David LT, Struan, others
DLT, I agree with you having questions about the MoQ's explanation of the immorality
of
the death penalty. Maybe it's better if I say "Pirsig's explanation" instead, for
Pirsig isn't
the MoQ and even he can make mistakes trying to explain moral issues using the MoQ.
A while back Struan brought up this topic too and we didn't really come to any answers
then (still out there Struan?). Struan wrote:
> Pirsig goes on to claim that in the case of a criminal who does not threaten
> the, "established social structure," (by imprisonment) it is plain that "what
> makes killing him immoral is that a criminal is not just a biological organism.
> He is not just a defective unit in society. Whenever you kill a human being
> you are killing a source of thought too."
[BUT]
> hundreds of thousands who died in civil war were a "source of thoughts" too, and
>that
> therefore by his own criteria the war was morally wrong because ideas lost
> through these deaths were at a higher evolutionary plane than the nation they were
>sacrificed for."
The human being is both a biological pattern and a source of intellectual patterns.
Above, in Struan's
first quote the human being (criminal) is regarded as a source of intellectual
patterns and therefore
on a higher plane than the social level. In the case of the civil war, the human being
is regarded as
a biological pattern and therefore on a lower level than the society it dies for.
In the issue of the Society versus the Individual Pirsig applies a double standard and
I think
the use of the MoQ in the argumentation against the death penalty is not correct.
The problem lies in the placing of the human being as a "source of thoughts" in the
intellectual level.
I think if a_source_of_thoughts is really more moral than a society, than it wouldn't
only be immoral for a society to kill a_source_of_thought, but also to limit this
source of thought
by imprisoning it.
Neither a thought, nor a_source_of_thoughts are part of the intellectual level. A
thought only thought
by one individual can never throw over a society, until it is carried (and in that
proces proven valuable)
by a group of people.
Let me say that I'm very much against the death penalty and I'm glad that in my
country this form of
barbarism was already abolished around the year that slavery was in the USA. Not
believing in
Pirsig's argumentation the question remains why it is better for a society to not have
the death penalty.
This is not an easy question, but I think it has to do with the following:
- The death penalty is a form of getting back at someone, a sort of delayed revenge to
temper the
feelings of hate (incomprehention of the criminals behaviour; "that's not human!") and
fear ("this
behaviour has to be killed within our society" and "it could happen to me too") within
society.
- The death penalty is used by institutions which in history themselves have been
often proven corrupt.
- The death penalty has as basic assumption that courts of law can make
truth-judgements with 100%
certainty, whereas within the MoQ there's no such thing as 100% certainty.
Dtchgrtngs
Walter
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