Thursday, April 1, 2010

On Death and its Delivery

I'd like to preface this entire post with some plain honesty.  I have been known to say things of the nature of "I hope you die." or "I'm going to stab you until its not funny anymore." Anyone who's known me for even a short period of time can tell you these statements are not meant in any form of sincerity.  I'm not a violent person, I don't like to fight, the thought of hurting other people doesn't appeal to me in any way.

Recent discussions have brought something to my attention that I was not really conscious of before, a lot of people have become desensitized to the concept of killing.  Listening to someone staunchly criticize my lack of faithfulness in their God in one breathe, only to talk about expediting the death penalty in the next blows my mind.  How exactly do you reconcile this?  At what point do your morals get to be inconvenient?  For a lot of people it seems to come down to money, image, or fear.  Sometimes a combination of these things.

In brief, I am not religious, but I have a deeply rooted sense of morality.  One of the things I hold firmly is that its never okay to kill someone.  In self defense, its acceptable if you are out of options; but if I ever come to that point I expect I'll be needing therapy for it.  So when it comes to something like the Death Penalty, I can't support it. I can't rationalize to the point where I'm okay with killing someone so long as somebody else flips the switch.  I understand that it costs a great deal to put these people in prison for a life sentence, that doesn't suddenly make me think killing someone is right.

The more I talk to other people, the more I discover that I'm sort of an odd case.  At what point did people get so comfortable with the idea of killing another person?  I suspect that if they knew they would have to perform the execution themselves, a lot of people would change their tune.  Its so easy to detach when you're not looking in the persons eyes.  Its easy to just look at numbers and charts and say that its the right course of action.  I often hear that as I get older I'll understand, I really hope not.