In Oklahoma they are thinking about
bringing back the gas chamber because their supply of anaesthetic drugs has run
dry. Or the electric chair, or the
firing squad.
There are a thousand ways to kill a human;
we are very inventive on that score. Thankfully most of the excessively cruel
ones, like hanging the culprit upside down over a sulphur pit, have falling
into disuse. Nowadays for the State to eliminate one of its members there has
to be a swathe of laws to guarantee that the miscreants are put down
mercifully.
In ISIS they don’t waste time with legal
niceties. They are not interested in killing ‘humanely’ like their hypocritical
American cousins. Beating about the Bush is not their style.
Public execution is all the rage. Off with
their heads! And upload it to the web for all to see.
And we do, with morbid
curiosity.
We had believed that the days of barbaric
slaughter were over, a thing of the past, the stuff of History. Wrapped in
comfort and relative security we had faith in the positive evolution of
mankind. But as Lord of the Flies tried to warn us, the barbarian is inside us
all. The veneer of civilisation that we have acquired over the centuries is
fragile and thin. In one generation the culture of millennium is blown away.
We are what we learn. If we are taught to
hate and destroy, we do so with verve and efficiency. If we are told that we
have the right to set ourselves up as judges and executioners, so be it. Let
the guilty tremble, our hands will not shake!
In the name of God, in the name of the Law,
in the name of some Ideology or other, it makes no difference. It is power over
persuasion, obedience over education. That is the real conflict. But it is a
never-ending conflict; we must at all times remain alert and nip these
attitudes in the bud. Not by the use of force, but by the use of reason,
culture, tolerance and humanity.
There is no utopia. The moment we relax our
efforts others will take advantage of that laxity.
And we will be the first
against the wall.
