Death of personality
So I'm still watching my way through Babylon 5, and I just finished the episode, "Passing Through Gethsemane," which got me thinking about something.

In the B5 universe, humans have done away with the death penalty. They felt that it was wrong, a life taken cannot make up for another life taken, or something like that. Instead they have the death of personality. The guilty person's brain is wiped. Their thoughts, memories, everything that made them who they were is erased, and they are implanted with a new personality that wants nothing but to help other people. So the bad guy is gone, and his body spends the rest of its life serving the community with a new personality t...

Death of personality
So I'm still watching my way through Babylon 5, and I just finished the episode, "Passing Through Gethsemane," which got me thinking about something.

In the B5 universe, humans have done away with the death penalty. They felt that it was wrong, a life taken cannot make up for another life taken, or something like that. Instead they have the death of personality. The guilty person's brain is wiped. Their thoughts, memories, everything that made them who they were is erased, and they are implanted with a new personality that wants nothing but to help other people. So the bad guy is gone, and his body spends the rest of its life serving the community with a new personality that enjoys it.

My question is, would that be more humane? You're still killing the guy. I mean, you haven't stopped his heart from beating, but you've made it somebody else's heart. The person who committed the crimes is gone, erased even, which is you're a religious person may have some implications on its own (which was the case in the episode I mentioned). Not only that but then you're creating a new person designed to do what you tell him. It's not slavery, exactly, but is forcing someone into a subservient role ok because you've programmed them to enjoy it? It seems like death might actually be the more humane way to go. What do you guys think?

There's another episode where a woman discovers an alien device that was used to capital punishment by some other race. It drains the life energy from one person and puts it into another. So while the bad guy is being executed, some terminally ill person gets to live. What about that? Is that better? Worse?

On a completely different note, saw Dark Shadows on Friday. It was better than I expected, which isn't saying much as I only decided to see it because it looked so ridiculous that I was curious. There were some pretty funny bits, but overall, it's not really very good. There's some fun to it, but then there's times it seems to forget what it is and tries to take itself way more seriously than it has any right to. I've found out since that it is based on a soap opera from the 60s. So maybe that explains it. So it's not like Lockout, which I said was a bad movie but really fun. This was a bad movie, but kinda fun. So take from that what you will.