Introduction: The meaning of our lives is to respect the lives of others.
Author | Shuyingjun
14th article in 2021, 293rd original article in total
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Betsy, a reporter for a News Outlet in New York, was suddenly given a special interview assignment to interview a prisoner sentenced to death for rape and murder.
The death row inmate, David Gore, was about to be executed three days later.
In other words, Gore will tell a stranger the story of his life in the last three days of his life.
Filmed in 2003, The Life of David Gore uses a sad story to present the audience with the conflict and struggle, maintenance and struggle of countless people behind the controversial topic of abolition of the death penalty.
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Gore was originally a professor of philosophy at a university and a leading member of a abolitionist organization.
Gore was accused of rape and murder by his colleague and friend Instance Haravi in the organization.
During a three-day interview with reporter Betsy, Gore reflected on his failed family, failed jobs, and failed careers.
Gore and his wife had a long-term relationship, and later because of a rape charge against Gore by a female student, he not only divorced his wife, but also lost his job as a professor.
Although the schoolgirl later dropped the rape charge against Gore, Gore has since been labeled a rapist.
Not only did he fail to find a job, he was unable to see his son, and even his only house was auctioned off by his wife, causing Gore to sleep in a car every day.
Gore could only borrow wine every day to pour sorrow, and eventually had severe alcohol dependence.
The only person who could comfort Gore at this point was his friend Harawi in the abolitionist organization.
But the group's work has been repeatedly frustrated in Texas, where the governor is a tough defender of the death penalty system and has vowed to send all prisoners sentenced to death to electric chairs.
Al Gore and Harawi, despite all the ways they have tried, could not prevent each of the pending prisoners from being executed.
Both Gore and Harawi developed a serious sense of frustration.
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It was at this time that Harawi was found dead in his home by a neighbor.
Her hands were handcuffed and locked, her mouth was taped to her mouth, and she died of suffocation by putting a plastic bag on her head.
Because the police found Gore's fingerprints on the plastic bag and extracted Gore's semen from Haravi's body, the suspect was quickly locked as Gore.
The police arrested Gore on charges of rape and murder, and prosecutors quickly brought him to court for trial, until six years of lengthy judicial proceedings, culminating in the final moments of Gore's execution.
But in the last three days of his life, Gore chose reporters to interview him, apparently not simply to write a biography of his failed life.
As the interview progressed, reporter Betsy gradually discovered that behind Gore's murder, there was a completely different version of the truth.
And in this truth, it is the great self-sacrifice of Al Gore and Harawi, the abolitionists, for their goals.
Although The Life of David Gore is a 2003 film, I do not want to fully disclose the plot in my article, because it will make the audience who has not seen the film lose the greatest pleasure of watching the movie, that is, the shock and shock that the mystery is revealed.
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With two flowers blooming and one branch each, this article is mainly about the theme of the film: the death penalty.
The topic of the controversy over the abolition of the death penalty in the film is a worldwide problem that has not been solved until now.
When one person illegally deprives another person of his life, can the State deprive the prisoner of his life in the name of the law, lawfully and calmly?
Countries and supporters of abolitionists have 10,000 reasons to abolish the death penalty, but there will also be 10,000 firm reasons to keep the death penalty in countries that still retain the death penalty and supporters of the death penalty system.
When both sides of the argument have very good and convincing reasons, then it is clear that the question they are arguing about is no longer a multiple-choice question, but a judgment question.
This is the case with the battle over the abolition of the death penalty.
It is not a simple legal issue, nor is it a simple social governance issue, or even a simple value issue.
It's really about our attitude towards life.
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I think that how to understand the value of life needs to be observed and judged from two dimensions.
The first dimension is how to look at the dominance of life.
In the ancient Chinese Han political ethics work "The Book of Filial Piety", it is recorded that "the skin of the body, the parents who receive it, do not dare to destroy it, and the beginning of filial piety is also the beginning." ”
The Christian view of ethics holds that human beings are not the masters of their own lives, God is, and that by depriving them of the same kind of life, human beings are fighting with God for dominance over man. So both killing and committing suicide are sinful acts that the Bible does not allow.
In the Constitution, the fundamental law of the country, china also stipulates that citizens enjoy the right to life, and the right to life is the basis of all other rights.
It also shows that life is the only prerequisite for a person to be human and must be articulated by the supreme law of a country.
So you see, whether ancient or modern, or at home and abroad, the definition and dominance of human life depends on the highest perspective outside the subject of life, such as parents, God, and national laws.
The subject of the right to life, on the other hand, has lost the first leading qualification for its own life.
The second dimension is how to look at the attributes of life.
"Killing to pay for life" is the simple concept of justice in Our country, which believes that life can be exchanged in equal quantities, in fact, it is based on a quantifiable dimension of life.
But is life a quantifiable material existence, or is it the highest value object in the universe?
The debate over the abolition of the death penalty, once it comes to this level of contemplation, the opposition between the two sides of the debate will become less black and white, either one or the other.
The so-called "right and wrong can be judged, and there is no right or wrong in value."
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Unfortunately, most of the current debate on the death penalty is still in a very rudimentary dimension, that is, the very utilitarian reality of whether the bad guys are punished and whether justice can be done.
When life is considered within a system of goal attainment, it means that life is instrumentalized and instrumentalized.
Kant said, "Man is not a means, man can only be an end." ”
When the goal is used as a means to achieve the goal, what value and significance does the goal have?
In the same way, when life becomes a means of maintaining life, life is not worthy of our protection and pursuit.
The unlawful deprivation of another person's life by one person is a multiple-choice question; while the lawful deprivation of one's life by a state is a question of value judgment.
There is no door between the two.
This article does not intend to put forward a clear answer to the abolition of the death penalty, as mentioned above, the reason why this question is complicated is because the two sides of the debate rigidly place the issue in two dimensions of the same judgment scale, and persistently hope to judge a high and low.
I just hope that no more lives will be harmed.
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【About the Author】
Shuyingjun, a psychological counselor who does not understand the law, is not a good film critic.
Read movies into poems, and turn words into light.