RE: [pf] use of: 'kill'

At 12:14 16/02/00 -0800, Jill wrote:
> we could probably get a discussion going on all of [Diane and Molly's 
>questions] - they are indeed good. 
>
>I would have a hard time killing a human, ... I think I could indeed do it 
>if my children were in severe danger.
>
[Molly: ]
> ... I could not stand in front of someone and shoot them, no matter what
they were doing. Maybe I could, if they were brutalising someone else.
Maybe to defend myself or someone else from brutality, I could kill another
person.

> If it's OK to point-blank shoot someone who is brutally raping and
torturing a woman -- ... if there is a greater good involved? Is it only OK
to kill someone else to rescue oneself or someone else from death or direct
and utter violence?
>
>Why would it be "better" to kill someone who is hacking someone with a
machete than to kill someone who is making handguns whose only purpose is
to shoot other people? Or someone who is building nuclear weapons, or
someone who is selling drugs that will cause a user to go crazy and kill
his girlfriend, or ...
>indirect violence probably kills more than direct violence (cigarette
ad-man vs. machete-wielding guerilla). Are we just operating on emotional,
gut feeling ...
> If my sole goal were to keep people from being brutally killed, and I
thought violence was a viable means, I would have to also kill abortion
doctors, gun-makers, lots of parents who are violent to their kids and
spouses, etc. I just can't see that as my mission.
>

**  This is a comment on too-common use of the metaphor 'kill' to mean:
'make disappear - vanish - remove'.

**  Police are trained (in the use of guns) to incapacitate the person
threatening them or someone else, not to kill that person. (tully, do you
have that sort of training with your ·357 ? ) After all, the job of the
Police is to bring the offender to justice (in a court), not to execute
'justice' themselves. 

**  A news item yesterday described a case here where a thug was holding a
policeman's head under water in a ditch and another policeman shot and
killed the thug.

**  Evidently, sometimes even here in NZ, and far too often in the USA,
people in an emergency see the purpose of the gun in their hand (or a
machete, though that takes longer) as being to kill the other person.

**  Many (most?) other people in the world regard the US culture as a
culture of violence and over-simple 'solutions'.

**  I worry that this is partly created by the language used (e.g. the
metaphor I mentioned), and the images visualised from the words and seen on
the screens.

**  I don't believe /anyone/ has the right to kill someone else, though I
believe we all have the right to terminate our own life, after some
discussion with friends and relatives. And that extends to the State; it
has no right to kill anyone, though it has the right to make itself (The
Government) vanish. The Crown's 'right' to kill came from the /very/ old
days when the King was believed to be acting as an agent of God - 'the
divine right of Kings'. IMO.  However, a major civilizing influence of
Government was that it took to itself this 'right' to arrest and to kill,
taking it away from all other entities (thugs, Barons, etc.) in the process.

( P.S. I remember first noticing 'killing' being identical with 'vanishing'
in about 1980, with the first world-wide computer game: space-invaders.)

David.
(David MacClement) davd@ihug.co.nz 
www.geocities.com/Athens/Delphi/3142/Pg1-AD11.html
 or better: http://www.emucities.com.au/member/davd/
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