THE HERO IS CAPABLE OF SELF-SACRIFICE The preceding two exceptions aside, it can be pretty safely said that the villain is not capable of self-sacrifice while the hero is. The Seven Samurai are willing to give their lives for the villagers. Clarice Starling enters serial killer Buffalo Bill’s den in pitch blackness to save the murderer’s captive, Catherine Martin. Sydney Carton willingly takes Edward Darnay’s place beneath the guillotine in A Tale of Two Cities. Those are heroes. The hero is capable of the ultimate sacrifice. Unpublished Black Irish JAB, “Heroes and Villains” But the hero must not throw away her life (or her happiness or cherished dream or her future) willy-nilly. The act must be taken for the good of another or for the greater good of the community — local or global or cosmic.

Punishment is a notion that humankind gradually outgrows.

A person has done evil, so another person, or a group of people, in order to fight this evil, cannot think of anything better than to create another evil, which they call punishment.

Every punishment is based, not on logic or on the feeling of justice, but on the desire to wish evil on those who have done evil to you or to another person.

Capital punishment is a very clear proof that our society’s organization is far from being a Christian one.

Everything about our present system of punishments and about all criminal law will be thought of by future generations in the same way that we think of cannibalism or human sacrifice to ancient pagan gods.

“How did they not see the uselessness and cruelty of those things which they did?” our descendants will say about us.

To punish others is like putting more wood in the fire.

Every crime already has punishment in itself, and it is more cruel and more just than the punishment created by people.

We should remember that the desire to punish is part of a very low animal feeling which should be suppressed, and which should not be a part of our reality.