Revenge

Revenge is a deeply ingrained part of our human psyche. It is something that anybody in any culture, society, or religious affiliation can respond to. It has existed for millenniums, and it is a common theme in literature, movies, and novels throughout the years.

Revenge is also called payback, retribution, retaliation, or vengeance. Some may characterize it as a form of street justice, even an altruistic action that enforces societal or moral justice aside from the formal legal system

Revenge is in fact usually considered the antithesis of legal propriety. It is not a calm, measured response to some real or imagined offense, but a deeply emotional retribution.

The so-called lynch mob mentality of instant justice, or street justice, is loosely derived and justified by biblical references to “an eye for an eye” and is what most people think of as revenge. People hell-bent on revenge have no time or respect for observing the legal niceties of a given situation, depending on the severity of the offense.

If in an extreme example, a member of your family is killed by another person, you will most likely want to revenge yourself upon the person who killed them right here and right now. You feel an immediate emotional surge of blind hatred and want to personally get back at them.

You don’t trust the law or the legal system to do the right thing. You don’t want to let them slip off the hook because of some legal loopholes or a fancy well-paid lawyer’s skill at digging up arcane precedents or dazzling and manipulating the jury with his eloquent twisting of the facts.

This has happened all too often for many people, and thus they feel a driving, urgent need to seek revenge themselves, to literally “take the law into their own hands” and punish the wrongdoer on the spot.

They may or may not act on these impulses, and they may or may not be restrained by any implications of further retribution, but this is generally how the cycle of revenge is perpetuated. Especially among younger people affiliated with gangs in today’s society. They contribute to the escalating cycle of violence, justifying it as payback, retribution, or retaliation.

Turf wars in the inner cities between rival gangs are often reported by the media. But then each act of revenge is met by another retaliatory act of further revenge until how it all got started and who is really to blame gets lost amongst all the heated feelings and bloodshed. This is not just a recent modern phenomenon.

Lawman Wyatt Earp and his brothers vs the Clantons, starting with the shootout at the OK Corral in the aptly named town of Tombstone, is an American legend of the mythical Old West that led to a series of revenge-based shootings. Even the Shakespearean plays “Julius Cesar, “Othello,” and especially “Hamlet” are all revenge-based and well-documented.

Hamlet believes he has good reason for revenge since his father appears to him as a ghost in a dream and revealed Hamlet’s uncle murdered him to seize the throne. The ghost of his father commands him to get revenge.

The idea of revenge as an accepted and easily understood cultural phenomenon permeates our human history and various societies. This type of long-term revenge is often commonly referred to as a vendetta or a “blood feud.”

Vendettas or blood feuds are an endless cycle of provocation and retaliation, fueled by a burning desire for revenge and carried out over long periods of time by familial or tribal groups. There are records they existed in many pre-industrial societies.

But we in the modern Western world are certainly not immune from the concept and practice of revenge either. In fact, it was a well-known and integral part of the world of our own European medieval ancestors as well and is still prevalent to this day.

During the Middle Ages, most would not regard an insult or injury as settled until it was avenged, or, at the least, paid for. Our Anglo-Saxon and Germanic ancestors had a system where revenge could be exacted by payment of an agreed-upon fee, decided and agreed upon by both parties involved. The price of killing a member of royalty was more than killing a peasant. Some things never change.

It seems that revenge, like jealousy, is one of those common, illogical primitive raw emotions that have both universal and historical connotations and implications, and as such are an inescapable part of the human experience.

Some religions encourage it as a sacred doctrine, while others preach the futility of revenge and advise “turning the other cheek” as a means of dealing with this most primal and deep-seated human emotion.

It is said that love and hate are the flip sides of the same coin, so the desire for revenge when it is motivated by the loss of a loved one, and the hatred-fueled desire to get even, is inevitable. The deep, burning desire to avenge the loss is a seemingly universal reaction, and how do we really stop such a deep-seated, historically human emotion?

I don’t believe that we can totally ever eliminate revenge. We are just hard-wired to want it, we need the emotional satisfaction of exacting revenge. And one way or another, we will get it.

But we should at least try to tighten up the legal system, close up the loopholes, and eliminate or curtail the ability of rich people who can afford high-priced lawyers to just “walk” while poorer people and minorities are invariably punished more severely.

We need to try to stop the cycle of violence and allow the aggrieved parties, no matter their financial situation, to get at least some degree of satisfaction. Otherwise, we are doomed to a never-ending cycle of violence, where anarchy and chaos rule. And the obscene proliferation of guns on the street today, and their easy availability, should be addressed and curtailed immediately.

At the very least, we should at least try to slow down, and stop acting in such a typical human, hotblooded, off the hook, predictably emotional response of immediate retribution. Maybe we should all just take a deep breath, pause and consider the old Klingon proverb from Star Trek.

“Revenge is a dish best served cold.”