Sunday, January 26, 2020
Capital punishment is morally wrong
Capital punishment is morally wrong      Among some of the most controversial issues of our lives today, no question pops up as frequently as the question of the ethics concerning the Death Penalty. Capital punishment according to the website legal-explanations.com is â€Å"the death sentence awarded for capital offences like crimes involving planned murder, multiple murders, repeated crimes, rape and murder etc where in the criminal provisions consider such persons as a gross danger to the existence of the society and provide death punishment.†     With its origins in Latin ‘capitalis meaning ‘regarding the head, a capital crime was originally punished by severing of the head. The first death penalty laws were established as far back as the Eighteenth Century B.C. in the Code of King Hammurabi of Babylon, which codified the death penalty for 25 different crimes. It was also a part of the 14th century B.C.s Hittie Code; in the Seventh Century B.C.s Draconian Code of Athens, which made death the only punishment for all crimes; and in the Fifth Century B.C.s Roman law of the Twelve Tablets. Death Sentences were carried out by such means as crucifixion, drowning, beating to death, burning alive, and impalement. (Deathpenaltyinfo.org Part I: History of the Death Penalty)      There are many arguments both for and against the application of the death penalty. Many people in favor of the death penalty would argue that it serves as a strong deterrent to potential recipients of such a punishment and therefore helps maintain a safer society. While numerous such arguments exist on both sides, I will be discussing why the death penalty is morally, ethically and fundamentally wrong, and try to present counter-arguments to claims made by the advocates of the death penalty.      One problem with the death penalty is that it is simply uncivilized. Most of Western Europe no longer retains the death penalty. On top of that, when Turkey recently made an application for admission to the European Union, the Unions committee made a recommendation against it, citing that â€Å"Turkey retains the barbaric practice of capital punishment.â€Å"American countries like Mexico and Canada have abandoned the death penalty. The parliament of Europe also passed a resolution ugring the United States to abandon the death penatly. A magazine, now in international circulation says, â€Å"Throughout Europe in particular, the death penalty is thought of as simply uncivilized.      â€Å"That its practice is said to be problematic for a leading nation. German Justice minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin has argued, â€Å"The Americans do not hesitate, proud as they are of their democratic tradition, to reproach other countries over human rights violations.â€Å"I think that great cost is desensitizing us to death and to using violence as an instrument for civilized society.      Another one of the biggest ethical problems associated with the use of capital punishment is its irreversibility. Death penalty, unlike conventional punishments is absolutely final. When a person, innocent of his charges is awarded the death penalty and after he/she is executed, there is no going back if advances in medical/forensic technology provide solid evidence in favor of the condemneds innocence. The court or the executioner cannot give back a life, so why should they be able to take it? The researchers Radelet and Bedau (1992) affirm that, â€Å"no less than twenty-three people have been executed who did not commit the crime they were accused of†(Focus on the Death Penalty, 2001). The execution of an innocent is not a problem existing solely in the United States; it taints almost every region in the world which still use capital punishment.      A death penalty advocate would argue that once a condemned person is deprived of his or her life, he or she is also stripped of the ability to harm or detriment the society further. If a person is deemed to pose threat to society, life in prison also guarantees no future crimes; and in some cases, is even more psychologically effective than the death penalty. Human beings are social creatures and the level of sensory and social deprivation experienced by some prison inmates is often enough to break them and their purpose to commit future crimes. Many would argue that life in prison would cost the tax-payer more than if the death penalty was carried out. Why should the tax-payer waste valuable resources in prolonging the life of an individual if he or she harbors naught but unfavorable wishes against him? Little do they know that in fact, executions cost almost four times as much! An average lifer would cost somewhere around $500,000 to the government (antideathpen alty.org/reasons) while an execution can cost as much as $ 2 million! Most of this money however is not diverted to the actual process of the execution itself; instead it takes the form of free counseling for defense, for appeals, maximum security on a separate death row wing. (antideathpenalty.org/reasons)      The application of the death penalty can often have a completely reverse effect among potential lawbreakers-it creates martyrs. Criminals are usually associated with a negative connotation in society. Most people are repulsed by the unconscionable, vile act they commit and are tremendously sympathetic for the victims of heinous crimes such as rape, murder etc. However, sometimes the death penalty can shift popular sympathy aside from the victims of the crime and to the criminals themselves. The 2005 execution of former gang leader â€Å"Tookie†Williams, said to have founded the notorious gang of the crips‘, which has an extensive history of assault, robbery and murder (http://www.tookie.com/abtook.html). This man was convicted with overwhelming evidence of the murder of four persons, some of whom he shot and mocked obscenely. A remorseless man, never one to apologize to the victims of afflicted families was, after being executed, idolized and sympathized by the public with events such as Candlelight vigils, websites like savetookie.org, protests and a media circus ensued trying to prevent the execution which took place 26 years after the crimes were committed(Balancedpolitics.org, sec. 12). This is just one of many cases, which make a mockery of the evil crimes, such degenerates commit.      Is there really a need for the Death Penalty in the human society? Like the silver lining on the dark cloud, one can see, in an otherwise hopelessly misguided system, there exist, other viable alternatives. The sheer number of less controversial, more reasonable and efficient methods of dealing with atrocious crimes in our society question the very place and existence of the death penalty. Could it be as a means of channeling our collective hatred, confusion and anger; a central point for the darker side of humanity, which originates from the rigorous conditions of our lives? The victims of these barbaric actions are often made scapegoats for our social troubles; it is they, who are blamed, even if the fault is inherent in our social policies and practices. George Orwell, in his book nineteen eighty four, needed but a single Goldstein to sustain his tyrannicism; while some of the modern governments need millions.      Given the overwhelming amount of arguments against death penalty, one can easily see that there is little purpose to it other than vengeance. Yet, looking at the number of nations still applying this barbaric and archaic form of punishment, it is hard not to see that our society has sunk to a level so low, that vengeance is acceptable to most. The State copies every disgusting quality of the heinous act of murder; a murder is often committed in anger and is therefore penalized with an execution carried out in resentment; a premeditated murder committed with satisfaction and pleasure is met with a likewise execution. The final result is the same and the feeling with which it is carried out is the same. There are several qualities of the death penalty which even go beyond the moral repugnance of a criminal act of murder. What then is the difference between a murder and an execution? Is it really possible for one form of murder to be correct while another be wrong? W ould the same deed, if carried out by two different persons, be at one time abhorrent and barbaric while the other righteous and divine? Most importantly, how can a morally wrongful deed promote the righteousness, let alone the comfortable survival, of the human society? Mutually assured punishment is simply not the solution. This outdated and barbaric eye-for-an-eye form of justice is a savage and eventually senseless way of going about the problem of societal crime.      Why is law-objective and completely free from religious pressures based on such antiquated and savage principles of a God that is more malevolent than divine? Attempting to defeat violence with violence would merely catalyze the proliferation of circumstances, the subsistence of which we claim we are trying to terminate, within our actions and inside our minds. Have thoughtless practices such as these aided humanity in any way by solving any of its problems? What of serenity? Does this have to involve the loss of human life? If only humanity made a collective effort in finding out if we can end the problem instead of delving in delusions of believing that murder is the route to salvation. Such a route to peace does not necessarily have to be paved with blood and that peace bought with the price of murder is naught but an illusion peace, beneath which lies the silence of death. Works Cited Amnesty International. Singapore-The Death Penalty: A hidden toll of executions. January 2004. 18 November 2009 . Cauthan, Kenneth. Capital Punishment. 27 April 2004. 16 December 2008 . Department of Justice. Capital Punishment Statistics. 5 June 1988. 5 12 2008 . McCuen, A B Barbery. Does DNA Technology Warrant a Death Penalty Moratorium. May 2000. Patterson, Aaron. Amnesty.org. November 1998. 18 November 2009 Sorensen et.al â€Å"Capital punishment and deterrence: Examining the effect of executions on murder in Texas. †Crime and Deliquency 1999: 481-493. Sheppard, Joanna. Capital Punishment and Deterrence of Crime. April 2004. 19 November 2009 US .
Saturday, January 18, 2020
Nature -Nurture Essay
Nature and nurture has to do with how a person becomes who they are through their personality and traits. Nature is what a person is born with, their traits and personality is due to their genetics. Nurture is being born with a blank slate and traits and personality a person gets comes from the experiences they go through throughout their life. They are opposite from one another. I believe that it is flawed to ask how much of a particular behavior is due to genetics and how much is due to experience. When a person says that they are acting a certain way due to their genetics is wrong, people learn most of their behaviors through what they have experienced throughout their lives unless it is something that can be passed down, like an illness or something mental wise. An example would be seeing something going wrong as a child and every time it did the child’s parent or parents would get angry instead of thinking rationally, growing up the child would most likely do the same because that is what they know and have learned to do. It is appropriate to separate the contributions of genetics and experience when measuring the development of differences among individuals because genetics is something a person cannot control while an experience is something you can have control over. Every person is different, no two people are alike. Each person is raised different, has seen, felt and heard different things, people learn from what they have seen and dealt with while growing up and can change and control their reaction to it. When it comes to genetics each person has a different family background, they cannot control it, and it is stuck to them and keeps getting passed down through generations.
Friday, January 10, 2020
Herman Melville’s’ Moby Dick
IntroductionMoby Dick has secured the author’s reputation in the first rank of all American writers. Firstly, the novel was published in the expurgated form and was called The Whale. It was published in 1851 (Bryant 37). â€Å"Moby Dick†is an encyclopedia of the American romanticism. Here there are thousands of private observations, concerning the developments of the American bourgeois democracy and the American public consciousness. These observations were made by writers and poets, the predecessors of Melville. Here we can see the united protest of the American romantic idea against bourgeois and capitalistic progress in its national American forms.Meaning of cannibalismIn the present paper we will discuss the meaning of cannibalism in the novel (Delbanco 26). The famous citation of the chapter 65 contains deep sense that deserves thorough analysis: â€Å"Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean mis sionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgment, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who nailest geese to the ground and feastest on their bloated livers in thy pate-de-foie-gras†(Melville 242). Moby dick is also educational and true, because Romanticism believed that fiction had to be the only vehicle to describe the history of the past.The intention was to make the story interesting (Bryant 14). To understand the original meaning of cannibalism in the novel it is important to establish principles which Melville has built the narration on. The attitude towards cannibals is described better in the story â€Å"Typee†. The connection with this story helps us understand the meaning of the abovementioned citation from â€Å"Moby Dick†. Pictures of savages’ life drawn by writer bear all features of â€Å"an ideal life â€Å". Melville admired the life of the tribe, but we can’t but notice, however, that he was not going to offer the reader a happy life of savages as the sample for imitation. The poetic pictures drawn by the writer have another meaning. They are created for comparison with contemporary bourgeois civilization (Delbanco 26).According to Melville, Bourgeois civilization, in the kind it existed at the beginning of XIX century, had no future. â€Å"Ideality†of savages in has two aspects: natural and public (Bryant 37). In natural aspect the savage is ideal because it is fine, and it is fine because has kept the features of the physical shape lost by the civilized person (Bryant 15).Melville adhered the same principle when he spoke about â€Å"ideality†of cannibals’ social existence. A savage does not have property, and it does not know what money is. It is relieved by that of two harms of a civilization. They cannot have a desire to act in defiance of truth and validity (Bryant 15). There is no stimulus for that. The savage is not spoiled by a civilization, but it has the defects: cannibalism and heathenism. However, what do they mean in comparison with more severe, realized crimes of the civilized person?In Moby Dick Melville is rather laconic describing savages life elements, but narrates in detail about the bourgeois state and the legislation, police, crimes against society, about power of money, about religious prosecutions, noxious influence of the society on a person – all that precedes eschatological accidents (i.e. infringement of the right and morals, conflicts, the crimes of people demanding punishment of gods) (Bryant 36).Melville does not dismiss cannibalism, backwardness of intelligence and public consciousness, primitiveness of a life and many other negative phenomena in a life of â€Å"happy†savages. Speaking about some wild or even brutal customs of savages, he finds parallels in a life of a civilized society: cannibalism is a devil art w hich we find out in the invention of every possible retaliatory machines; retaliatory wars are poverty and destructions; the most furious animal in the word is the white civilized person (Delbanco 25).Symbolism as a trait of romanticism in the novelIt is not the only symbolic trait in the Moby Dick. For example, all crew members are given descriptive, biblical-sounding names and Melville avoids the exact time of all events and very details. It is the evidence of allegorical mode. It is necessary to mention the mix of pragmatism and idealism (Bryant 14).For example, Ahab desires to pursue the whale and Starbuck desires to arrange a normal commercial ship dealing with whaling business. Moby Dick can be considered as the symbolical example of good and evil (Delbanco 25). Moby Dick is like a metaphor for â€Å"elements of life that are out of people’s control†. The Pequod’s desire to kill the white whale is allegorical, because the whale represents the main life goa ls of Ahab. What is more important is that Ahab’s revenge against Moby is analogous to people’s struggling against the fate (Bryant 14).ConclusionIn conclusion it is necessary to admit that Melville thought people needed to have something to reach for in their life and the desirable goal might destroy the life of a person. Moby Dick is a real obsession which affected the life of ship crew (Bryant 37). Thus, the system of images in â€Å"Moby Dick†makes us understand the basic ideas of the novel of Melville. Eschatological accidents often are preceded with infringement of the right and morals, conflicts and crimes of people, and the world perishes from fire, flood, cold, heat, famine. We can see this in the novel  «Moby Dick†which shows a life of the American society of the beginning of XIX century (Delbanco 15).Works citedLevine, Robert S., ed. The Cambridge Companion to Herman Melville. Cambridge, UK & New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998.Del banco, Andrew. Melville: His World and Work. New York: Knopf, 2005Melville, Herman: Redburn, White-Jacket, Moby-Dick (G. Thomas Tanselle, ed.) (Library of America, 1983)Bryant, John, ed. A Companion to Melville Studies. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986 Bryant, John. Melville and Repose: The Rhetoric of Humor in the American Renaissance. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001
Thursday, January 2, 2020
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