[Lochnar]

I'm bored and can't sleep (again) so, how about a debate? The topic is "Murder (Prison or Death) and the role of Empathy in the process."

Here is my view. Of course this is colored by my culture so take it for what it is, a personal view.

If you kill someone without good reason (I do believe in "good reason" but define it at your own risk) then you are a murderer. As such you belong in a special class of sub-humans along with the likes of rapists, corrupt politicians, child pornographers, wealthy lawyers and L. Ron Hubbard, just to name a few. Such people, and I use the term loosely, should not be afforded the rights of "good citizens".

To me this makes sense because by engaging in the activities of these group members (murder, r a p e, abuse and so on) you reject the basic foundation of our society, law. Law, or rather the respect and/or fear of law, is the only thing that protects most of us from the rest of us. Without law there would be only Darwinism in it's purest form. So, in rejecting the foundation of society, law, one rejects society and so rejects their rights and the protection of society. Why do I say that? Well, because everything we tend to label as a "right" is in truth a "gift" given by our society and protected by our society.

We, in our natural state, have no "rights" outside of freewill. Does a tiger I meet in the jungle have any notion of my "right" to live? No. But it does, at some basic level, understand that I will fight or run. Those are my basic choices when I am alone in the jungle with a tiger. The choice is mine to make hence even in the most primal of instances I have freewill. This can not be taken, I always have a choice...even if I don't like the options I have them. For that reason freewill is a "true right" and, I think, the only "true right". So, back to rejecting law by committing a crime.

To recap - In rejecting the foundation of society, law, one rejects society and so rejects society's gifts and protection. While this sounds like the beginning of an argument for the death penalty, it is not. That comes later, after I talk about empathy.

Empathy (identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another) is a key factor in a society. It is as important as law, if not more important. Law without empathy leads to petty dictators. When a society's members have the correct level of empathy the need for law is diminished. People do things for the proper reason (because it is correct) rather then fear of the law. It is my opinion that our society (American) lacks the proper level of empathy as is evident by the way we treat one another, but that is different topic.

The arguments for or against the death penalty vs imprisonment most often evoke one or more of the following: deterrence, retribution, discrimination and innocence (or the question there of). I think that (on a case by case bases) each of these are needed to determine the penalty for murder (or even the decision of if a murder has occurred) but they must be harshly governed by empathy in addition to law. This would necessitate a long and drawn out process but, shouldn't it? A decision and penalty of such a magnitude (death penalty) must have exactly this kind of process and the members of the society must be unified in their dedication to see it through and provide the best quality of information on which to base the decision.

In using this process we would find that in some cases murders should die and in other cases they should be imprisoned. We would also find that as our prisons stand today (at least in America) they are the more cruel of the options. What we do in prisons is unconscionable. By that I mean the animalistic situations prisons put people in thereby forcing people that already may not be as "human" as they could be to become less "human" then they should be. As it stands now, I think that in more situations then not the more humane choice is the death penalty. Also I have no clue of how to fix it without a very long and drawn out process of re-education for ALL parties.

Just my two bits on the treatment of murders and a comment on our society. And now, I'm finally a bit sleepy...