(no subject)

[sophiaserpentia]

In regards to statements several of you have made regarding the death penalty, whether or not the inflicting of pain during execution is cruel, and so on, I came to a few conclusions today.

I have never seen anyone around me brutalized in a capital offense. It may change my views. But I can still understand to an extent the anger that sinpar expressed in her response to my post yesterday about the death penalty. That kind of revulsion and fury is the natural and appropriate emotional response to brutality.

I also have in mind alobar's comments to the effect that society is best served by simply and quickly executing its psychopaths to remove the burden they impose on all of us. I agree that society does not deserve to be burdened with the care and uptake of unredeemable, unrepentant violent psychopaths. There is no reasoning with or rehabilitating such people because they lack certain crucial circuits in the brain that make it possible for them to feel remorse or understand right vs. wrong.

However, even in spite of all of the above, I am now resolved firmly in opposition to the death penalty.

Why? It occurred to me today that the fact that someone may have lost the right to live does not logically or necessarily imply in itself that we as a society should, or deserve to, take his or her life.

It is written that he who lives by the sword dies by the sword. This simple maxim reflects the way things are. But this fails to take into account the notion that we may be better off, collectively speaking, by seeking to transcend some aspects of the cosmic order which we inherit.

That last statement represents a shift in my way of thinking, the implications of which will ripple out over the next few months.

Human nature is a product of evolution. Evolution is not something which, to date, we have had any choice in. But now as sentient beings we have the power to affect the course of our evolution. I don't just mean this in terms of genetics or neurology or endocrinology, although those are aspects of the changes to come.

This is an important opportunity which humanity must not squander.

In my opinion, the best, and perhaps the only valid, guiding principle for directing the ways in which we evolve consiously, is compassion. By that I don't mean and have never meant that we should feel "warm fuzzies" for everyone around us. By that I mean an abiding respect for and awareness of the depth of sacredness that exists within every human individual.

It is not for the sake, so much, of the condemned that I have chosen to oppose the death penalty. It is for the sake of the rest of us. An ancient sage would say we increase our karma collectively by executing a criminal. In light of what I have written above, I would concur, though I don't see karma per se as a supernatural matter. In taking the life of a criminal, we affirm the violence by which he lived his life in a powerful way. It signals a confirmation of the brutal mechanisms by which we evolved. It gives the wheel of violence another turn instead of ending the cycle.

Comments

[adroanzi.livejournal.com]

You said what was in my mind when I took that survey. But of course you said it much better ^_~