The Last Meal: is justice being served?

If you were on death row, what would you choose as your last meal? It seems a morbid question I know but I find it strangely compelling; this simple daily ritual, placed under horrific circumstances takes on a whole new level of meaning and it's something I probably never would have considered had I not stumbled across the Last Meals Project. In the USA prisoners awaiting execution are granted a last meal, these details are made public record. Photographer Jonathon Kambouris has taken this information, combined with photos of the convicted killers and created the slightly controversial and extremely provocative Last Meals Project (eventually to be turned into a book). In the intro on the website, Kambouris explains:

"Justice may not always be served because the innocent can be proved guilty and the guilty can be proved innocent. Choosing the last meal is a significant ritual because the accuracy and validity of this choice is the only answer one can ultimately accept. This series visually documents the face and last meal of a convicted killer and is without question, honest and true."

Last Meals Project, Jonathon Kambouris (www.lastmealsproject.com)

After reading the intro, a slightly morbid curiosity got the better of me and I began clicking through the pages of the site. As I viewed each of the now deceased prisoners and contemplated the connotations of their last choice on this earth, the project began to take on a much greater meaning. By personifying these individuals through their final meal choice, Kambouris moved me to consider the bigger issue. With each eerie photograph I was not only plagued by questions of "guilty or innocent?" but more broadly "is taking another person's life ever justified?". I know there are some seriously ill people out there who have committed unspeakable crimes but does/would taking their lives undo what they have done?

It has been 44 years since capital punishment was carried out for the final time in Australia, however the legislation still exists and is being exercised in many countries (eg. America, China, Singapore, Japan). As a result there are currently three Australian citizens who have been sentenced and are now on death row in China and Indonesia. Last year 23 countries carried out executions under capital punishment legislation and in Iran and Somalia this also included juveniles offenders. With many countries withholding the number of executions carried out it is impossible to attain clear figures on the lives that have been taken under this law but estimates for 2010 are in the thousands.

I am probably not in a position to speak on such an issue because I have never personally experienced someone close to me becoming the victim of a senseless crime and perhaps I would feel very differently if I had, but I can't help but think of a quote by Ghandi:

"An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind" - Mahatma Ghandi    

Foundations for the "greater good": moral philosophy

Morality: principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behaviour.

It forms the very core of who we are as human beings; dictating how we interact with each other and our environment, and yet it evades all five senses, so how are we supposed to understand it? Moral philosophy first sparked my interest three years ago when it popped up as a brief introduction to one of my media subjects. I'd been 24 years on this planet before I'd received any formal education on theories of ethics and morality, quite an oversight, I remember thinking at the time. I had imagined that something which was so essential to my humanity would have been broached a little earlier. I did of course receive plenty of informal training, "don't drown your sister in the bath", "don't put the cat in the letterbox", "don't take somebody elses food without asking"; these things were BAD. All those little hints did help to point me in the right direction but like so many other things we are taught when we're young it was "1+1=2, because it just did". As far as morals went there was never any real framework for examination or exploration, I was simply expected to be GOOD and had to guess the rest. 

As per the always evasive nature of philosophy, moral philosophy offers no concrete answers for what is right and what is wrong nor how we negotiate this daily see-saw but it does provide some concepts which have helped me to wrap my head around this intangible force within. There are three main theoretical areas within the field: metaethics, normative ethics and applied ethics. Metaethics is the most abstract, examining the meaning and origin of morality, eg. do morals exist independently of us or are they human conventions? And what psychological factors motivate us to act morally? Normative ethics examine how we regulate these moral conventions, for example the consequentialist theories break it down into three categories:

1. Egoism: an action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favourable than unfavourable to the person performing the action.

2. Altruism: an action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favourable than unfavourable to everyone except the person performing the action.

3. Utilitarianism: an action is morally right if the consequences of that action are more favourable than unfavourable to everyone.

Finally there are applied ethics which focus specifically on analysing various moral issues (eg. welfare, animal rights), employing various normative theories to determine right from wrong. It’s a lot to take in and this is only the tip of the iceberg but I think this is really interesting stuff. I'd love to go into more detail but everything you need you can find at the Internet Encylopedia of Philosophy (Ethics). 

Good and bad, wrong and right, they can make the world go round or stop completely. I want to understand why I act the way I do in different moral situations and even more than that I want to understand why other people act the way they do when faced with right and wrong. I believe change begins with understanding and this forms the basis of my journey, to understand as much as I can so that I can go into the world and do well, but more importantly I can go into the world and do "good".

Rachel