I turned 19-years-old today. It’s quite an odd thing: I’m one year from being twenty.
I know much more than I have all the previous years I’ve been alive. I’m in quite the interesting position in that I have more understanding. The ultimate thing is that I’m much wiser.
After a long meditation and internal struggle, today, on my 19th birthday, I have become certain of a rather radical truth and piece of wisdom: no one deserves to suffer… not a single person. In much of my talks with people about morality, there seems to be a very permissive attitude toward what we do with criminals and wrongdoers. I do not have such an attitude. They believe that “[w]hen some wrong-doers suffer … this suffering is in itself good, or at least not in itself bad” (Parfit, OWM Vol. 2, 429). It is very troubling to me to think that we ever should hurt someone or that someone deserves to suffer. Such a belief must be mistaken. I agree with Parfit that this permissive and reactive attitude is “like some simpler emotions that are had by the animals that are most like us” (OWM Vol. 2, 429).
I may post some stuff soon. I really do apologize for the silence, I’m still figuring things out.
