Jungle Justice: The Mob Mentality

It's strange how justice seems appealing when it is carried out by the victim himself. It's interesting how sweet revenge tastes. A Time to Kill by John Grisham is a perfect example, Ten year old Tonya is viciously raped and murdered (eventually), by two white racists, Carl Lee, Tonya's father finds and kills these two men. It gives one a false sense of satisfaction - I murdered the person that caused me so much pain. But that satisfaction does not last long, it is quickly defaced by reality, the reality that one has just committed murder, the reality that two wrongs can not make half a right, the reality that still, even after you have murdered these people, your pain linger and will linger.

It's strange how we tend to see sense in mobbing and murdering a ... say, thief, for instance. I will always make a reference to the senseless and barbaric ALUU4 killings that happened is Nigeria - May we never forget. It makes absolutely no sense to take a life unlawfully, a life you cannot give. There is a reason for law, there is a reason for justice, there is a reason this is the 21st century. I heard about an Afghan girl who was buried from neck down and then her head was stoned to death by five men. The girl was 12, she was raped and so she reported but they said she was an adulterer, It is absolutely retarded, archaic and stupid. And the interesting thing is, that was lawful murder, legal murder - calling a 12 year old an adulterer is even ridiculous enough, but stoning her to death, that's just stupid.

Jungle justice, killing a man because you think he deserves that, without the proper legal consent. The world needs to find a way to get rid of that because it is backwardness - may it not be said that we are backward in the 21st century.

It is true though, certain times, certain crimes make the victim broken inside, enough to desire revenge, extreme revenge as in the example in the first paragraph - Grisham's A Time To Kill - however if we just stop and think and imagine how much worse we will feel afterwards then we will find that it really is not worth it.

Mobs and lynches happen all over the world, not just restricted to certain parts, I think it has to do with the human mind, when a thief is caught the first thing that happens is that people stop thinking, sanity disappears, everybody is controlled by the crowd and the moment's rave. You just want to do what everyone around you is doing, which is hitting the unfortunate individual with sticks or machetes or anything sharp that you can lay your hands on, you forget that you have also stolen something before and that you were not beaten like this, you forget that the individual that you are hitting is also human and is asking to be forgiven, you forget that you did not give him the life that you are about to take. You are consumed by the fact that he has committed a crime and even though you also commit crimes, his own crime is much larger and therefore does not deserve a second chance, the type that you got.