At a time when murder, robbery, polution, war, terrorism, poverty, hunger, drug addiction, racism, domestic violence, obesity and disease are culminating to threaten the very existence of the human race, is it not time to question our ways of guiding ourselves and each other?
Tookie Williams, the murderous founder of the Crips gang was put to death, and his funeral held today. Those who objected to his death argued that he had changed his ways during his double decade prison life and had become a positive voice and inspiration in the world. Let's say that he was indeed guilty of murder and of several murders. And let's say he did change his ways, and was now saving countless youth from lives of crime as well as countless victims of those potential gang members.
Why kill Tookie? The chief arguments by those who would support killing him would be, in no particular order:
1) Punishment - Kill him to punish him.
2) Retribution - Kill him to give his victims and their survivors justice or the satisfaction of payback
3) Prevention - Kill him to deter others like him from killing people. Set an example of him in order to sway others from killing.
4) Honor the Law - It's the law. He broke it. He should pay the consequences of the law. (Or a variation of this would be Honor God's Law - kill him if you believe God would want us to.)
5) Economics - Taxpayers are paying to keep someone alive who has proven he cannot be trusted to honor the value of human life.
6) Politics - Its sad but true that judges, courts, governors and presidents have and do grant or deny clemency after first weighing the political popularity of their choice.
7) Some combination of the above
Now, I don't care to argue the rightness or wrongness of Capital Punishment. I'd like to look at this from the angles offered by the Vision Revolution.
What if what was in fact best for society and individuals alike to have each of us grow up and live in a world of visionaries? What if in the year 2020 our children grew up in a world that honored them, educated them, communicated with them as visionaries.
A visionary is at once the ultimate individual, as he/she is guided first and foremost by his/her own inner guidance, consience or vision. Many would fear such a world, for it could not be a world of heavy authority. It would be a world of unordinary freedom and independence. Yet at the same time, consider how it could be a world with much less crime, poverty, polution, disease, war, terrorism, etc.
For the sake of this article, lets assume that you see a future world of visionaries as a far better place to live.
What place do the above arguments for killing Tookie Williams have? Does such thinking inhibit the Vision Revolution?
Think about it.
Conditioning human beings to obey "the law" primarily through fear and threat of punishment or retaliation... Does that help to bring about a world of visionaries? Or does it work against it?
The whole idea of conditioning is to override one's natural mechanisms of guidance. Tell someone what is right and wrong, reward them when they obey, punish them when they don't. Hmmm... If you ask me, that is a formula for having a citizenry that is "civilized" and obedient... much like... Nazi Germany, arguably pre-Hitler, the most "civilized" and advanced nation on earth.
The more you condition someone to follow and obey, the less they tend to turn inward and rely upon their own conscience for guidance. All you need to do is sufficiently educate and train a group of otherwise good people, and you can have them toeing the line when you tell them the enemy is Evil and should be destroyed by the millions.
Personally, if it was proven that Tookie was in fact guilty of murder, then I don't think he should have been kept alive for twenty years on taxpayer dollars. Someone who proves themselves so untrustworthy with human life should not be kept around. Human life is much too valuable.
Whatever your "position" on Capital Punishment is, please join me in revisiting it. Not as a policy or position... but in terms of the revolution.
Here is a man with influence among troubled youth, who turned his life around and became a voice to lift and inspire such people to not follow his path, but to rise and make something of their lives. Do we kill him to satisfy some emotional need for "justice"? Do we kill him to prevent people from questioning or disobeying "the law"?
To be a visionary, in my view means developing the inner strength to rise above our emotions, and developing the strength to question authority and disobey it when necessary.
I am not offering an answer or solution here, I merely intend to begin a dicussion.
Post your comments, and when you do, see if you can further the conversation in a meaningful way... rather than defending a position and showing that your position is right. To be a visionary, we must rise above such means of communication.
