Waking Up From Murder

I just awoke from a nap. I was dreaming that I was visiting my step family, who in real life have said that I “deserve to die”. Actually, in the dream, the family I was visiting was a bizarre hodgepodge of past friends, step family and even a reality TV family (kind of a cross between “19 kids and counting” and “little people, big world”). I was sitting in the dining room where two of my real life step-nephews seemed to be doing homework for school. By way of making polite conversation I asked them what grade they were in. The one sitting closest to me, Nick, who in real life, as in the dream, is a very independent young man, told me, “eight”. I said, “Do you mean, eighth grade?” He said contemptuously, “No. We don't have 'grades'. We have 'levels'. We're not like other schools.” I asked, “What do you mean?” And he said, “We believe in the death penalty.” As I started to inquire further I woke up. But even as I lay awake in my jail cell, more questions for my nephew poured through my mind. 'Do you think some people deserve to die?' 'What do you mean by “deserve to die?”' As I lay there, I realized that a person's position on the death penalty is a good divider between basic types of belief systems. And this dream seemed to indicate so by apparently defining an entire school system based on the belief in the death penalty. If you believe in the death penalty, then you essentially believe that some people “deserve to die” (or conversely, “do not deserve to live”). And you can't believe that unless you also believe that there are (and should be) some standards that people must live up to in order to “deserve to live”. You also, by implication, believe that those standards are determinable. And, more importantly, that it is possible to weigh an individual against said determined standards. In short, if you believe in the death penalty, then you believe that humans have the ability to determine (by judgement) the moral worth of other humans. And this belief will determine not only your position on the death penalty, but also your position on many other issues as well, such as whether or not war can be justified on moral grounds (i.e. “in the name of God”). Even a person who calls themselves atheist, is bowing to a false god, if they believe such a thing. I won't go into all the reasons it is impossible for us to morally judge each other, numerous other books have already been written about that (especially the Bible!). But I just wanted to observe what believing in the death penalty really means. I believed I had the ability to judge society once too. And I believed that my ability to judge was superior to those whom I judged. And I carried out my judgements, until a little girl showed me that my ability to judge was pure delusion. That was when I “woke up” in real life!