...to kill a human being...

When is it right to kill a person?

I'm sorry, my mind wanders. Did I say something?

Oh yes, that one!! The conundrum faced by "humanity" (if you will) everyday, somewhere in the world. But now that we have started down the treacherous road let’s continue then, shall we?

When can you justify taking a life? I was watching a show by George Carlin recently and this guy has a wandering mind too. He thinks of questions that make “humanity” squirm like a child, caught stealing candies. One of his comments struck me in this particular show though. We say life is sacred but do we believe it? Do you think before swatting that fly, killing that roach or hunting down that deer? If you believe what you say, you are hell bound my friend for destroying so many things so sacred. So really, that brings me back…when is it right to kill another person?? If the Americans caught Bin Laden today, killing him would be like swatting a fly. Right?? Surely, his life can’t be sacred? Well, not to Jesus anyways. Allah might have different thoughts, but hey let them fight their own battle up there.

Now, I’m not saying that Bin Laden should not be caught. Far from it, catch the bastard. So many lives are being lost (debatably at the wrong places) for one man. But I’m just wondering, what happens when (if?) he is captured? I am just trying to decipher the sacred aspect of life here that makes killing one person more of a sin than killing another person.

Who defines this mysterious sacredness of life? Is there a counter where we can measure it? You fall below 100 and ding…ding…ding…you are the weakest link…you can be executed by anyone without the slightest amount of sin being added to the killer’s counter. How did America compute the “sacredness” of 80,000 lives in Hiroshima? How did Hitler quantify it on his end? Was there a difference in their calculations? Maybe the Americans applied the double integration of human lives over the limits sin to sacredness and Hitler merely did a partial differentiation. It would be so much easier to elucidate things using mathematics, wouldn’t it?

The fact remains though, life was never inherently sacred. Nope, no counter exists, no sacredness exists. It’s merely the people you love and care about that makes things “sacred”, for the lack of a better term. If somebody harms your beliefs, and the people you care about, that bastard has had it. His “sacredness” just went down to zero for all you care. Swat him!!!

You know what probably drove Bin Laden to do the things he does? No, he did not wake up one fine day saying, “Hmm, I’m bored. What should I do that should keep me occupied for the rest of my life?” No, he was never struck by divine prophecy, enlightening him to murder any idiot who does not agree with Allah. Well, actually that’s something that he decided. Allah probably does not represent God to him. It represents a belief that he is right and the world should be destroyed for not agreeing with him. At some point in his life the beliefs he cared about and the people he cared about were deliberately or inadvertently harmed. And so he turned to Allah and was enlightened forever. And now he kills to protect his beliefs and the people who care for him and about him. Now here’s the interesting part…hold your breath…come on…so does any and every other country that can.

Two philosophies and sentiments in this world have caused more killing and bloodshed than any other. Religion and patriotism!!! Both have so many misguided connotations that they no longer remain the virtuous beliefs as claimed by their proponents.

Let me start with the lesser (only slightly) of two evils. Patriotism is essentially the reason every war has been fought over since the dawn of a coherent civilization. In its purest form, it is supposed to instill in you the pride for who you are, what your virtues are and knowledge of what your shortcomings are. People from India are kind and generous and intelligent, people from America are brave and fearless and innovative, people from Britain are noble, the French are refined and….well you get the point. Patriotism however has been this misguided missile of hatred for a long time now. It is cited as a reason for wars and more importantly accepted without any debate as a reason for war. Today, it is not so much a matter of pride in one’s virtues as a hatred for other people’s shortcomings. You mention you are doing something for patriotic reasons and you can justify anything. Anyone who opposes is “unpatriotic” and faces the wrath and the scorn of society. Patriotism is probably the philosophy filled with most hypocrisy…well…probably second only to this next one.

Religion!! The granddaddy of all philosophies. A philosophy that preaches peace and spreads violence. A philosophy meant to explain the origins of humans and probably one that would spell its doom. A philosophy, ladies and gentlemen that can make people do crazy things for crazy reasons. Now, the existence of God being a non-issue here, the fact remains that religions, just like patriotism, were scripted to bring about self-respect and peaceful living within societies. A noble cause, if any. Fact also remains, that history has scripted religion as an instrument of loathing and destruction. Closely knit with patriotism, and probably the origin of the former in many cases, it has probably been that all elusive weapon of mass destruction, some posing Texas cowboy went looking for (or at least that’s what he said).

We have songs and speeches filled with the delusions of patriotism…our country is the most beautiful in the world, we live in harmony, nothing can separate us, united we stand, these colors don’t run, we built this country with our blood and all sorts of crap really. Most of which we know are not true, and we don’t even have to look into our hearts to realize that. We just to have to look out of our shells of hypocrisy. The same goes for religion, only the delusion is magnified there. It doesn’t make things easier that religion is a philosophy seemingly, mostly based on delusions.

What’s funny to me though is that people are not just willing to kill but even die for these two philosophies. And even if you believe in the hallucinations presented by them, isn’t that a tad bit wrong. I read this or heard this someplace long time back, it said, to die for love is the easy way out, it’s living for love that’s tough and that justifies it. If you believe on something, don’t you think that life justifies it more than death? If you believe in religion or patriotism, doesn’t life justify those things more that the kill or be killed for it line of thought?

So, taking the long ranting road back, when is it right to kill a human, to take life, to go to war, to launch an atomic strike, to become a suicide bomber, to kill a murderer, to execute a rapist….never!! That would just be the easy way out. It is easy to kill a man, it is harder to kill an ideology. Nazism faded away to its minimal existence not because the allies killed Hitler, but because Hitler committed suicide. It was him who took the easy way out, he died for himself. If the allies had caught and executed Hitler, we might have seen his supporters multiply. Hitler would then have died for them. It is a thought to keep in mind when dealing out punishment.

If a person is wrong, to think in terms of killing that someone would justify their existence, to think in terms of life would justify ours.