Mortality Blog

This was actually going to be a big long thing, but myspace errored out and lost it. So here it is in brief - I’m pretty sure that it’s wrong to kill. I’m really sure in fact - it makes me sick to think of death, my own or anyone else’s. If there isn’t any heaven or hell to live out the rest of your eternal existence (since God isn’t availble to refute me on this one, I’m going to go ahead and assume I’m right) then this mortal lifetime is all we’ve got - which sucks, I know, but that’s the situation.

And if this life is all we’ve got, just about the worst thing that anyone person could do to another is to take that life away.

There are of course ramifications. Can anyone guess which hot political topics this impacts? Abortion, capital punishment, war, and doctor-assisted suicide. Since all of them involve killing someone, I’m now opposed to them. The only situation in which I would be willing to make an exception is killing in self defense - if it’s your life or theirs, you’ve got every right to pick your own. Survival is our most basic instinct - in fact, I might even argue it’s our highest purpose in - well, life. Reproduction is a close second, with the betterment of our species or something like that coming in third.

But yeah. I had always kind of wondered exactly how I felt about abortion. After thinking it through, I’ve got my answer. Yuck. Killing people is wrong. Killing baby people is really really wrong. And killing them before they even have a chance to become anything more then a helpless little bundle of cells - yeah, that’s pretty much the worst kind of cold-blooded killing. I know, there are so many arguments in favor of allowing abortion - but I can’t even imagine anything (besides that self-defense caveat) that would justify murder. Murder is what you do when you’re crazy.

Which brings us to doctor-assisted suicide. What is suicide? Killing yourself. So that’s obviously not okay. And if a doctor gives a patient who expresses a desire to end their life a lethal does of chemicals, then they’ve committed murder. It doesn’t matter if the other person wanted it, or even if they were asking for it - the simple fact is, up until that point, they were alive, and afterwards they were not alive. Totally absolutely wrong.

And ultimately, why would I think this way about killing? Because I’m completely terrified of my own mortality, and people are crazy - if they start to think that SOME killing is okay, it’s not that big of a leap to decide that MORE killing must be okay. Including killing me, or other people that I like. So let’s avoid that, okay?

Well, you know how I feel about capital punishment - I’m convinced that killing people is absolutely wrong, and should only be considered in the context of weighing one life against another.

Of course it sounds like a good idea - nobody likes those child-rapists, right? Of course they deserve to die! Rather then arguing that no one deserves death, I’m going to point something else out - not everyone defines ‘child’ and ‘rape’ the same way.

How young is a child? Below 18? Maybe 16? 14? 8? 4? Right off you’re going to have to pick an arbitrary number - what if you pick 15 as the magic number, and then some kid who’s 15-and-four-days gets raped? Is that somehow less worthy of death then the kid who’s 14-and-363-days?

And what’s rape? That should be obvious, but it isn’t - you know why ’statutory rape’ is considered rape? Not because there’s neccesarily any coercion involved - but because the ‘victim’ is unable to give legal consent to having sex. So does this mean that we can kill a 19-year-old who has safe. consentual sex with his 17-year-old boyfriend? At 17 he’s still a child, and that’s rape - punishable by death?

Extreme examples? Of course they are - but you know that they’re going to happen, and innocent kids are going to get killed. Our justice system is good, but it’s not perfect - and would you trust an imperfect system to sentance criminals to death? Because I sure wouldn’t. I would feel guilty as hell about it. I do actually feel pretty guilty that we still have the death penalty here in the US, and that people would actually try to expand the territory covered by that act of cold-blooded murder.

Mmmm. Well, that’s all the politics i’ve got energy for tonight.