Meditation for September 6th, 2016
The Spirituality of Torture
For legal reasons, it is sometimes referred to as enhanced interrogation, but lets be honest, it is the torturing of a human being. Information may or may not be extracted. Torture gets a bum rap mostly because of how much pain and humiliation it makes someone go through. It is as old as murder.
I believe that torture is a great replacement for capital punishment.
The United States is the only western country that still uses capital punishment and only China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (see any patterns here) use it more. Most of the countries that use it are either theocracies or strict dictatorships. For the religious countries, and the United States fall under that category, the capital punishment is to place the offender into the judgement of God.
Almost like suicide where we play God on ourselves and find no forgiveness, the death penalty seems like the state is playing God on others. Maybe before God was ready to call that person to their judgement.
The death penalty is expensive, completely inhumane and doesn’t deter heinous crimes at all.
Torture on the other hand can be cheaper, is just as humane if not more humane because of leaving the person alive and will deter crime.
Torture can be more than just water boarding and shocking someone’s genitals. It can be a piece of art. It can break the boundaries of our very puritan imaginations to find a way to make a criminal wish they were never born to break the law.
Imagine three months of torture rather than three months of jail for Brock Turner.
Death is absolute. Even in the most boring religious terms, the dead is rewarded somewhat by escaping the horrors of his or her life. If one is killing without remorse, then death is probably a welcoming place. They are dead and the families of the victims must live on while the dead are nothing but a horrible memory.
Torture will let the loved ones know that the offender is going to get it worse.
So this fall, lets get together and legalize torture and do away of old religious nonsense that is capital punishment. Are we the United States of America, or are we one of the countries we bomb with drones?