Yes. No. Yes. No. Maybe. Sometimes. Crap.
Dec. 13th, 2005 10:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jchrisobrienCall it the astrological influence of being a Libra cusp (concerned with balance), call it weighing both sides of the issues, or call it plain on wishy washy, but I have a profoundly hard time coming down on one side of the fence or the other for a lot of the big moral issues out there. The Tookie Williams execution is the latest example of this. If you don't know, just plug tookie williams in google and read about him yourself, you can make up your own mind as to whether he is repentant or not.
I was raised Roman Catholic, so I was taught that killing was wrong, be it during war, murder, execution, or abortion. Later I learned about exemptions during wartime, and taking a life while defending your self, and a thousand other shades of grey. I've seen the hypocrisy of people who are pro-choice but anti-death penalty, and those who say life is sacred unless you are a murderer. I hear the arguments on either side, and I sway to and for depending on the eloquence of the speaker or the precision of their logic.
It's more than frustrating, it's weak. Your beliefs define your character, and if you're beliefs change with the wind, what does that say about you? I believe that people are organic: they grow and change over time, and once your learn something that doesn't mean you are committed to that belief for the rest of your life. Change should occur after you wrestle with an issue, hold up your beliefs to a spotlight, kick the tires and see how they hold.
Buy the car because you like it, not because the salesman made you like it.
I am a vortex of thoughts and opinions. Murder is the worst thing you can do to someone. Forgivness is a sign of civilization. People have to take responsibility for their actions, and suffer the consequences if that applies. People can change. Some people never change. You can come from a horrible background and neighborhood and better yourself. You can come from a cultured, civilized background and be an amoral prick who justifies their vile behavior through philosophy or a thousand shades of grey. People will say anything to save their life. You can't force someone to change.
If it's inhumane to kill someone who has killed another, what do you do to them? How should they pay for their crime? How many years of your life should you sacrifice to pay for the years you took from another? Can you ever really pay for that crime, and if you can't, why bother incarcerating them in the first place? I am told there are plenty of studies that say that the death penalty is not a deterrent. By that token, people are going to kill or rape or steal regardless of what you do. What is our response to that?
These kind of question quickly spiral out of the micro view and into the macro. They become questions of culture, of society. People wouldn't steal if they weren't poor. Any society that grows has rules, and needs ways of punishing people who break those rules. All kinds of words on all sides of the argument again. Drowning in a sea of emotion and logic.
If I really buckle down and think about it, I can come up with answers that satify me. It's good when things happen that make you question your beliefs, and even better if you can be consistant about them in the end.
I was raised Roman Catholic, so I was taught that killing was wrong, be it during war, murder, execution, or abortion. Later I learned about exemptions during wartime, and taking a life while defending your self, and a thousand other shades of grey. I've seen the hypocrisy of people who are pro-choice but anti-death penalty, and those who say life is sacred unless you are a murderer. I hear the arguments on either side, and I sway to and for depending on the eloquence of the speaker or the precision of their logic.
It's more than frustrating, it's weak. Your beliefs define your character, and if you're beliefs change with the wind, what does that say about you? I believe that people are organic: they grow and change over time, and once your learn something that doesn't mean you are committed to that belief for the rest of your life. Change should occur after you wrestle with an issue, hold up your beliefs to a spotlight, kick the tires and see how they hold.
Buy the car because you like it, not because the salesman made you like it.
I am a vortex of thoughts and opinions. Murder is the worst thing you can do to someone. Forgivness is a sign of civilization. People have to take responsibility for their actions, and suffer the consequences if that applies. People can change. Some people never change. You can come from a horrible background and neighborhood and better yourself. You can come from a cultured, civilized background and be an amoral prick who justifies their vile behavior through philosophy or a thousand shades of grey. People will say anything to save their life. You can't force someone to change.
If it's inhumane to kill someone who has killed another, what do you do to them? How should they pay for their crime? How many years of your life should you sacrifice to pay for the years you took from another? Can you ever really pay for that crime, and if you can't, why bother incarcerating them in the first place? I am told there are plenty of studies that say that the death penalty is not a deterrent. By that token, people are going to kill or rape or steal regardless of what you do. What is our response to that?
These kind of question quickly spiral out of the micro view and into the macro. They become questions of culture, of society. People wouldn't steal if they weren't poor. Any society that grows has rules, and needs ways of punishing people who break those rules. All kinds of words on all sides of the argument again. Drowning in a sea of emotion and logic.
If I really buckle down and think about it, I can come up with answers that satify me. It's good when things happen that make you question your beliefs, and even better if you can be consistant about them in the end.
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Re: Without understanding, there can be no communication
Date: 2005-12-13 07:30 pm (UTC)put that person in jail, make sure they never get out again. what is lost from society when a murderer is executed is the possibility that an innocent person will also be executed. i'm more than happy to leave some peoples' revenge fantasies unfulfilled to guarantee that the legal system doesn't fuck up and kill someone falsely convicted. as for remorse, to a certain extent it doesn't matter. i don't believe in life sentences for everyone who kills another person for any reason, i would base release on whether or not the felon will be likely to commit another crime. if so, i wouldn't let them out. that would be dumb.
The system may be corrupt, and it should be continually changed and upgrade and turned into something better. In the meantime, people are being killed every day.
yes, and the death penalty hasn't been shown to be a good way to prevent murders from happening. murder rates are significantly lower in europe, eh? why? they have nothing to fear. perhaps they're all wusses over there?
(i know that murder rates can be correlated to a wide range of social factors along with the distribution of wealth and opportunities - if these are fixed then i imagine murder rates will go down here too. fyi see bowling for columbine if you haven't already. moore's attitude bugs me at times, but a lot of good points are raised and demonstrated.)
Understanding it should be easy, ACCEPTING it is another matter. A killer has proven that they are a danger to other people, and the surest way to put an end to that danger is to kill them so they don't kill anyone else. That is a theory. Some people accept that, some people reject that.
yes, but conversely, the surest way of having a wrongfully convicted person die is to keep the death penalty. based on what recently happened in illinois, i don't believe this is an uncommon thing.
Should our system be overhauled? Yes. This gets into the bigger spiral again, because we have to overhaul our justice system, and our penitentiary system. Rehabilitation over incarceration. But you can't rehabilitate people that don't want it. Some criminals say they are victims of society, and it's not them who have to change, it's society. Now you're talking about a social change, removing poverty in the cities, removing the need for crime.
oops looks like you already talked about some of this! i should read the whole response before replying. :) i'm all for very careful rehabilitation. if it sticks, great, after they've served the appropriate amount of time to 'pay' for the crime, let them out. if they want nothing to do with getting better, they're never getting out. this is where things start to get sticky for me, since it is presumably possible to game a system like this. a tremendous amount of checks and balances would have to go into the release process to make sure that bad seeds are not escaping.
The desire for justice, or vengence disguised as justice, has been around forever. I don't know if we will ever outgrow it. That would involve all societies and cultures being on the same page, and I don't see that happening ever.
well i'm sure the -impulse- to have a death penalty when a loved one is killed is inately in a large percentage of the population. however, in a large number of countries, they have refused to listen to this urge and don't allow their government to kill people for crimes they are convicted of. it's interesting to see how religeous attitudes seem to divide those in favor vs those against. maybe those atheists aren't so mean after all. ;)
Re: Without understanding, there can be no communication
Date: 2005-12-13 08:15 pm (UTC)2. Nothing has shown to be a good to be a good way of preventing murders from happening (a lot of this could be societally based, though). After seeing Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and a few football matches, I know that Europeans aren't wusses :) I don't want to delve too deeply into gun control (see! the spiral continues!) but if there were more jobs and opportunities, then murder rates might go down. Next question becomes: how do we create these opportunities? Maybe we need a return to the New Deal and it's job programs.
3. Questions can be raised on how humanely we should be treating prisoners, especially lifers. Once someone is locked away for life, do they have any reason to change? Society has to grapple with how comfortable they are providing food and shelter to a killer for the rest of their life, over providing food and shelter or opportunities to the homeless (help! I can't stop the spiral!)
4. People can and will game the system. I could see doing just jail time for all offenses, but if you kill again after serving your time, you're locked down for life or killed, no parole, no appeal. Society has taken a chance on you after you killed, and now a second person is dead. That's the nightmare that people are faced with, because if you let a killer out and they kill again, you bear responsibility for the action. (or maybe you don't that's another topic for debate). No system can be perfect.
5. Where are you getting the information about religiuos attitudes dividing people?