Fear And Loathing At Executions

I cannot adequately describe how my reading this first person witness account of yet another execution of a living being affected me. The closest I can come is to say that I imagine, as if it were my own, the terror that must overwhelm the condemned who knows that he has been rendered so helpless as to be even deprived of the fight or flight instinct inherently afforded by Nature to all living beings.

Anyone who has given over to the hands of a vet an incurably sick loved dog or cat companion who will euthanize it understands this. Whether one holds his loved companion while the vet injects the lethal cocktail, or watches the loved companion look back at you over the shoulder of the vet carrying it away, wondering what's going on and counting on you to help, knows the feelings I'm trying to express.

It's been a part of me since early childhood to feel horror at even the idea of a helpless being tortured and/or killed. The planned, scheduled and carried out execution of even a person who has admitted to having committed the most awful and heinous of crimes elicits in me, now as an adult, a reaction much like I had as a child when watching a movie of pirates running through people with their swords. I hid my head. I just could not watch. I experienced the the fear, the horror as if I were the helpless one.

There are so many times now that I want to disassociate myself from membership in the species Homo Sapien, even though I know that I have within me the same instincts to hurt, render helpless, frighten and kill other beings.

I wonder if my horror at even giving my loving companion pets over to a vet for merciful relieving it of its pain and suffering, in a strange way, a kind of salvation.

But I wish I knew and could be sure that the being I condemned wasn't overcome with fear.

I wish I knew. I wish I understood.

Leanderthal