Guns don't kill people, tourists do.

I watched the film Hostel 2 last night. In the same vein as the first, the film depicts people being lured into a foreign Hostel, where they are captured and taken to a mass torture facility, where rich people pay to torture and kill them, fulfilling their own psychotic and often sexual fantasies. A nice sunday afternoon family film for sure. In the second part the film not only follows the victims but also 2 men 'murder tourists' if you will, prepared to partake in the act of torture and murder in the hope of changing their own life for the better.

I was watching the film thinking, I bet this really happens somewhere. What are the great taboos of civilised society? Illegal sex is one of them, sex with children, but allegedly (I say allegedly, it's a well documented fact) 'sex tourists' can go to Thailand or Cambodia to indulge in such a truly evil and mentally retarded practice. Drugs are another taboo in civilised society, but there are plenty of places in the world where anyone can go to indulge in whatever they like.

So is it really so inconceivable that a place exists that people, with enough money and no morals, can go to torture and murder innocent people?

I believe this is not too far from the truth, it happens somewhere. There are enough impoverished people in the world that would be easy targets, living in slums, with no family, no one to care about or protect them. These people could be easy targets, viewed as sub-human by some Western cultures no doubt. Perhaps these poor people's lives would be thought of as having less value than someone from a rich society who has the means and will to sustain their own life and develop it. So I am under no doubt as to the fact that there would be rich pickings around the world for any organisation wanting to set up such an operation.

It is possible, but is it conceivable?

I think it is. Killing someone is the greatist taboo of the human race. No matter how much of it is around, in wars, in the national or local news. The fact remains that humans, in general, know that killing another human is a bad thing. It is held as the highest of all crimes in Law: Murder. So if there is a rule, a moral, a code or a law, we as flawed and perverted creatures will seek to ignore it and want to do it anyway. For these reasons I fully believe that the greed of our species will seek to exploit this taboo for it's own gratification and proliferation.

So what would it be like to kill someone?

I find it a matter of some intrigue. Now I must state here that I'm not going to rush out and slice some poor bastard up, just to indulge that. But what is it like? The moment when such a complex organism, capable of thought and reasoning and self awareness just dies. Imagine it, something that lived, that had thoughts and memories and opinions, just gone. The shell of the organism still present as a dead body, but the body isn't the person, the person is gone forever. What must it feel like to be directly responsible for extinguishing that life. It's curious, that's for sure. I don't think I ever want to see someone die and I realise that some people who read this will have had the experience of watching someone die and not have relished it, in fact, quite possibly be scarred by it.

The whole matter leaves me confused. With so many questions:

What is it like to kill?
If life isn't the body, or the brain, then what is it?
Could someone gain a greater understanding of life by extinguishing one?
How would it change my perception of my life seeing another life disappear?
What drives serial muderers to repeat the process most people find so abhorent?
Why has each of these questions got longer until now?

Maybe that's why people want to kill. To answer these questions. I know I couldn't do it. We all joke about it and make flippant comments "I could fucking kill that bastard" or "I wish he was dead". But when it really comes down to it most of us, thankfully, couldn't kill a fellow human.

Perhaps the reason we can't kill is that we spend so much of our lives actively trying to stay alive. Protecting ourselves from real and perceived threats. Insuring our lives and those of our loved ones. Is that what makes us cherish life and hold it sacred, that we realise the fragility of our own life?

Luckily I have never been in the position to suspect that my life is about to end iminently. Maybe if that ever happens, my views will change about life and death. For now I am not scared of death, although I will be doing my utmost to avoid it.

So I believe that people would want to kill an innocent person for 'fun' or even just 'curiousity' but I don't think I'll ever understand why or how any sane person could justify it to themselves. Let alone, live with that knowledge afterwards.

This post typifies my life in some ways. I started off by watching a film, a piece of fiction (or 'kidology' a great word my dad uses). It ended with me tying myself in knots with unanswerable questions, unfathomable posturings and more confused than I started out.

If I ever think of a conclusion to all this I will be sure to add it, unless of course I am doing a 20 stretch for murdering Jade Goody (and everyone thought it was cancer, pah!)