Dust to Dust

The conversation about the impact and implications of Osama bin Laden's death have brought to relief, for me, a larger philosophical question: Is murder the appropriate response to murder?

"Appropriate" seems Victorian-sounding. What I mean to say is, what value does murdering a killer have? Can vengeance and justice coexist?

No.

First, it's important to distinguish between the two. Justice is the act of righting a wrong. Vengeance is the act of retaliating against a wrong.

Second, it's just as important to establish a clear principle in regards to the crime of murder as viewed by the legal system: there is no such thing as a "just" response to the taking of a human life. It is a wrong that can never be righted. Therefore, no matter what is done in response by the artifices erected by societies, the loss will remain, forever unfulfilled.

In many cases, this isn't even a question of muddy philosophical distinctions or of whether a brutal, insane murderer should be allowed to live, let alone sheltered, protected, and fed by those who he would rather destroy. An unknown number of innocent men and women have been murdered by death penalty due to our short-sighted and neolithic thirst for violent reprisal. They are innocent people killed by the blood lust of a race of beings still primitive enough to mistake selfishness for righteousness.

And we would let it happen everyday if possible. As long as we continue down this path, we will never see justice. This is because murder by retaliation, whether in the form of individual action or state-sponsored death penalties, does not discourage or disincentivize murder; it legitimizes it. It creates an obvious and glaring exception to a rule that most if not all human societies enforce, that the taking of a life of a fellow human being is an unforgivable and intolerable act. When we justify one act of murder on the basis of emotional fulfillment, we give license to the inevitable infallibility of our fellow beings to imposition this exception to their own desire to create emotional fulfillment.

That's not to say by eliminating the death penalty, murder will end. That's to say a society cannot even think about significantly tackling the issue of murder until it recognizes the incompatibility of vengeance and justice.

If a society wants justice, it seeks to reduce vengeance, not engage in it.