Civilization War and the Death Penalty
We are built around logic as our inner being. This article proposes that Civilization is logically incompatible with war and the death penalty. The latter two are linked by scale. The key is given in circlemath, which is logic, the dynamic of thinking, applied in the pure case of number.
War and the death penalty are a linked duality. Each is a form of killing. Logically there is a duality in Civilization itself. To specify this we will refer to Civilization, capitalized, as its mature and complete form, leaving the lower case, civilization, for its incomplete, partial and incipient form. It then follows as a logical truism, that because Civilization and war are incompatible, Civilization and the death penalty are also incompatible.
In this way we define a new and higher meaning for civilization. Attaining to maturity it gains a capital C, becoming Civilization as an ideal state and goal for our higher aspirations. This will be our world without war, built upon the foundation of a world without capital punishment.
Both types of society, with and without capital punishment exist today, and the struggle between them is in the balance. In this circumstance it is essential to grasp the larger picture, that the struggle to end the death penalty is equally the struggle to free humanity from the scourge of war and the threat of war.
Even as we realize this we may feel individually helpless, that such issues are beyond our reach, that we are the pawns and they the players. They come into focus however the moment we make the connection that war is but the death penalty writ large. The latter is but the stamp of the social rule under which people live in nations harboring the death penalty, applied outwardly in international relations.
Seeing this gives a different picture. The final outcome remains beyond our individual means, but it puts a link in place. We are involved. We have an opinion, which taken en mass in democratic countries gravitates to expression in the political process. We may or may not vote, nevertheless, whether we do or not, our opinion still carries weight in the tide of social affairs.
Tens of thousands have expressed their views on the death penalty through the Internet, views which then resonates in other media. They tend to dwell upon particular instances of crime murder and execution, but extensive coverage is also given to the situation world wide, shaping the form of a general consensus. Beyond this horizon we have the unthinkable, the insanity of war, brought into view by the imperative of civilization's need for unification and the failure of forceful means to attain the desired result.
We can now come to the conclusion. It is that a world without the death penalty and a world without war belong to the one stable, and that these two ‘withouts’ constitute and define Civilization as a state that currently does not exist, nor has ever existed in the past.
We pride ourselves on our civilization without seeing that it falls short of Civilization. We need to effect a change, and in this respect we are not helpless for we have the means to do so within our reach. If we obtain the possible, a world wherein capital punishment is stilled, the threat of war will similarly recede, for a change of mood will overtake the world, signaling the threshold of the Millennium in the dawn of a new, a truly human Civilization on Earth.
Stephen W. Taylor MbChB, Dec. 5th 2005