If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed or email alerts. Thanks for visiting!
Don’t just wish you could ram hard into the guy who just cut you off on the freeway (more likely in Houston), or slice the neck of the slime ball openly flirting with your girlfriend, or simply make life miserable for that bastard who cheated you of your millions in the partnership? Everyone has been there and not done that. The demons of revenge make interesting mind games and can keep you smiling menacingly all to yourself. But is revenge really that evil, as it is made out to be by all those holier-than-thou Gandhians?
An anthropologist, Joseph Henrich at Emory University, Atlanta has shown in recent research that stable communities depend on people who have “an intrinsic taste for punishing others who violate a community’s norms”. Although it is frowned up as a moral or emotional failing, revenge is a deep-rooted functional behavior in most humans who thirst for payback when wronged. (source: NY Times)
We all cheer for the underdog who rises from the ashes to assume an aura of invincibility as he wipes off his foes one by one. Literature has glorified the Dumas’ classic tale of The Count of Monte Cristo and the Hollywood slasher movies Kill Bill Vol.1 and 2 only extends the basic instinct into the new millennium. Revenge is a dish best served cold – so begins the movie as you are taken down the path of sweet revenge by one heck of a vengeful bride. Not once did we admonish ourselves for enjoying the gore and blood, all justified by an earlier treacherous act. The world has changed a lot since Dumas’ penned his classic, but strangely revenge is just as sweet.
Revenge reflects a biological sense of justice. Gandhian principles of turning the other cheek often are touted as taking the moral high road towards salvation and sold as rising above your perpetrators. But in today’s world of quick justice, such ideas are merely old fashioned. But revenge at times can be manifold in measure and go to the extent of ruining the other person’s life. If we do consider revenge an appropriate measure of doling out justice, then shouldn’t we also be mindful of the balance? Such arguments have been repeatedly raised in opposing capital punishment and need to retain civility of society is emphasized. Can we actually measure one bad act by a reciprocal another? Don’t we always tend to overestimate our anguish and exaggerate punishments?
The debate of questioning revenge may always remain inconclusive. In the meanwhile, let me think how best I can get back with my ninth-grade teacher who screwed up my English grades and cost me my rank? Ah-ha! The pain still lingers, which can be soothed by the fires of revenge (Ok, I know it I will make an extremely bad revenge tale writer).
by Patrix | on Monday, December 5th, 2005 at 12:00 pm | 
Philosophy . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Both comments and pings are currently closed.
December 6th, 2005 at 8:35 am reply
revenge need not be violent:)
Gandhian philosophy is not about non-action.
in fact he has rated violence above cowardice. and obviously non-violence above violence.
i think forgiving (when you have the power to forgive, not when you forgive because you have to forgive) too can be a form of revenge.
Not saying forgiving is a solution. but just wanted to point out that violence is not the only form of revenge:)
December 6th, 2005 at 2:33 pm reply
I am an average human with the usual feelings and yes, sometimes revenge is sweeter than thou.
December 6th, 2005 at 10:37 pm reply
Revenge is a pointless ego-feeding activity, and the reason is that it only generates further negativity and further desires for revenge (from the other side), and thus the tale of vindictive behaviour goes on for eternity (the current Middle East scenario is a good example in context).
Fiction and bestsellers aside, real life shows those who forgive, forget and move on make much better successes of their lives without letting the past hold them down. They also die much happier human beings. Isn’t that what counts over temporary ego boosting?
December 7th, 2005 at 10:30 pm reply
Wise Donkey unfortunately, forgiving if done often can be taken as cowardice and sadly cannot be used as forms of revenge more than once.
Queer, ok so lets hear your Kill Bill stories :)
Aekta, Agreed! revenge cannot be the sole motivation for living but it often gives a psychological closure when treated unfairly. On a sidenote, I believe that justice is eventually meted out to the wrong doer and things have a way of balancing out.