Y Safle

At first sight this may seem like a no-brainer: that killing for vengeance is nowhere near as immoral as killing for some other reason.

However, after a particularly nasty murder in the UK, I noticed one person, Blewyn, wrote to say that to kill the murderer would make us as bad as the original murderer.

Now I take it that Blewyn is alluding to some deeper understanding of human motive and the human condition, which we really ought to try and understand before firing off the first ad hominem that comes to mind.

Why should we consider the issue? Well it is clear to me that Blewyn is an intelligent person, who thinks differently from others on this issue. By granting that he is clearly intelligent, we must suppose there is intelligent reason for his comparison above, and until we understand that reasoning, we cannot hope to accept or refute it.

That alone is an important principle of critical thinking that would do so much to promote understanding in our society.

Now for this discussion, I intend to use a hypothetical example so as not to distress anyone familiar with real cases who may happen to find this message.

So let us suppose that someone, Cornelius, murders another person – Aurelia. Let us suppose that Aurelia is an accomplished archer, and that Cornelius hates archers.

Now to get inside the head of Cornelius is difficult, and not wholly desireable, but let us suppose that his hatred for archers has consumed him to some extent. It stems perhaps from a childhood event where his father stood him by a tree and shot an apple from above his head; but over the years his nightmares of that event turned to hatred, and his hatred was repressed until eventually he came to the point where he could not look at an archer without feeling a mix of hatred and a longing for his father (who left him alone shortly after the apple event).

Thus whenever Cornelius sees Aurelia he is consumed by normally repressed emotions, and on one occasion, given the opportunity, he lapses into a kind of insanity and seeks to gratify his repressed emotions in the murder of Aurelia.

Now anyone who knows all this about Cornelius will perhaps see that there is a curious tension here between his neurosis, in which he is a victim of his own life circumstances, the product of his up bringing, and between his own personal responsibility and choice, which he exercised many times – both in failing to address his base instincts, and also when he deliberately chose to gratify his deepest repressed desires.

Note this carefully: we do not hold Cornelius to be free from personal responsibility simply because of his upbringing and neurosis. He is very much at fault in the matter of Aurelia’s death.

But now, what is our response to Cornelius? Most people who knew and loved Aurelia, and many more besides will instinctively wish for the death of Cornelius. Deep down we all have a desire for retribution when wrong is done against us, or those we love. Such emotions are not a neurosis, but they are an emotional, not a rational response.

If we give in to those emotions and deliberately allow the torture or killing of Cornelius, then we have made exactly the same choice that Cornelius made. We have chosen to kill (or torture) simply to sate our base instincts.

We should not hold Cornelius responsible fo his neurosis – that is beyond his control, but we rightly hold him responsible for his choices, and thus his actions. But if we make the same choices as he did, then we really are no better than he is. If we were in his shoes, we must conclude we would have done what he did.

Thus when we punish Cornelius, we must hold to some higher ideal for the punishment than simply that it sates our inate desire for vengeance. Punishment may hold an element of retribution, but a restrained retribution that allows for some measure of healing.

Punishment should be a deterrant, but also with the hope that the offender may be rehabilitated too.

This is what I understand Blewyn to be saying when he says that killing the offender makes us as bad as he, and this is why we need a rather more rational debate on the whole concept of punishment than can be found following straight after various deradful tragedies.

Note that killing Cornelius will not bring Aurelia back, nor heal the hurt that her beloved Marcus feels deep inside.

Someone might say:

Actually it solves the danger of the perpetrator doing it again, and it solves the financial burden of keeping them in jail. And it sends the message that if you cross the line, you go down, permanently.

The message seems to be lost, if the U.S. is anything to go by. The issue of cost should not be a factor – what price our humanity? As for the danger of the perpetrator doing it again? Life sentences can achieve this.