| Latin Proverb: Revenge is a confession of pain |
Author: Stephen DeVoy
August 13, 2008
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I am fortunate in that the compulsion of revenge does not run in my family. When I am provoked to anger, the anger quickly dissipates. This, I believe, is a virtue.
Various events and periods of suffering in my life have led me to examine the concept of revenge. Revenge is a kind of vigilante justice. It is not true justice as there is no requirement to prove guilt. More often than not, the drive for revenge arises from hatred. Therefore, the drive for revenge is much like a murderous rage, it comes from an emotional unfitness on the part of the avenger.
There are many reasons why revenge is not unethical. When a person seeks revenge, that person casts judgment upon another without trial. Indeed, judgment is passed without even providing the accused an opportunity to defend himself or his actions. Revenge, in this sense, is a form of denial. The avenger evades the possibility that the accusations are false and takes action in order to force the judgment upon the victim. Perhaps it is the deeply concealed belief that the accuser himself is unjust and wrong that forces the decision towards revenge for dialog just might reveal the accuser to be unjust.
People have strong emotional dependencies upon belief in victimization. If a person believes he is a victim, he refers to that belief as a justification for being anti-social, for being hateful, for being intolerant. Should proof be allowed to emerge that the wrathful avenger is not a victim, the avenger would find himself unable to recruit others or solicit a blind eye to his crimes of revenge.
When one a person decides to take revenge on another, it is easy to self justify the revenge by exaggerating the target's defects and moral weaknesses while completely ignoring all of the target's strengths and virtues. When a person decides to divorce their partner, a similar thing happens. Suddenly all of the virtues of the partner are forgotten and all of the ills are elevated to highest importance. The same is true for revenge.
Besides the fact that the avenger may be wrong about the target being the cause of some injustice, real or imagined, another pitfall exists. A person changes vastly across time. I know that I have. I see little in common between the person I am now and the person I was ten years ago. The target of revenge might not be the same person he once was. Is it just to torment such a person who is not the same person he once was?
This question comes up in prominent cases such as those of near death ancient Nazis found living ordinary lives after decades in hiding. If a man were a prison guard at a concentration camp when he was 18 years old, can he rightfully be punished if, by the age of 90, he has been transformed into a very different, and perhaps a very good person? It is for this reason that I do not share a sense of justice when an ancient violator of human rights is arrested. Is this really the same person? When I look back at who I was at 18 years of age, I see someone other than myself. How much truer will that be when I am 90?
I once heard that some people rob in order to murder. The idea is that even amongst murders, the idea of murdering might be sufficiently repugnant to require that it be undertaken only as a side effect of some less repugnant activity. The murder enters a store, pulls out a gun to rob the cashier, and then, due to the cashier trying to resist, is "forced" to murder. Beneath it all, the driving force is the lust to kill and the robbery is a means to find a justification for it. Perhaps the same can be said of the avenger? Perhaps the avenger accuses and torments not for revenge, but because he likes to accuse and torment and revenge just gives him a convenient excuse to do it.
Finally, and more selfishly, revenge does not make sense because revenge rots the soul of avenger. With all the wonderful or productive things one can do with their life, time spent on revenge is time not spent living well. Worse yet, acts of revenge open oneself up to provocation of revenge in response and to exposure as a hateful person.
The enlightened person does not seek revenge. He seeks understanding, closure, and peace. If there is a cosmic scoreboard, it can only be maintained by an objectivity far superior to any that we as humans possess. In our subjective existence, evening scores can only lead to increasing injustices.
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