God

VA Sniper To Be Executed Tonight

I wonder what it feels like to decide whether or not someone lives? What does it feel like to watch someone die?

When I was in high school, I favored the death penalty. Life looked pretty simple from the perspective of my 16 and 17 year old self: do the right thing, get rewarded; do the wrong thing; get punished. It followed that having strong punishments for doing the "wrong thing" was only common sense - the worse the punishment, the lesser the incidence of "wrong things" and the better for society overall.

I've rethought that. I think that what actually probably deters most people from murdering is a recognition of what it means to deprive another person of life. I also tend to believe that the reality we experience and our perceptions about other people are largely founded on projections of our own opinions and worldviews. By this reasoning, I would argue that someone who murders probably also already sees his own life as relatively meaningless.

I think that the answer is to celebrate life, and to create a cultural norm that respects life. How many studies are there that have proved that positive reinforcement works much better than negative reinforcement?

I don't subscribe to the notion that killing a killer solves anything. Maybe it truly does give closure to the victims' families - all I know is that tonight I am very thankful that I've never been involved in a situation where I'd find out firsthand the answers to some of the questions I've raised here.