[John Kilduff]

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What's wrong with revenge exactly? Not that I think the criminal justice system should be about "revenge" entirely, but ask yourself what "justice" means in this case...

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I don't think retributive justice (crudely referred to as 'revenge' here) is necessarily something to scoff at. I'm happy when people who do bad things are punished, and I suspect most other people are too.

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I'm generally saddened when people are hurt (even if they may well "deserve" it), and may I say I think God is saddened too.

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Imagine a hypothetical world where we could find some terrible criminal monster like Dennis Rader and give him some kind of ankle bracelet that we could know, with 100% certainty, would prevent him from killing again. Let's say we've also concluded, somehow, that Rader is 100% un-rehabilitatable. And by some magic, we've also managed to conclude that it's completely impossible someone will ever repeat his crimes. Given this, should we allow him to live a free and unencumbered life, sans punishment, despite the fact that he's caused so much pain, suffering, and misery in his community? Our hypothetical has magically addressed the concerns about deterrence and rehabilitation -- but I many people would be comfortable letting Rader go free in such a hypothetical. And I think the answer is clear as to why most people wouldn't be comfortable, and it's because I think a 'just' society would necessarily have to punish someone like Rader, justified by the simple notion that he deserves it. And I would be surprised if many people would disagree with this.

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I happen to disagree with that perspective, and see zero value in adding to the suffering present in an already greatly suffering world. If someone is no longer capable of doing harmful, evil things to others, then in my opinion there is no value in making that person suffer. All that would do, in my view, would be to increase the total amount of suffering in the world.

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That isn't to say I approve of severe forms of physical punishment, but I'm a firm believer that getting what's 'deserved' is part (and probably only a part) of achieving justice.

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"Achieving justice" by concentrating on the negative side of the equation is a seductive mirage, especially since we cannot ensure that good people are rewarded by good things happening for them to balance the scales. Evil things happen routinely to good people, and good people are frequently unrewarded for their good deeds in this world (though they may be rewarded in the hereafter); so by focusing on punishing evil, we tip the scales in the world towards a greater amount of evil than good occurring in the world as a whole. As if evil doesn't already outweigh the good in this world!

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Having said that, I think especially important for a moral society to try to balance desert with fairness. For example, I may think a rapist deserves to sit in prison for 10 years for their crime, but if we've only been punishing other rapists to 1 year in prison, we should probably take that into consideration. There are other factors to take into consideration as well. But I think desert is one of those factors we should take into consideration, and I think we can defend retributive justice once we accept the Rader-type hypothetical and the concept of just desert.

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I see your point about relative justice, but IMO humans should not be trying to play God or the role of Universal Arbiter of Justice by meting out retribution for evil acts.

When humans try to achieve that, in addition to the tainting of results which often occurs due to bias or limited perspective, there is the basic truth that we have far less power to do greatly good things for people than we have the power to do to greatly evil things to them.

Retribution, while admittedly attractive in some fashion, is a lower human emotion which we should strive to suppress and overcome. There is no way to achieve true justice in this world, and by enacting punishments purely for the sake of trying to achieve some abstract sense of justice, the human race descends deeper overall into hatred, pain and misery.

Will not the person upon whom punishment or vengeance is enacted, frequently feel that it is unfairly applied to them? So they will harbor resentment and possibly try to seek vengeance of some sort of their own (which may even be possibly misdirected against innocent targets). Thus the vicious cycle continues.

The Buddha said: "Only by love can hatred be appeased or dissolved; never by hatred can hatred be appeased". What type of a future world do we wish to see? A world in which the cycle of hatred and retribution continues indefinitely, or a world in which humans eventually move beyond that?

I wonder how many among us happened to feel any compassion or sorrow whatsoever for Saddam Hussein, when the tyrant was hanged? As evil as his deeds were, he still probably somehow felt justified with his actions in life, and his death was a personal tragedy on grand scale for him. Even tyrants are deservant of some degree of compassion. As Samuel Clemens wrote: "Who, if anyone, prays for the Devil? Yet what sinner is more in need of our prayers than he?"

Just as Jesus forgave those who tormented him, we should strive to feel and give love even to those who despise and mistreat us. This is the highest human spiritual potential, and pragmatically speaking, it is the only way the human race will be spared on this Earth once the proliferation of technologies of mass destruction become far more developed and proliferated. Even if you disagree with the spiritual points I am hoping to convey, a focus upon retribution and hatred will ultimately destroy the human race if that focus is not widely supplanted by the spirit of compassion and mercy. This is so because the human-focused power to destroy is always greater than the human-focused power to create. So if equal portions of love and hatred are everpresent in the human race, then when the power to destroy grows great and widespread enough, the human race must eventually self-destruct. By focusing upon the retribution motif, the total sum of pain, suffering and resentment in this world is increased. Attempting to achieve "justice" by increasing the amount of suffering and resentment in the world, only pushes the human race a bit closer to this dire precipice which looms so threateningly in the not-so-tremendously-distant future.

What I believe to be necessary necessary, if the human race is to survive long-term, is for the higher motif of love and forgiveness to surpass the baser urge for retribution or vengeance.

If we wish the human race to survive, the message of love and forgiveness as embodied and displayed by Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior should become our focus and aspiration. This is true for pragmatic and worldly reasons, so I won't even talk now about potential benefits in the afterlife.

A world in which love overcomes hatred would also be a better place in which to live, wouldn't it? Presently the struggle between love and hatred rages on, as it has for milennia. Which side would you most like to see win that struggle?

Every little thing counts, and I think the human race would be acting very wisely by trying to increase the amount of love and gratitude in the world rather than by increasing the amount of hatred and resentment in the world. When someone feels mistreated or unfairly punished (and who often does not?), it often does not end there. That person goes on and ends up passing that hatred to others by doing something bad to others (even if unawares, or even if those others are not to the actual source of their resentment. On lesser scale, when someone feels cranky due to unpleasant things having happened to them, they often treat others more poorly).

So this is the quandary the human race is in. The choice is open to all of us. I suggest looking at the gift of pure love that Jesus gave us all, but even if you are not religious, we have that choice before us on a daily basis. Do we choose Love, or do we choose Hatred? Whichever we choose, the actual effects of our choices ripple outward endlessly in an interconnected universe.

Well, thanks to everyone for reading.