... individuals in a room both have the right to life providing they each follow their duty not to kill each other. This notion is, at a glance, fine: everybody has the right to life. We all have a duty not to kill anybody else. But we live on a planet with finite resources, dependent on our ability to survive. To do this sometimes involves the deaths of others (whether by our own hand or by the lack of a resource consumed by another). So, automatically, our sacred right to life is imperilled, because we cannot always respect our duty not to kill. To justify this conundrum we invented a multitude of derogations that allow us to kill without the accompanying guilt or punishment. Our legal frameworks, in places allow retributive killings, war is nothing other than legalised mass killing, public order and state security enable us to carry out pre-emptive ...

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