Exactly this! And also if we don't want to celebrate his death, it's also completely fine feeling absolutely no sadness about it. My compassion is better routed elsewhere – with people, animals, and the planet suffering and dying.
There is a parable in which the Buddha kills a sea captain. Strange as it sounds, perhaps it offers the better lesson.
In this story, the Buddha in a past life was a ship’s captain. Faced with a murderous man intent on slaughtering hundreds of merchants, he made the fateful choice to kill the captain himself. The act broke the precept of nonviolence, yet it was guided by compassion. Not only did it save the lives of the merchants, it also spared the murderer from the far greater karmic weight of mass killing. This is the principle of skillful means: intention can transform even a violent act into an expression of compassion. Morality is rarely simple. What matters is not the outward appearance of our actions but the heart behind them. True compassion sometimes requires bearing personal sacrifice to prevent deeper suffering. The takeaway is that the Buddha holds even the perceived evil one in his heart.
This points us back to the Buddhist teaching of karma. It is not punishment, not revenge, not a divine hammer waiting to strike. The Buddha defined karma simply as volition, as the force of our intentional actions. He also warned that the unfolding of karma is one of the great imponderables, not something we can wield against others like a curse. To say of someone, “he brought his death upon himself,” may sound like the voice of justice, but it is in fact turning Dharma into a weapon, spreading more hatred instead of easing it.
So the harder question remains. In the face of evil, what is asked of us? Is it enough to hold those who commit harm, even those who might harm us, in our hearts with love and compassion? Or is this naïve? Is it wishful thinking? Do we have a duty to save them from themselves, from the destructive karma they are building?
Here I think of Antony and the Johnsons’ song Hitler in My Heart. I read it as a meditation on facing the darkest parts of human existence and holding them, not with rejection, but with compassion. To carry “Hitler in my heart” is to acknowledge that cruelty and horror live within the human condition, and yet to keep them within the embrace of love. The refrain that “flowers grow from corpses” suggests that even in the most horrific and broken places, beauty and renewal are possible. By embracing the shadow, instead of pushing it away, there is the possibility of healing, even transformation.
The plea, “Don’t punish me for wanting your love inside of me”, speaks to the vulnerability of this work. It is the cry of someone who knows the risk of confronting darkness, who hopes that love, both for oneself and from others, might become the force that changes everything. In this light, the song is not despair but a meditation on the redemptive power of compassion, the only force that can turn even evil into something life-affirming.
And yet the question lingers. Is it enough simply to hold compassion for those who do harm? Can this actually help dissipate their actions and the suffering they cause? Or is compassion only for our own healing, while the harm rolls on unchecked?
I think again of the Dalai Lama’s retelling of stories from Tibetan monks who survived the Chinese prisons. One account comes from Palden Gyatso, who endured thirty-three years of imprisonment and torture. When asked what he feared most, he did not speak of death or pain, but of losing compassion for his captors. Another version comes from Phakyab Rinpoche, who also admitted that his deepest fear was not to keep compassion alive for those who had inflicted such cruelty.
Testimonies from the Cultural Revolution echo this. Monks and lamas were beaten, humiliated, and sometimes forced to witness or even participate in violence against their own teachers. Yet what shines through these stories is not only the brutality endured, but the spiritual struggle to resist hatred. The Dalai Lama often highlights these examples because they reveal the real measure of strength: the refusal to let compassion die, even in the face of atrocity.
That thread runs through the parable, the song, and the testimony. Compassion is not weakness. It is the only way the cycle of hatred can be broken. To hold compassion for those who cause suffering is not to excuse them. It is to resist becoming like them. It is to protect the possibility of healing, not only for ourselves, but perhaps even for them.
Two thought-provoking essays for the price of one! In my heart I feel the truth of intention as the crucial element but culturally I’m met with the primacy of action and outcome. If a moment’s inattention while driving leaves me on the other side of the road and nothing happens there is no societal consequence. If it leads to death or injury the consequences are grave. We are also inculcated with the maxim “the way to hell is paved with good intentions”.
These are not conversations that we have in the public sphere but are so important in sharing a cultural space with each other.
I wanted to add this, because my thoughts turned to the horror of the Genocide in Gaza too.
The loss of Charlie Kirk, tragic as it was, and the suffering in Gaza are worlds apart in scale, but the moral challenge is the same. How do we confront violence, hatred, and loss without letting our hearts harden? Justice, law, and compassion are key.
Charlie Kirk’s rhetoric, often rooted in hate speech, contributed to harm and division. That does not make him deserving of murder. Justice will see his killer tried and convicted in court. Proper laws, like those in the UK that prevent hate speech, and stricter U.S. gun regulations limiting arms to organized militias rather than individuals, might have prevented some of the harm surrounding him.
At the same time, justice must extend to those who incite violence and hatred on a mass scale, politicians, leaders, and soldiers whose actions fuel war and genocide. From both sides of the Palestinian conflict, including Hamas backers and the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, those responsible must be held accountable in court.
Justice is best served through law, not hatred. Those who commit cold-blooded crimes, whether murder or genocide, are to be condemned and held accountable, not avenged. Compassion, not hatred, is what allows justice and humanity to prevail.
Thank you for yours comments. Honestly, think that pieces like Rachel's and comments like yours make me think there really is something valuable within this whole internet/social media experiment
The one thought that I'd like to try to needle through is how we balance that compassion we need with the hatred that we will inevitably feel because even if we want to say that impartial justice is best served through law, the question still persists of how we arrive upon what we decide law is?
A lot of our political issues today boil down to that essential question as what we have agreed upon as law seems to be woefully inadequate
Personally, I think its about holding space for hatred as we try to do so for compassion. It's the reason why Tibetan monks are criticized - one can admire the desire to hold onto compassion, but if compassion and the need to maintain it lead to death and destruction for those around you, why pursue it as an ideal at all?
In many ways this is the fundamental critique of the left - the extreme tolerance preached leads to cultural and eventually societal destruction. I disagree, but I can't pretend it is not a seductive argument and one that I believe is seducing men and women around the world.
Do you have any ideas on how the left manages to hold on to its righteous hatred while also maintaining our compassion? My best guess is that the difficulty I have answering this is why most laws are written collectively
I share your sense that there are no easy solutions here. The roots of these killings are complex and tangled, and it would be naïve to imagine that we can neatly disentangle the political from the personal in every case. Like you, I can see how violence inevitably becomes politicised, and how easily narratives are shaped to fit agendas. That in itself is a tragedy layered upon the first.
Where I perhaps place most of my hope is in breaking the cycle of hatred that fuels both the act and its aftermath. If every outrage only hardens divisions and deepens binaries, then we condemn ourselves to repeat it. Dialogue built on respect, honesty, and a genuine will to restore democracy to reason is the only way forward I can see. It is not easy, nor is it certain, but without it we surrender the possibility of something better.
So while we may not have solutions ready to hand, perhaps the shared recognition that hatred cannot be the ground of our politics is at least the beginning of one.
Thought-provoking piece that is bound to ruffle some feathers, starting with the title itself...
I don't have to celebrate or condone what happened to Kirk, I simply acknowledging that Kirk celebrated and condoned what happened to Kirk. He virtually welcomed what happened to him. You reap what you sow, so you'll have to forgive me that I feel not for Charlie, but for people he wanted to die and/or suffer, Palestinians and raped children included. He stood for fascism and fascism is violence by definition. The thing is, it's more comforting to scream at those who make you uncomfortable, like people who have zero tolerance for fascism, than to face and process your own complicity in fascism. As a civilisation, we virtually run on comfort, convenience and normalisation, and it's incredibly disturbing to even whisper "our whole existence is violence" or "violence is our status quo."
I've always maintained that the sole reason Western society (across the "political divide," for lack of better term) is shocked and opts for tiptoeing around deaths like this is not because we truly detest violence and think it's not the answer, but because we're conditioned to unsee and normalise everyday violence that keeps the state apparatus. This led to some incredibly heated debates over the years.
Kirk's murder isn't an exception, it's the everyday, lived reality for millions. However, you'll see it as a shocking exception and a sign of end times if you believe you've lived in a predominantly peaceful and non-violent world up to this point. It will be an exception that shakes your worldview if you don't see poverty as violence, if you don't see millions of hungry children as an act of violence - including those in your very neighbourhood whose predicament you see as simply "unfortunate." There are still people who don't apply the word "violence" to ICE kidnapping people doing their grocery shopping and collecting their kids from school. Food deserts, soil riddled with cancer-inducing chemicals, undrinkable water are all violence by nature. But it's all oh-so-unfortunate and something else, just not violence. The state exists thanks to violence and persists thanks to violence, and is the only beneficiary of us buying the normalisation and blindfolds.
You're very right that the ultimate core of this is anthropocentrism. Human supremacy over nature is the first step that eventually transforms into supremacy of certain humans over other humans. All supremacy depends on violence, so it's the prerogative of all supremacists (including the state) to teach its subjects the proper way to see and unsee and preserve the violent status quo.
Wow. Tough stuff Rachel. Personally I don't think anyone *deserves* to die. Charlie Kirk just reaped the reward of his own philosophy. In the USA you have to be careful about exercising the first amendment because of the second amendment.
Very well said. It's very easy to get swept up in our ape Brains and go "I want this person to die" but the logical part of you goes "but who controls the death??"
I don't think the death penalty should be an option in our government. However, as you mentioned, there are countries (like Denmark for example, I think it was Denmark at least) that have polished the art of reforming those with a criminal history, usually with simple basics like housing and food security. While it may not be able to help everyone, even "unreformable" criminals can still live and work like those tribal people you mentioned.
I have written in my book, Being Restorative, about the human propensity to elevate humanity and individual humans above other beings, to the peril of all. What I wish to say here is that your essay compels me to acknowledge that the Quaranic verse, Surah Al-Ma'idah (5:32), which states that "whoever kills a person it is as if he has killed all of humanity, and whoever saves a life, it is as if he has saved the life of all of humanity" which also appears in Jewish teachings (the tradition in which I was raised) somehow dwells atavistically in me. I am not suggesting the verse is true; I am only acknowledging its potency in my ethical DNA.
I think of Bryan Stevenson, the US lawyer and author of Just Mercy, who wrote about the death penalty— the question is not whether a person deserves to die, the question is do we deserve to decide? My friend Obie Weathers has lived on death row for 24 years. He is brilliant and his art has been celebrated by Ai Weiwei. I have co-taught a college class with Obie. He lives his Buddhist practice and is my great teacher. And the state of Texas via a jury of his NOT peers condemned him. The daughter of the man he killed would consider Obie's execution a welcome death. I would experience it as a tragedy.
Rachel, I appreciate your courage in calling us to face our hypocrisies and our sentimentalization of individual death, and for creating the space to hold the complexities involved.
Indigenous communities didn’t kill a man for words. They may have shunned them and that wouldn’t be too far for me here. The issue I have is not about how anyone feels about Kirk, it’s about how we as a society start moralizing killing as a solution. Because where does that stop, especially in a deranged society? In many people’s book, you’d be on the list. So unless we can agree this should be condemned, any of us who speak are then a target to another’s perceived morality.
As a society, we've been 'pampered' in the sense that we've had our killing done for us (to this day), be it in the form of colonial dispossession, wars abroad, or just your everyday slaughter of animals. Isn't it a tad hypocritical to condemn this call for more moral clarity, in which a society assumes accountability for its own killing?
A punchy essay and one that made me feel a bit uncomfortable! It highlights for me our cultural lack of coherence about what is most important in our society. I have always been vehemently against the death penalty but after reading this and Raymond’s comment I am now questioning that stance.
The best I can say at present is that under our current penal system I am still of that belief but I could see that in a system that was based on shared values the persistent damaging of those values could in the worst case scenario and with no other way of protecting the society merit death. The calculation in such a case would be on radically different terms, though, from our present judicial model.
I’m not fully convinced but this is definitely food for thought!
I too feel no sadness about Kirk's death. On the other hand, the way indigenous societies deal with psychopaths is a form of due process. There is common agreement that they should be mocked, ostracized, and in extreme cases, killed. This may work in closed societies. In our large, (more) open society, common agreement says that's not how we deal with psychopaths, unless, in some states here, they have been proved murderers themselves. Is Kirk's speech despicable? Yes. But in democracies, even horribly flawed ones, killing someone because of their views puts EVERYONE at risk. This is not about empathy. (Keep in mind, it's looking very likely he was killed by someone who found his views to be not sufficiently extreme...)
I find it deeply troubling that people are so quick to declare what is right and wrong - I may or may not agree with you on his values, but the minute we all group think and declare one human as more worthy of life than another - isn’t that Nazism? Eugenics? KKK? Even though you are convinced your moral compass is correct. Isn’t that the point of history .. Hitler thought he was morally superior and correct. As does the army in Sudan rampaging and killing. We can’t stop the process of debate and disagreement that is what makes society thrive. I do appreciate the provocative article though - it’s good to challenge us all.
He was a nasty piece of work, but who decides who deserves to die? Any of us could piece together some logic that concludes some person in the public eye is too evil to allow to live any more. The examples you give are punishments decided by societies, rather than a lone gunman.
Exactly this! And also if we don't want to celebrate his death, it's also completely fine feeling absolutely no sadness about it. My compassion is better routed elsewhere – with people, animals, and the planet suffering and dying.
💯
I see a lot of tip toeing and so called moralizing around this death. We are so fucked up and doomed.Charlie was a piece of shit, simply.
It is unfortunate that the whole world seems to be spiralling into hate.
Wake up people, it does not have to be this way. Or does it?
There is a parable in which the Buddha kills a sea captain. Strange as it sounds, perhaps it offers the better lesson.
In this story, the Buddha in a past life was a ship’s captain. Faced with a murderous man intent on slaughtering hundreds of merchants, he made the fateful choice to kill the captain himself. The act broke the precept of nonviolence, yet it was guided by compassion. Not only did it save the lives of the merchants, it also spared the murderer from the far greater karmic weight of mass killing. This is the principle of skillful means: intention can transform even a violent act into an expression of compassion. Morality is rarely simple. What matters is not the outward appearance of our actions but the heart behind them. True compassion sometimes requires bearing personal sacrifice to prevent deeper suffering. The takeaway is that the Buddha holds even the perceived evil one in his heart.
This points us back to the Buddhist teaching of karma. It is not punishment, not revenge, not a divine hammer waiting to strike. The Buddha defined karma simply as volition, as the force of our intentional actions. He also warned that the unfolding of karma is one of the great imponderables, not something we can wield against others like a curse. To say of someone, “he brought his death upon himself,” may sound like the voice of justice, but it is in fact turning Dharma into a weapon, spreading more hatred instead of easing it.
So the harder question remains. In the face of evil, what is asked of us? Is it enough to hold those who commit harm, even those who might harm us, in our hearts with love and compassion? Or is this naïve? Is it wishful thinking? Do we have a duty to save them from themselves, from the destructive karma they are building?
Here I think of Antony and the Johnsons’ song Hitler in My Heart. I read it as a meditation on facing the darkest parts of human existence and holding them, not with rejection, but with compassion. To carry “Hitler in my heart” is to acknowledge that cruelty and horror live within the human condition, and yet to keep them within the embrace of love. The refrain that “flowers grow from corpses” suggests that even in the most horrific and broken places, beauty and renewal are possible. By embracing the shadow, instead of pushing it away, there is the possibility of healing, even transformation.
The plea, “Don’t punish me for wanting your love inside of me”, speaks to the vulnerability of this work. It is the cry of someone who knows the risk of confronting darkness, who hopes that love, both for oneself and from others, might become the force that changes everything. In this light, the song is not despair but a meditation on the redemptive power of compassion, the only force that can turn even evil into something life-affirming.
And yet the question lingers. Is it enough simply to hold compassion for those who do harm? Can this actually help dissipate their actions and the suffering they cause? Or is compassion only for our own healing, while the harm rolls on unchecked?
I think again of the Dalai Lama’s retelling of stories from Tibetan monks who survived the Chinese prisons. One account comes from Palden Gyatso, who endured thirty-three years of imprisonment and torture. When asked what he feared most, he did not speak of death or pain, but of losing compassion for his captors. Another version comes from Phakyab Rinpoche, who also admitted that his deepest fear was not to keep compassion alive for those who had inflicted such cruelty.
Testimonies from the Cultural Revolution echo this. Monks and lamas were beaten, humiliated, and sometimes forced to witness or even participate in violence against their own teachers. Yet what shines through these stories is not only the brutality endured, but the spiritual struggle to resist hatred. The Dalai Lama often highlights these examples because they reveal the real measure of strength: the refusal to let compassion die, even in the face of atrocity.
That thread runs through the parable, the song, and the testimony. Compassion is not weakness. It is the only way the cycle of hatred can be broken. To hold compassion for those who cause suffering is not to excuse them. It is to resist becoming like them. It is to protect the possibility of healing, not only for ourselves, but perhaps even for them.
Beautiful, thank you.
Thank you, you inspired me to writing this up into a Substack of my own. It also helps places my reply to you into its original context.
https://open.substack.com/pub/ray256/p/flowers-from-corpses-on-karma-compassion?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=58rpvw
Two thought-provoking essays for the price of one! In my heart I feel the truth of intention as the crucial element but culturally I’m met with the primacy of action and outcome. If a moment’s inattention while driving leaves me on the other side of the road and nothing happens there is no societal consequence. If it leads to death or injury the consequences are grave. We are also inculcated with the maxim “the way to hell is paved with good intentions”.
These are not conversations that we have in the public sphere but are so important in sharing a cultural space with each other.
I wanted to add this, because my thoughts turned to the horror of the Genocide in Gaza too.
The loss of Charlie Kirk, tragic as it was, and the suffering in Gaza are worlds apart in scale, but the moral challenge is the same. How do we confront violence, hatred, and loss without letting our hearts harden? Justice, law, and compassion are key.
Charlie Kirk’s rhetoric, often rooted in hate speech, contributed to harm and division. That does not make him deserving of murder. Justice will see his killer tried and convicted in court. Proper laws, like those in the UK that prevent hate speech, and stricter U.S. gun regulations limiting arms to organized militias rather than individuals, might have prevented some of the harm surrounding him.
At the same time, justice must extend to those who incite violence and hatred on a mass scale, politicians, leaders, and soldiers whose actions fuel war and genocide. From both sides of the Palestinian conflict, including Hamas backers and the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, those responsible must be held accountable in court.
Justice is best served through law, not hatred. Those who commit cold-blooded crimes, whether murder or genocide, are to be condemned and held accountable, not avenged. Compassion, not hatred, is what allows justice and humanity to prevail.
Thank you for yours comments. Honestly, think that pieces like Rachel's and comments like yours make me think there really is something valuable within this whole internet/social media experiment
The one thought that I'd like to try to needle through is how we balance that compassion we need with the hatred that we will inevitably feel because even if we want to say that impartial justice is best served through law, the question still persists of how we arrive upon what we decide law is?
A lot of our political issues today boil down to that essential question as what we have agreed upon as law seems to be woefully inadequate
Personally, I think its about holding space for hatred as we try to do so for compassion. It's the reason why Tibetan monks are criticized - one can admire the desire to hold onto compassion, but if compassion and the need to maintain it lead to death and destruction for those around you, why pursue it as an ideal at all?
In many ways this is the fundamental critique of the left - the extreme tolerance preached leads to cultural and eventually societal destruction. I disagree, but I can't pretend it is not a seductive argument and one that I believe is seducing men and women around the world.
Do you have any ideas on how the left manages to hold on to its righteous hatred while also maintaining our compassion? My best guess is that the difficulty I have answering this is why most laws are written collectively
I share your sense that there are no easy solutions here. The roots of these killings are complex and tangled, and it would be naïve to imagine that we can neatly disentangle the political from the personal in every case. Like you, I can see how violence inevitably becomes politicised, and how easily narratives are shaped to fit agendas. That in itself is a tragedy layered upon the first.
Where I perhaps place most of my hope is in breaking the cycle of hatred that fuels both the act and its aftermath. If every outrage only hardens divisions and deepens binaries, then we condemn ourselves to repeat it. Dialogue built on respect, honesty, and a genuine will to restore democracy to reason is the only way forward I can see. It is not easy, nor is it certain, but without it we surrender the possibility of something better.
So while we may not have solutions ready to hand, perhaps the shared recognition that hatred cannot be the ground of our politics is at least the beginning of one.
Well said!
Oh wow, this was a heavy, yet beautiful read. Thanks so much, Raymond, this gave me lots to think about.
Thought-provoking piece that is bound to ruffle some feathers, starting with the title itself...
I don't have to celebrate or condone what happened to Kirk, I simply acknowledging that Kirk celebrated and condoned what happened to Kirk. He virtually welcomed what happened to him. You reap what you sow, so you'll have to forgive me that I feel not for Charlie, but for people he wanted to die and/or suffer, Palestinians and raped children included. He stood for fascism and fascism is violence by definition. The thing is, it's more comforting to scream at those who make you uncomfortable, like people who have zero tolerance for fascism, than to face and process your own complicity in fascism. As a civilisation, we virtually run on comfort, convenience and normalisation, and it's incredibly disturbing to even whisper "our whole existence is violence" or "violence is our status quo."
I've always maintained that the sole reason Western society (across the "political divide," for lack of better term) is shocked and opts for tiptoeing around deaths like this is not because we truly detest violence and think it's not the answer, but because we're conditioned to unsee and normalise everyday violence that keeps the state apparatus. This led to some incredibly heated debates over the years.
Kirk's murder isn't an exception, it's the everyday, lived reality for millions. However, you'll see it as a shocking exception and a sign of end times if you believe you've lived in a predominantly peaceful and non-violent world up to this point. It will be an exception that shakes your worldview if you don't see poverty as violence, if you don't see millions of hungry children as an act of violence - including those in your very neighbourhood whose predicament you see as simply "unfortunate." There are still people who don't apply the word "violence" to ICE kidnapping people doing their grocery shopping and collecting their kids from school. Food deserts, soil riddled with cancer-inducing chemicals, undrinkable water are all violence by nature. But it's all oh-so-unfortunate and something else, just not violence. The state exists thanks to violence and persists thanks to violence, and is the only beneficiary of us buying the normalisation and blindfolds.
You're very right that the ultimate core of this is anthropocentrism. Human supremacy over nature is the first step that eventually transforms into supremacy of certain humans over other humans. All supremacy depends on violence, so it's the prerogative of all supremacists (including the state) to teach its subjects the proper way to see and unsee and preserve the violent status quo.
I found this very informative and thought-provoking. Thank you.
Very well said. No sadness or outrage over here
Wow. That tells it like it is. You have courage. I zgree agree with you.
Wow. Tough stuff Rachel. Personally I don't think anyone *deserves* to die. Charlie Kirk just reaped the reward of his own philosophy. In the USA you have to be careful about exercising the first amendment because of the second amendment.
Very well said. It's very easy to get swept up in our ape Brains and go "I want this person to die" but the logical part of you goes "but who controls the death??"
I don't think the death penalty should be an option in our government. However, as you mentioned, there are countries (like Denmark for example, I think it was Denmark at least) that have polished the art of reforming those with a criminal history, usually with simple basics like housing and food security. While it may not be able to help everyone, even "unreformable" criminals can still live and work like those tribal people you mentioned.
Rachel, I appreciate how your essay invites me to consider the dimensionality of your position. First, I recommend to your readers Frederick Joseph's brilliant piece. https://frederickjoseph.substack.com/p/the-guns-eulogy-for-charlie-kirk
I have written in my book, Being Restorative, about the human propensity to elevate humanity and individual humans above other beings, to the peril of all. What I wish to say here is that your essay compels me to acknowledge that the Quaranic verse, Surah Al-Ma'idah (5:32), which states that "whoever kills a person it is as if he has killed all of humanity, and whoever saves a life, it is as if he has saved the life of all of humanity" which also appears in Jewish teachings (the tradition in which I was raised) somehow dwells atavistically in me. I am not suggesting the verse is true; I am only acknowledging its potency in my ethical DNA.
I think of Bryan Stevenson, the US lawyer and author of Just Mercy, who wrote about the death penalty— the question is not whether a person deserves to die, the question is do we deserve to decide? My friend Obie Weathers has lived on death row for 24 years. He is brilliant and his art has been celebrated by Ai Weiwei. I have co-taught a college class with Obie. He lives his Buddhist practice and is my great teacher. And the state of Texas via a jury of his NOT peers condemned him. The daughter of the man he killed would consider Obie's execution a welcome death. I would experience it as a tragedy.
Rachel, I appreciate your courage in calling us to face our hypocrisies and our sentimentalization of individual death, and for creating the space to hold the complexities involved.
Indigenous communities didn’t kill a man for words. They may have shunned them and that wouldn’t be too far for me here. The issue I have is not about how anyone feels about Kirk, it’s about how we as a society start moralizing killing as a solution. Because where does that stop, especially in a deranged society? In many people’s book, you’d be on the list. So unless we can agree this should be condemned, any of us who speak are then a target to another’s perceived morality.
As a society, we've been 'pampered' in the sense that we've had our killing done for us (to this day), be it in the form of colonial dispossession, wars abroad, or just your everyday slaughter of animals. Isn't it a tad hypocritical to condemn this call for more moral clarity, in which a society assumes accountability for its own killing?
I'm not sure what you are asking...
A punchy essay and one that made me feel a bit uncomfortable! It highlights for me our cultural lack of coherence about what is most important in our society. I have always been vehemently against the death penalty but after reading this and Raymond’s comment I am now questioning that stance.
The best I can say at present is that under our current penal system I am still of that belief but I could see that in a system that was based on shared values the persistent damaging of those values could in the worst case scenario and with no other way of protecting the society merit death. The calculation in such a case would be on radically different terms, though, from our present judicial model.
I’m not fully convinced but this is definitely food for thought!
I too feel no sadness about Kirk's death. On the other hand, the way indigenous societies deal with psychopaths is a form of due process. There is common agreement that they should be mocked, ostracized, and in extreme cases, killed. This may work in closed societies. In our large, (more) open society, common agreement says that's not how we deal with psychopaths, unless, in some states here, they have been proved murderers themselves. Is Kirk's speech despicable? Yes. But in democracies, even horribly flawed ones, killing someone because of their views puts EVERYONE at risk. This is not about empathy. (Keep in mind, it's looking very likely he was killed by someone who found his views to be not sufficiently extreme...)
I find it deeply troubling that people are so quick to declare what is right and wrong - I may or may not agree with you on his values, but the minute we all group think and declare one human as more worthy of life than another - isn’t that Nazism? Eugenics? KKK? Even though you are convinced your moral compass is correct. Isn’t that the point of history .. Hitler thought he was morally superior and correct. As does the army in Sudan rampaging and killing. We can’t stop the process of debate and disagreement that is what makes society thrive. I do appreciate the provocative article though - it’s good to challenge us all.
I agree! However, note that I argued the opposite of declaring one human life as more or less valuable.
Great Rachel, totally agree. But I do feel Iain Mcgilchrist did contradict himself quite a lot, and does seem biased in a conservative sort of way.
He was a nasty piece of work, but who decides who deserves to die? Any of us could piece together some logic that concludes some person in the public eye is too evil to allow to live any more. The examples you give are punishments decided by societies, rather than a lone gunman.
Agreed! Which is why I didn’t say I condone the action of the gunman, but am rather speaking to the result.
And likewise, the gunman didn't kill him in defense of others.