106: Trapped in Bottom of the 9th (4)

【No Sensible Option Left】
We can’t kill our way out of killings.
 
It’s because when we award a “License to kill for justice” to everyone for every life of families/friends murdered away, this license will multiply itself exponentially, thwarting humanity from ever catching up no matter how many murders/slaughters we embark on. Soon, the killings will spin out of control.
 
Look at the current atrocities unfolding in Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Palestine. Even when we only consider these two on-going wars, the Palestinian (approximately 33,091 people), Israeli (1,410), Ukrainian (40,000), and Russian (60) life lost forever grow each day.
 
Here, we must remember that the vast majority of them are innocent people, having nothing to do with the initial killing.
 
What’s more, roughly 1.7 million Palestinian people of Gaza have been forcefully displaced by the Israeli military attacks, losing their livelihood, and now barely surviving as refugees. Likewise, the Russian military invasion has forced 10 million Ukrainian people into displacement, both domestically and internationally, losing nearly everything they had built in life.
 
And now, when we confront with full transparency the massive devastations brought on by all the wars/conflicts from past to present, everywhere. If we continue to award a “License to kill for justice” to everyone for every life of families/friends murdered away, then no matter how many murders/slaughters we embark on, or rather the more we embark on them, this license will multiply itself exponentially, thwarting humanity from ever catching up.
 
After all, when we listen to our wisdom and humbly study/think about the seemingly endless wars/conflicts repeated throughout the history of mankind, we’d come to see the simple truth. That is, at the core of this perpetual pattern is our faulty justification for retaliatory killings in the name of self-defense; the “License to kill for justice.”
 
In all fairness, a retaliatory killing might buy us some time; it may even stop the bleeding for a little while. But make no mistake--it’s at best temporary. In the long run, there’s no end to this self-defense logic because the innocent people who have nothing to do with the initial killing get caught up in these retaliatory attacks. 
 
“They killed us first, so us killing them back is self-defense” may sound emotionally appealing, but the problem with this logic is that it’s nearly impossible to precisely target any retaliatory attack at only “those who killed us first.”
 
“But if there’s no justice in killing them back, then what are we to do? Doing nothing means the innocent people will continue to be massacred. My family and I may be next. We have no other choice but to kill them back!!”
 
In this way, when we’re on the brink of elimination with our backs against the wall, we're left with no sensible option to choose from. In fact, we’re only left with unreasonable/unjust options, pressed to hastily make sense of killing newborn babies, small children, and innocent people; while in the back of our minds we know none of that really makes any sense at all.
 
This indeed is getting “trapped” in the Bottom-of-the-9th-inning-with-2outs.
 
Once you walk into this trap, you quickly get swallowed up. You get suckered into a place where there’s no sensible option left; where justice or wisdom hold negligible value.
 
Nevertheless, even when we’re trapped, or regardless of how much sorrows/agonies fall upon us. They don’t alter the fact that injustice is still injustice; that it’s not right to willfully ignore injustice.
 
So then, what can we do? In the next post, let’s connect to that point.

Read Next: Trapped in Bottom of the 9th (5)【From Top of the 1st】
Read Previous: Trapped in Bottom of the 9th (3)【Can't Kill Our Way Out of Killings】
 
Complete Series: Trapped in Bottom of the 9th (1)～(5)
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Read Theme: Violence/Peace