Death Is No Consequence

In the United States we still kill people as a "punishment". But death, when properly understood (rationally and not emotionally), is not even a consequence, much less a punishment.

Everyone dies sooner or later. And, whether you are alive for ten years, or a hundred years, it makes no difference whatsoever once you are dead. Dead is Dead, and it is only your irrational fear of death that makes it seem like a suiting punishment for really "bad" people, like me.

Of course, I don't think I'm a "bad" person. In fact, I know I'm not a "bad" person. But, the fact that society has labelled me, and people like me, "bad", sheds an interesting and telling light into the mind and psyche of the society we live in and for the vast majority of the people who make up that society.

At its core, the death penalty isn't really about "punishment" at all, and it only pretends to be about justice". But it is easy to see past these "masks of sanity" by simply considering the basic beliefs that are necessary in order to kill anyone. And the most basic of all beliefs necessary in order to take, or advocate taking, another person's life is the belief that your own life is for some reason more valuable than theirs. There is no way around this basic belief if you think you have the "right" to kill, for any reason.

And the reason itself is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if your reason is echoed by a consensus of a hundred million voice in your nation, or just one insane voice in your head. The reason we kill is no more than an excuse for making ourselves feel more important than the person we are killing.

That's why killing in the name of "Justice" is no better than killing in the name of "Revenge", or "Love", or "Lust". These are all false reasons (not really reasons at all, but merely excuses) and hence, false "gods" whose names we invoke in order to justify our feelings and our desires. Humans have been thus sacrificing other humans throughout history for exactly these same "reasons". We recognize the insanity of it through our history, and yet fail to see that we haven't changed one bit. Only the excuses (our "gods") have changed, but the killing continues. And while death is no consequence for the dead, killing has the worst consequences of all for the living, regardless of what gods names we invoke, or excuses we invent. You'd think that if we learned just one thing from the course of human history it would be this one blaring truth.

[J.D. November 28, 2016]