Comment on Do you want the murderer of the UnitHealthcare CEO prosecuted?
yeahiknow3@lemmings.world 2 weeks agoThanks for the reply. This is a genuinely tricky question, because most of us acknowledge that revenge under some circumstances isn’t just permissible but desirable, but the devil is in the details. Revenge might be justifiable
- For practical reasons such as a deterrent to future transgressors.
- To ameliorate some tiny fraction of the hurt inflicted by the transgressor.
For instance, it would be devastating to lose a loved one, but it would hurt even more if those who killed her were out there enjoying themselves consequences free.
Sasha@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
Yeah, at this point the discussion starts getting to the edge of my knowledge, I don’t think killing is good in either case. I don’t think it’s a way to repair hurt and I can’t imagine it helping me, I’d much prefer imprisonment (though there are more radical approaches I’d massively prefer over that).The Leftist Cooks video I linked talks about approaches that are far better than I’m capable of describing in a Lemmy comment (I tried and failed lol). In it they discuss what it’s like to be a victim of SA and how one reconciles that experience with being a prison abolitionist. tl;dr being a victim isn’t really a contradiction and there are better ways to heal that aren’t revenge based.
As for a deterrent, for one that doesn’t seem to work. This is one of the only reasons that supporters of the death penalty can give (other than a desire to inflict pain) and it’s generally shown to be very ineffective. This is one of the things I alluded to in a previous comment when I said I didn’t need to explain why the death penalty is bad. The other is that you can just get it wrong and kill people you shouldn’t, I’m more interested in moving beyond violence as a tool for suppressing further violence. We are capable of being better, I see it quite often in the radical groups I work with.
I think valid practical reasons would be things like bringing an end to harm, for example had Trump actually been assassinated, I might not have to be so damn worried about all the trans people in the states. Killing Netanyahu or Putin might save a lot of lives, though in all these cases there are a lot of people who would carry on that work, and they may even decide to inflict greater suffering as a response.
There’s an interesting edge case where the killing of Shinzo Abe was driven by revenge, but ultimately put such a spotlight on an issue that it caused the government to take action. I honestly don’t know how to feel about it, it wouldn’t be possible to predict the result so I can’t see it being justified beforehand, but at least it lead to something good in the end.
To be quite frank, I want to build a better world, and I don’t want killing to ever be a part of it. It might take a lot of death to build that world, but we should move beyond it. I don’t feel like people can be deserving of suffering, however they can and should be made to repair what suffering they’ve caused where at all possible, and prevented from causing more. It’s these points that I’m referring to when I say I’m an idealist.