A reflection: How can we rid society of violence?

I read and enjoyed a fascinating essay called “Kindness Triumphs in the Temple of Betrayal and Hatred... by @chbartist (78) in mindset yesterday and the essay motivated me to write this short essay in response.

I think I understand the history of crime and punishment, revenge and retaliation. But I think we must grasp an important principle that we must model the behavior we wish to encourage, we must not meet hate with hate and rationalize our hate. Neither should we meet violence with violence and rationalize our violence as being the appropriate response. We must see that rationalization is the starting point for many bad or horrific deeds.

We must understand that criminals rationalize stealing, assaulting or murdering to achieve an end. Their end is to enrich themselves or sometimes to survive. To them the end justifies the means. We may feel that their end doesn’t justify the means. When we capture them we put them on trial and sometimes execute them. We kill them just as they killed someone else. We justify our killing as proper punishment or justice. But we fail to see we are also rationalizing. We are saying our end “justice” justifies our means “killing”. I know everyone will say these are different things, one is murder for money the other is murder for justice. I would say to those who say this that yes you are right that they are different. I understand, but do you understand how they are also the same?

A life has been taken in both scenarios and someone is dead. While to some the death of the murderer is justice, but in reality it doesn’t bring the victim back, all it does is make the executioner a murderer. I hope one day we will understand this concept. A life was taken and now another life is taken. They are truly the same.

I believe that we will only come to a point where all society values life and human rights when we value all life and all humans rights. If we are heart broken by the death of a little girl or boy at the hands of a murderer, and we seek answers as to why it happened and how it is to be prevented. We must understand human behavior and justification for assault and taking another’s life. As long as we assault criminals with batons, tear gas and kill them with electric chairs we are justifying assault and murder. We are teaching that these things are okay under circumstances we define. We are rationalizing. This makes it possible for all people, both good and bad, to rationalize their behavior also. When we as a species decide that there is no acceptable rationalization for assault or murder we will be taking the first step towards ridding our society of violence.

Only light can illuminate the dark, only peace can stop war, only heat can warm you in the cold. If we want people to stop being hateful we must show love and compassion. If we want people to stop being greedy we must show generousity. If we want criminals to stop killing people we have to stop killing criminals. If we want to stop people from justifying horrible deeds, those deeds must become unjustifiable for all of us.

I hope people will one day understand this.