion.
Clearly, this model doesn't apply in a democracy. No one is properly property of anyone (well, anymore). The very fact that We, the People in a democracy as a social body together to me means that it is unjustifiable and ethically irrational to kill any part of our own body.
By
lindabeth, at 4:16 PM
Although that really wasn't the subject of the post, I do agree.
I was trying more to point out our blind adherence to a badly chosen method of judicial murder as an heir to other methods of killing people in cold blood. Of course it's only one aspect of the emotionally based slap in the face to the principles everyone coos about on Sunday morning as though they didn't have blood on their hands.
It's a bit similar to the way some people equate support of soldiers with support of the badly chosen wars they are ordered to fight and die and kill in.
The death penalty is about collective anger, not about justice and if anger is the basis of our laws, we have to stop the crap about this being a Christian country. In fact we have to stop calling it a civilization because it's just another case of "if it feels good, do it."
By
Capt. Fogg, at 10:38 AM
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