|
To quote a t-shirt: "Some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them"
You aren't in jail because you killed that person. You are in jail so others will go "Hey, I don't want to go to jail", so you will go "Hey I'd better not kill anymore people when I get out, or I'll go to jail", and to physically prevent you from killing more people during that period of detainment. Putting you in jail doesn't bring back the dead guy. You go to jail to maintain the integrity of the judicial system, so that order in general, is kept.
As to whether or not you should be held responsible, yes, you should. More and more often I'm hearing that criminals are "products of society", that pedophiles were abused as children, etc. Punishment has nothing to do with your specific crime, but more the crime in general.
When you make choices, you go through a thought process, which is influenced by previous experiences, etc. While some would take the view that this means you have no free will, I would say that the fact that you are able to make these choices is free will. Just because you are able to say that a series of events caused you to make the decision that you did, doesn't mean you didn't make the choice. Perhaps you should have considered the consequences more heavily into your thought process.
Hmmm, slightly disjointed, but there you go.
__________________
"Oh, irony! Oh, no, no, we don't get that here. See, uh, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about, uh, '83 when I was the only practitioner of it, and I stopped because I was tired of being stared at."
Omnia mutantu, nos et mutamur in illis.
All things change, and we change with them.
- Neil Gaiman, Marvel 1602
|