“We’ve been taught to think that the real question is “Do people deserve to die for the crimes they have committed?”  And that’s a very sensible question.  But the other way of thinking about it is not “Do people deserve to die for the crimes they have committed?”, but “Do we deserve to kill?”
“I believe that our identity is at risk.  When we actually don’t care about these difficult things, then the positive and wonderful things are nonetheless implicated.  Ultimately those things are shadowed by suffering, abuse, degradation, marginalisation.  For me it becomes necessary to integrate the two.
“Ultimately we are talking about a need to be more hopeful, more committed to the challenges of living in a complex world.  Spending time talking about the poor, the disadvantaged.  We all have to believe things we haven’t seen.  Development comes not from the ideas in our mind alone, they come from ideas fueled by conviction in our heart.  Vaclav Havel said sometimes we need hope, an orientation of the spirit, a willingness to be sometimes in hopeless places, to be a witness.  There is no technology or design that will allow us to be fully human until we pay attention to suffering poverty, injustice.  Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done. ”
From Bryan Stevenson, TED.com