I myself am totally, 100% against death-penalty. I've always been and I think I'll always be. Nevertheless, I really to try to understand other people's point of view on the subject. Humans are imperfect and since I'm human, I could always be wrong...
Funnily enough, this is one of the best reasons against death-penalty. We are all humans. None of us is almighty. Who are we to decide over the life and death of another human being?
I think, it is really sad that Stanley Williams died today, like I always think it is sad whenever someone dies. I don't know if he really commited those murders. He very possibly has. And still I am sad that someone who very likely killed four innocent people died? Yes, I am and let me explain why before you start squashing me.
I think, a question, we all have to ask ourselves, is: Why do some people become murderers? Why do people commit crimes in general? Is it something that they are born with, like a special gene or something? Could it be because of their education? Could it be because of bad influence from other people? Could it be some mental illness? Could it be because of the circumstances under which those people grew up?
I think it's a good mixture of all of the above. I don't think people are born to be murderers. I don't think people are born to be anything. Let's say humans are somewhat intelligent hard-drives. Basically, when we are born, we are brand new and empty, ready to be saving data. And that's exactly what we do throughout our whole life: we collect data. Some data is given to us by our parents or friends. We do something and receive a consequence for our action. This is saved as well (hopefully). It is what we call learning. When it comes to making decisions, we access our hard-drive and choose, based on what we have stored. If we burnt our finger once by holding it into the flame of a burning candle, we'd surely not do that again, because we have learned that that causes pain, which is usually something people try to avoid. That's why mother's need to watch over their children. They are not born knowing that it hurts to put your little finger there. They either need to find out or be told that it hurts.
Why am I explaining all this? Basically, I want to explain that I believe that something like ultimate free will does not exist. I don't know if that is really true. It is just my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe in fade or anything like that. It's just that in my opinion that we as imperfect human beings are not able to see the world objectively. It all needs to be interpretated by our brain and that's our nice little hard-drive with all the information we stored on it and that's inevitably gonna have a strong influence on how we interpretate the world around us, ourselves and our actions. Some people might be clever enough and overcome certain data on their hard-drive, but we certainly can't expect that from everyone, because sometimes the brain just doesn't have enough capacity to do that, which is certainly not the owner's fault. No-one in a healthy state of mind would simply decide on his own 'I truely learned that killing is wrong, that it causes pain not only to the person being killed, but also to his relatives etc., but anyway, I'm just bored, I'll go shoot someone.'. A person, thinking something like that is either insane or has some other priorities (like to have fun is more important than other people's life). What I'm trying to say is, that imo, these different priorities surely come from different data on the hard-drive, which simply leads to different interpretations.
I know that this is a very strong opinion and I've already had various discussions about it that all lead to nothing as well.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that a murderer should be left running around on the streets, because he is not responsible for what has done. A murderer is either mentally ill or terribly misled by the data on his hard-drive. If he is mentally ill, there is something wrong with the hard-drive itself. Sometimes that can be fixed, sometimes it can't. If he is mislead, there is something wrong with the data on his hard-drive. Sometimes this can be changed by trying to delete the old data and replacing it with new, sometimes it can't be changed (maybe because there is simply too much wrong data, maybe because it keeps itself from being deleted etc.). In both cases, the mentally ill one and the mislead one, this person should be put into jail. Not because of punishing him, but because of protecting others. I really don't like to think of the government as a castigator. It should be a protector for the people and a teacher to the person who committed the crime (and if it is just 'if you do that again, you'll be punished.' If the person fears the punishment enough, he might not commit the crime again, though not necessarily because he then think the crime is wrong, but just because of the fear of being punished for it. That's certainly not the ideal way, but since the human hard-drive is quite complicated, maybe the only doable in most cases.) The problem is that you don't know whether the person who has commited a crime has actually learned something or is maybe just pretending. If someone was a thief, the risk of letting him proove that he learned something, is not as high as letting a muderer proove. In the case of the thief, it's "just" about money and stuff like that, in the case of the murderer it's actually a human life. I therefore think that some people, like murderers or children rapists shouldn't get a chance to proove that they have learned something and stay in prison forever, because the risk of letting them out in public again, without knowing for a 100% (and that's impossible) that they are not gonna do that again, is simply too high.
Of course, my whole believe of humans not really having free will implies that I may never be angry at anyone, no matter what they did to me. Basically that's true, but unfortunately that's impossible. I'm only human myself. I'm not able to really see things objectively, because I have data on my hard-drive as well, which is determining how I see, hear, fell etc. I totally understand that people want revenge. If someone killed my parents or my brother or a friend of mine, maybe I would want the killer to rot in hell forever, to suffer incredible pain and agony for all eternity. The government on the other hand should try to be as close to objective as possible. They should try to keep their emotions out of it as much as possible.
If you kill someone who has commited a murder, he has no chance at all to learn something from that. It also doesn't protect society from the killer better than a life-long imprisonment would. It's true that the society needs to pay for those people, but since the killer is at least to some point the result of the society itself, maybe the society should be punished for that by paying for him. That might teach them to try to prevent those things from happening in future. I know it's the old fear of the punishment method rather than replacing the wrong data, but like I said, it's complicated and maybe that's the only possible way.
After all, the government should try to give an example. If the government may kill a killer, why can't I? That's already part of the wrong data that is stored on people's hard-drives.
I am aware that all of the above, could be complete nonsense. I don't know. I'm only a human being. But unless the death-penalty is imposed by someone who is almighty and completely objective, like God for example, the data on my hard-drive does simply not allow me to agree to it and since I don't believe in the existance of God, it's gonna stay that way, unless my data is changed and that's very probably never gonna happen.
You may as well, tear me apart now, if your data doesn't allow you to just accept my opinion as being my opinion. You may as well feel the desperate need (again due to your data) to change my data and express this need by argueing how wrong I am, even though it's very unlikely to happen, as it is unlikey that my post has changed any of the pro-death-penalty-data, stored on various hard-drives of various members of this community.
Funnily enough, this is one of the best reasons against death-penalty. We are all humans. None of us is almighty. Who are we to decide over the life and death of another human being?
I think, it is really sad that Stanley Williams died today, like I always think it is sad whenever someone dies. I don't know if he really commited those murders. He very possibly has. And still I am sad that someone who very likely killed four innocent people died? Yes, I am and let me explain why before you start squashing me.
I think, a question, we all have to ask ourselves, is: Why do some people become murderers? Why do people commit crimes in general? Is it something that they are born with, like a special gene or something? Could it be because of their education? Could it be because of bad influence from other people? Could it be some mental illness? Could it be because of the circumstances under which those people grew up?
I think it's a good mixture of all of the above. I don't think people are born to be murderers. I don't think people are born to be anything. Let's say humans are somewhat intelligent hard-drives. Basically, when we are born, we are brand new and empty, ready to be saving data. And that's exactly what we do throughout our whole life: we collect data. Some data is given to us by our parents or friends. We do something and receive a consequence for our action. This is saved as well (hopefully). It is what we call learning. When it comes to making decisions, we access our hard-drive and choose, based on what we have stored. If we burnt our finger once by holding it into the flame of a burning candle, we'd surely not do that again, because we have learned that that causes pain, which is usually something people try to avoid. That's why mother's need to watch over their children. They are not born knowing that it hurts to put your little finger there. They either need to find out or be told that it hurts.
Why am I explaining all this? Basically, I want to explain that I believe that something like ultimate free will does not exist. I don't know if that is really true. It is just my opinion. Don't get me wrong, I don't believe in fade or anything like that. It's just that in my opinion that we as imperfect human beings are not able to see the world objectively. It all needs to be interpretated by our brain and that's our nice little hard-drive with all the information we stored on it and that's inevitably gonna have a strong influence on how we interpretate the world around us, ourselves and our actions. Some people might be clever enough and overcome certain data on their hard-drive, but we certainly can't expect that from everyone, because sometimes the brain just doesn't have enough capacity to do that, which is certainly not the owner's fault. No-one in a healthy state of mind would simply decide on his own 'I truely learned that killing is wrong, that it causes pain not only to the person being killed, but also to his relatives etc., but anyway, I'm just bored, I'll go shoot someone.'. A person, thinking something like that is either insane or has some other priorities (like to have fun is more important than other people's life). What I'm trying to say is, that imo, these different priorities surely come from different data on the hard-drive, which simply leads to different interpretations.
I know that this is a very strong opinion and I've already had various discussions about it that all lead to nothing as well.
Don't get me wrong here, I'm not saying that a murderer should be left running around on the streets, because he is not responsible for what has done. A murderer is either mentally ill or terribly misled by the data on his hard-drive. If he is mentally ill, there is something wrong with the hard-drive itself. Sometimes that can be fixed, sometimes it can't. If he is mislead, there is something wrong with the data on his hard-drive. Sometimes this can be changed by trying to delete the old data and replacing it with new, sometimes it can't be changed (maybe because there is simply too much wrong data, maybe because it keeps itself from being deleted etc.). In both cases, the mentally ill one and the mislead one, this person should be put into jail. Not because of punishing him, but because of protecting others. I really don't like to think of the government as a castigator. It should be a protector for the people and a teacher to the person who committed the crime (and if it is just 'if you do that again, you'll be punished.' If the person fears the punishment enough, he might not commit the crime again, though not necessarily because he then think the crime is wrong, but just because of the fear of being punished for it. That's certainly not the ideal way, but since the human hard-drive is quite complicated, maybe the only doable in most cases.) The problem is that you don't know whether the person who has commited a crime has actually learned something or is maybe just pretending. If someone was a thief, the risk of letting him proove that he learned something, is not as high as letting a muderer proove. In the case of the thief, it's "just" about money and stuff like that, in the case of the murderer it's actually a human life. I therefore think that some people, like murderers or children rapists shouldn't get a chance to proove that they have learned something and stay in prison forever, because the risk of letting them out in public again, without knowing for a 100% (and that's impossible) that they are not gonna do that again, is simply too high.
Of course, my whole believe of humans not really having free will implies that I may never be angry at anyone, no matter what they did to me. Basically that's true, but unfortunately that's impossible. I'm only human myself. I'm not able to really see things objectively, because I have data on my hard-drive as well, which is determining how I see, hear, fell etc. I totally understand that people want revenge. If someone killed my parents or my brother or a friend of mine, maybe I would want the killer to rot in hell forever, to suffer incredible pain and agony for all eternity. The government on the other hand should try to be as close to objective as possible. They should try to keep their emotions out of it as much as possible.
If you kill someone who has commited a murder, he has no chance at all to learn something from that. It also doesn't protect society from the killer better than a life-long imprisonment would. It's true that the society needs to pay for those people, but since the killer is at least to some point the result of the society itself, maybe the society should be punished for that by paying for him. That might teach them to try to prevent those things from happening in future. I know it's the old fear of the punishment method rather than replacing the wrong data, but like I said, it's complicated and maybe that's the only possible way.
After all, the government should try to give an example. If the government may kill a killer, why can't I? That's already part of the wrong data that is stored on people's hard-drives.
I am aware that all of the above, could be complete nonsense. I don't know. I'm only a human being. But unless the death-penalty is imposed by someone who is almighty and completely objective, like God for example, the data on my hard-drive does simply not allow me to agree to it and since I don't believe in the existance of God, it's gonna stay that way, unless my data is changed and that's very probably never gonna happen.
You may as well, tear me apart now, if your data doesn't allow you to just accept my opinion as being my opinion. You may as well feel the desperate need (again due to your data) to change my data and express this need by argueing how wrong I am, even though it's very unlikely to happen, as it is unlikey that my post has changed any of the pro-death-penalty-data, stored on various hard-drives of various members of this community.
. Sorry about that.
.