If I Only Knew What I Think I Know

Before one more person is killed, I think that the killer should be required to explain the consequences of her/his action. What gives her or him the right to extinguish a life that cannot be recreated by human hands? I suspect that the common rationale is that killing someone stops them from doing whatever you don’t want them to do. More honestly, there might be an admission that it enables the killer to take something he or she wants away from the killed (spell check just isn’t buying killee). The annals of history—including the Bible—are filled with justifications based on what God wants. We humans kill with abandon, but I would suggest that it is in the context of denial about death. The ethic of mutual reciprocity (the Judeo-Christian Golden Rule) creates a new perspective when applied: let me kill another as I would like to be killed by them. The “final solution” is anything but, and nothing demonstrates that more clearly than the Christian story of passion and crucifixion. Those who crucified Jesus were hoping to shut him up. They hoped to intimidate his followers to the extent that they would shut up. Two-thousand years later we don’t seem to have yet learned the lesson that imposed death is not a solution to anything. This grave error in human judgment is compounded by the unknown variable introduced by the conservation of energy. The life extinguished didn’t just go away, it simply changed state. There may be more than bleeding heart sentimentality behind the commandment, “You shall not murder.”