2002-02-05

an eye for an eye only leaves the whole world blind

My dad has a new client. his mother was a crack addict; he was a crack baby. he was physically and sexually abused before he turned eight. when he was about ten, his mother took him to the hospital for some reason, and the doctors found what was apparently markings from being beaten by an electrical cord. he was then sent to his first of thirty (yes, thirty!) foster homes that he would live in for ten years.

well, he killed a few people, and now the government wants to kill him.

this is crap. people say that the death penalty will deter crime, and perhaps it does a little, but how will institutional killings prevent children from being beaten by electrical cords and tossed around from foster home to foster home? how will it keep poor, uneducated people from raising children to be criminals, indirectly? people must realize that [a major part of] crime is a result of the corruption of society, not the other way around.

most people i have encountered throughout my life would reply: "well, this man deserves to die, he killed someone else." in my opinion this is a very primitive, barbaric and archaic argument. how can you deem an act as evil only by performing the very same act?

many people that have the opposite opinion are also very religious, who claim that to forgive is divine. so why don't they practice that? besides the death penalty, so much violence, war, is caused by people's desire for vengeance. vengeance. . .that is not a pretty word. retaliation. i hear that a lot on the news. bin laden. the taliban. terrorism. israel. palestine. all of those conflicts stem from vengeance. i hope that freud wasn't right, that agression is not a drive. i'd like to believe that people are good, and i mostly do. but that's not to say that we dont have a long way to go.

"Violence breeds violence...Pure goals can never justify impure or violent action" -- Mahatma Gandhi