OSHO International Foundation presents
Osho: The Rule of a Barbarous Society
The death penalty
is a degrading proof
of man's
inhumanity to man.
It shows
that man is still
living in the barbarous age.
Civilization
still remains an idea,
it has not become a reality.
The death penalty
is so idiotic
that you will have to look
from all the aspects,
to understand why
such an idiotic thing
has continued
in all the civilizations,
cultures, nations.
Even
in a few countries where
it was dropped,
it has been adopted again.
In a few other countries
where it has been dropped,
it has been replaced by
life imprisonment --
which is worse than
the death penalty itself.
It is better
to die in a single moment,
rather than
to go on dying slowly
for fifty years, sixty years.
Changing
from the death penalty
to a life sentence
is going
not
towards civilization,
it is going still deeper
into barbarous,
inhuman
darkness,
unconsciousness.
The first thing to remember is
that the death penalty is not really
a punishment.
If you cannot
give life as a reward,
you cannot give death as a penalty.
This is a simple logic,
there cannot be two opinions about it.
If you cannot give life to people,
what right do you have to take their life?
This is how
man goes on saying one thing
and goes on doing just its opposite.
He talks about being civilized, cultured...
he is not civilized, not cultured.
The death penalty is proof
enough.
This is the rule
of a barbarous
society:
an eye for an eye,
and a head for a head.
If somebody
cuts your one hand,
then in a barbarous society,
this is a simple law:
one of your hands should be cut.
The same
has been carried down the ages.
The death penalty
is
exactly the same law:
an eye for an eye.
Of a man it is
thought
that he has murdered somebody;
then he should be murdered.
But it is strange: if
killing somebody
is a crime,
then how can you
remove crime from society by
committing the same crime
again?
There was one man murdered;
now there are two men murdered.
And it is not certain that this
man murdered that man,
because to prove a murder is not
an easy thing.
And if murder is wrong,
then whether it is committed
by the man or by the society
and its court, that makes no difference.
Killing certainly is a crime.
The death penalty is a crime
committed by the society
against
a single individual,
who is helpless.
I cannot call it a penalty,
it is a crime.
And you can understand
why it is committed:
it is a revenge.
The society is taking revenge;
because the man did not follow
the rules of the society,
the society is ready to kill him.
But nobody
bothers
that when somebody
murders,
it shows that the man
is psychologically sick.
Rather than
sending him into imprisonment
or
to be executed,
he should be sent
into a nursing home.
Source: From Darkness To Light #4 Copyright © Osho International Foundation, Switzerland. OSHO ® is a registered TM.
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