Quick, Precise, and (Mostly) Clean
There’s nothing to legitimize when there’s nothing to disclose.
To the Esteemed Members of the Committee for Greater Humanism,
Your petition for correctional reform is received, considered, and responded to with the following opinion.
The soundness of a society’s embrace of punishment by beheading depends upon how it is to be embraced. That is, a society must determine the proper context in which beheading is best legitimized. Particularly if it is meant as an institution for public or semi-public use, or to otherwise exist in general knowledge, which demands compatible circumstances for support.
A society that wishes to behead must accentuate its character to complement that of the punishment. The speed, precision, and relative cleanness of the guillotine cannot be implemented successfully unless its users are sincere, mature, and efficient. They must say what they mean, they must be clear as to what they are doing and why they are doing it, and they must have the means and resources to render blame upon the most adequate individual based on the available evidence. That sentences of beheading are handed down out of caprice, catharsis, or vengeance is the literary fancy of the resentful and the powerless. In truth, no sentencing judge conducts themselves with greater fidelity to order or reluctance to offend.
Societies that hang their citizens, gas them, electrocute them, quarter them by horse, shoot them en masse, or put them in solitary confinement are as ill-suited for beheading as any can be. They are better attuned to what they want than to what they are. They act in indifference, by impulse, and through improvisation. Punishment for its own sake, rather than punishment correctly administered, is their chief satisfaction. Your mother could be sentenced to electrocution on no other basis than that she was there and a slot was available, and none could object without bringing down the entire edifice of its chosen operative logic. To introduce the guillotine in addition to and as being equal with these methods would mean compounding chaos with confusion. Worse, it would insult liberal principles.
But the matter is made easier when societies see the guillotine as being better applied as a simple tool devoid of symbolic import and with as much public ignorance to it as can be managed. There’s nothing to legitimize when there’s nothing to disclose.
Societies, no matter their characters or inclinations to nobility, have a surplus of guilt. A great percentage of their guilt may be addressed by those cruel, public punishments, and many other grueling ones beside. Yet some forms of guilt are more exceptional than others and require a more exceptional means of correction. In this context the guillotine’s liberal sheen is dimmed, but it remains admirably frictionless in removing names off the VIP list of the State.
It is helpful to define what makes guilt exceptional. As I understand it, guilt of that kind does not lie in the severity or heinousness of a transgression; such severity is relative to the values of a given society. It is rooted rather in the altitude of the criminal on examination.
Think yourself a child. A clown approaches you and offers you one of their balloons. But you, either out of childish incompetence or distrust of the clown, lose your hold of the string, sending the balloon to the stratosphere where it can go no further. Now the balloon is a citizen, and the citizen has an accusation levied against them. Oftentimes an accusation can be litigated among their equals, or if it is somewhat more serious or less resolvable, to the next highest superior. If it ascends still higher, the accusation is all the graver. Once it reaches the highest social summit, the guilt is effectively confirmed and exceptional.
People at the highest rung of social administration don’t have the time to sort out ongoing disciplinary infractions. So exceptional guilt must be, first, a rarity and, second, exhausted of every possible opportunity of clemency and appeal. All that is left to be done is to officiate the appropriate and most conclusive sentence.
That leaves two remaining matters. First, logistics. I can only assume that someone somewhere has schematics designed with a sensitivity to humaneness and which can be adjusted for placement in a secret chamber. There must also be standards for its upkeep. No one should expect or desire to become attached to this particular form of dispatch, so it is appropriate to maintain it with minimal use in mind and to never approach it without an ethical code in place. The literal executioner must be exhaustively vetted so that the laziest, cruelest candidates are excluded from consideration.
And second, impact. It is difficult to shore up a sufficient dramatic effect around something that is supposed to be a secret; but I believe it can be done with minimal risk of seepage. Beheading alone will deter no one; in fact it may even exacerbate crime. What will put the citizenry on the proper edge is the fear of committing a scalable crime. There may be nothing more unfortunate for an accused person who cannot free themselves from the successive scrutiny of officials, each whose growing power over them is equal in proportion to the shrinking sympathy held toward their defense.
The chamber itself is a different matter. I’m sure interior design of correctional spaces has advanced in such a way that we can decorate it either to heighten the condemned’s sense of terror in their last moments or to soothe them. For my part, the former would be adding insult to injury. This will be a lonely death, with no audience and no serious assurances that their loved ones will be aware of their fate in any sense. Their only company is with the solemn, almost priestly deputy we’ve tasked with taking their life. You envision, perhaps, a Red Chamber. So do the perverse imaginations of the litterateurs. The responsible statesman, however, should be more amenable to a Yellow or some kind of Pastel Chamber. It lacks theatricality but offers the most sensible, empathetic impression. If the ascending guilty are to feel doomed, the condemned will think they’re being sentenced to therapy, which could, in a manner of thinking, be very much the case.
I hope this will be helpful.
[Tiberius]
Dear [Tiberius],
On behalf of the Committee for Building Better Humans and its donors, I’m writing to express our deepest gratitude for your taking time out of your demanding schedule to answer our petition so promptly and thoughtfully. While we regret that you did not have time to address our stated proposals of improving dietary regimens, supplying libraries, broadening visitation rights, and clarifying political status, it is still heartening to see a national leader confronting any issue with his modest, well-meaning citizens.
Reevaluated expectations aside, we remain hopeful of the vindication of our overlapping causes.
Sincerely,
[Committee Chairman]