Moral Relativism?

[Baruch]

Are you vegetarian? Do you eat meat? Do you kill and dress your own livestock? Don't most of us delegate that to someone else? If you are not suited psychologically to be a executioner, why deny that anyone else is? Aren't you projecting your own puritanism on others? I have only participated in one slaughter, of a rooster, with my father wielding the axe. I don't want to attend another, but I won't be a hypocrite eating my chicken noodle soup.

Or do you suppose government so unreliable, that giving it the right of execution to be too dangerous? Then why the police and military?

Shalom

[evangelicalhumanist]

All right, then, I'm a hypocrite. I eat meat. Only plants can manufacture the materials of life from minerals water sunlight etc. Every other living thing must consume living things. I didn't set it up.

As I indicated, my response is an emotional, not logical one. I think killing a person in cold blood is "a cruel and unusual punishment." This may have to do with my understanding of punishment, which I don't want to include revenge. Revenge is non-productive. So as I said, because I haven't thought this out thoroughly, my attitude to capital punishment is emotional.

[Kurt]

As usual, EH, you bring it down to the nitty gritty. I don't know if I could pull the switch, either, even given a perfect justice system. As it is, though, I don't think anyone should be pulling the switch on anybody else.
The fact that I eat meat, which must be killed, is a separate issue. I can't live without killing something to eat, whether it be animal or vegetable. I don't know, but I might, under the right circumstances, be willing to eat human flesh in order to survive, but that's pointless conjecture. The bottom line is that I know I must kill to survive.
Baruch has reason to wonder why one would not assign the power of execution to government when we assign it to police or military. It's a good question, easily answered. Execution is against the law for police; they may only use deadly force when deadly force is immediately threatened against them or someone else. Similarly, we in liberal democracies enforce strict rules of engagement on our military, all of which preclude execution that hasn't been sanctioned by a duly constituted military tribunal.
In other words, capital punishment (execution by the state) of non-combatant private citizens does and should have a different meaning for us than the meaning of civilian death by police officer or death in war.

[evangelicalhumanist]

I may have brought it down to the nitty gritty, but I don't think I answered well -- and it doesn't look like I did to Baruch's satisfaction. Thing is, I logically agreed with you that it is a "fitting" punishment, but I suppose that there are just places where I must toss logic aside and "go with what I feel. Is that a bad thing? Well, why should it be. I'm a human. And frankly I ask the same from others when their logic -- however it might be informed -- leads them to deny some rights, or insist on behaviours they deem non-negotiable. We humans do, I think, need to do at least a little thinking with our hearts.

(Now there's a crack wide enough to drive the Oasis of the Seas through. Go ahead, Baruch, beat me up for my lack of faithfulness to my Greek masters!

[Baruch]

EH - O Apathia, o Ataraxia ... spirits attendent on Phoebos Apollon ... rescue your dear amystes EH, from those attendant ... Pathia and Taraktos ... on Chthonic Dionysios! Give him the living requisat in pacem he so deserves!

Kurt - You slice and dice correctly, and yes, we must distinguish our response to the various ways in which a person might involuntarily die, and use State power to enforce, because only in that way were we able to end the prior system, of familial vendetta ... Montagues and Capulets alike.

Shalom

[Kurt]

Yeah, EH, when logic fails me, or more precisely, fails to support my other faculties, I often rely on intuition. I know that intuition is supposed to be a feminine quality, but I guess that just means that I'm not too far on the male side of the continuum to have picked up a bit of it.
And speaking of rights, it's interesting that we can often feel immediately that someone is being badly treated without having to go through any logical or intellectual process at all.

[Baruch]

We might react to a violation of another, because like parents, we pick up on the non-verbal signs the victim is making, just as we react to infants. Ethics is like pornography ... I know what it is when I see it, but it is very hard to define it.

Shalom