Read an email from the Second Permanent Secretary of Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Gayle Goh and reflected on my approach to life:
Our starting point must be the world as it is and not as we would like it to be.
…We can, we must and we do influence our own future.
But we can do so only if we start from an objective analysis of where we are and what options are open to us.
…But I do not think language should distract anyone from my essential message: there are no simple solutions; in fact sometimes, at a particular point of time, there are no solutions to specific problems.
Does this mean that we should give up? Of course not. Mine is a counsel of realism, not despair
We must strive to understand clinically and unsentimentally what can be achieved at any particular moment on any particular issue.
.. Perfect solutions are not to be found this side of heaven. We should not pursue the ideal at the expense of the achievable. And sometimes we must accept that we cannot do anything.
More commentaries on Toshi case from:
<li><a href="http://www.campusobserver.org/2007/January/26/tochi/tochi.html">Linda Perry</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.yawningbread.org/arch_2007/yax-707.htm">Yawning Bread</a></li>
<li><a href="http://i-speak.blogdrive.com/archive/238.html">Gayle Goh</a></li>
See interesting discussion of death penalty in light of the recent Tochi case.
Regarding the questions “Should it be mandatory for judges and juries in capital cases to have watched an execution (or video thereof), before being eligible to mete out the death penalty? Should the selfsame judge and jury have to watch the execution of each and every person they have condemned to death?”, I would say “Yes” to all the questions . A judge should have a first hand account of the impact of his decisions and not be sheltered from it behind the administrative and bureaucratic processes leading up to the execution.
A “shorter distance” from the decision to execute and the act of execution is created when a judge witnesses the execution he has ordered. This is important because a “longer distance” can easily create a false sense and weakened sense of the grave moral responsibility a judge is entrusted with and undermine the natural sense of humanity inherent in all of us, including judges. What I mean can be further seen in this extract of an article on pyschological distance being a factor enabling and facilitating violence towards others (surely execution is a form of violence towards another):
Milgram manipulated psychological distance in later studies based on the same premise. When the victim’s cries could be heard through an open door, more subjects were likely to discontinue the experiment compared to the original results. Rather than being out of sight the subject was seated next to the learner (confederate) and was asked to physically press the victim’s hand upon the shock electrode and required to hold it down while the victim was shocked. In this situation, disobedience was at 70%. If the urging of the experimenter was given through a telephone (in the original experiment, the experimenter was physically present), the subjects were less likely to be obedient. Hence, psychological distance or the degree to which the victim is dehumanized had varied results on the outcome.
One of Milgram’s subjects explained: “You really begin to forget that there is a guy out there, even though you can hear him. For a long time I just concentrated on pressing the switches and reading the words†(cited in Gleitman 1986:401). The dehumanization of the victim by use of language is a common theme of war. War terminology in the World War II included such terms as “final solution†(the mass murder of six million people) and “special treatment†(death by gassing). The Gulf war in 1991 included such terms as “smart bombs†(good targets that still kill people) and “new world orderâ€. The televised version displayed an inanimate computer game and this distanced our minds from the people that died. The war in Afghanistan dehumanized human casualties with terms such as “price of war†or “collateral damage†(loss of human life whether or not the bombs reached their target).
Nonetheless, the initial effects of witnessing an execution would be diluted after initial exposure.
The main motivation of my view is my sympathy for the unlucky innocent who has been executed. But this is not to say that I object to the death penalty. I have not thought through this issue and have no fixed position.
I allow the possibility that it is desirable to have a death sentence and if so, we would also want judges to be able to make effective decisions without having to suffer any unnecessary guilty from watching executions arising from their decisions. Intuitively, retributive punishment in the form of death penalty seems justified in circumstances of mass murder and unnecessary, senseless and extreme cruelty. But no death penalty system is perfect and there will be innocents executed and I find the idea of sacrificing one innocent for the good of many more emotionally and morally repugnant even though it seems rationally and objectively appealing to me.
A bunch of inconsistencies I am. Heart and head in disharmony.
I discovered the Awe-In-One Dark Purple 6pk pick today, which from now is my favourite pick and which I highly recommend to all picking guitarists out there.
The pick doesn’t move around when I play and I don’t lose my grip. It felt great in my hands and helped me nail better the jazz rhythm guitar that I’ve been practising recently. I just felt like I played great. Amazing what a difference the right pick can make, something which I never thought would be the case!
Check it out: Awe-In-One Guitar Pick.
