Revenge and avenge are separate things.

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That is not revenge, that is self defense. Big difference between revenge and defending yourself.

No need to apologise for something you aren't responsible for. it's happened a lot and one of my longest abusers, I have no desire to get revenge from. Most of the people who have raped me, I've never felt that urge. It was just a perfect set up at the time and I have very VERY few regrets in life - that I didn't take it is one.

self defence stops people from continuing - I don't mean that. I mean, you touch me without my permission, I'm going to physically make it so that next time you think about doing that to someone you'll consider they may deck you. Too many dykes grab my tits on night out. WAY too many.

But as for hanging onto things, I actually don't. but if I'm given an opportunity on a silver plater (through the offending party's behaviour) to do something within reason (not going to permanently harm) I'm not shy/hesitant about taking it. But I won't go too far out of my way to bother. And I'm not the gossipy/vendictive type. I don't work that way.

I don't believe in karma, I don't believe in "energies", I don't believe in any form of god. I do believe in harvesting behaviour that one has put out to others because people get sick of the shit though - or putting yourself in harms way from the lifestyle one leads.

I also believe in acting in a way that one feels good about owning. I'm fine with how my attitude around this feels. It doesn't feel icky or nasty or grudging. It feels like a very strong boundary line.

To answer the, "where should I have put this thread?" question, I would have gone with the "Thinking Harder" forum. But, I don't think anyone cares.

In terms of revenge. No, I don't think it is a good idea. Not healthy for you to hold onto the anger. That shit can tear you up inside.

Ok I am curious: How many of you who feel revenge is a waste of time or that it's not healthy, are in favor of the death penalty?

My definition of revenge is an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and believe it's my right when I'm sure that all my compassion and forgiveness won't stop my enemy from harming me and others.

Good question. The courts and the politicians would consider the death penalty justice. I think it's an act of revenge. The state avenges the death of the victim. It's said to give closure to the family.

I am in favor of the death penalty but believe in revenge when needed.

But again that is just my opinion!

I'm not sure what "ok" is.

I tend to think revenge and/or retaliation involves natural instinct. Maybe it does serve some sort of purpose for our animal selves.

But when you look at the forest instead of the trees, revenge just makes things worse. i think revenge may harm the person who has hurt you, but it also hurts/damages you.

An exercise I recently heard of for dealing with the times one's been hurt, is to take that hurt and think about whether you've ever hurt a person in a similar way. Sometimes the answer is no, but I think it's a good exercise. When people do bad stuff, it's on them. Karma or not, it's on them. I think the best a person can do is to take responsibility for healing any wounds created to the best of our ability so that we don't end up hurting others due to our on wounds.

I think it's true what I heard on a recent Zen podcast: Hurt people hurt people and healed people heal people. So focusing on healing is, I believe, far more beneficial to oneself and society than getting back at somebody else.

Sometimes easier said then done - I'm afraid I've been spiteful far too many times in my life due to a pereived wrong.

Depends on how you define 'ok.' Are you okay with seeking/succeeding at revenge at your own expense?

My dad says, and I believe this to be true, when you're after "revenge--Dig two graves."

I think this is the original quote: “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”

I wish I could express myself better on this, but, I wondered if there was an actual scientific, or non-emotional, reason to be against revenge and cruelty, etc.

Like, could someone convince others, using nothing but logical debating skills or science, why revenge or cruelty is "wrong". For example, to my knowledge, animals do not partake in revenge, and they do not seem to particularly be involved in intentional cruelty. Why?

Hi Hunter!

I don't want to derail, but Dogs, they have a little chip in their brain that is self activating, and the sweetest most loving dogs, some times attack another dog. It's called they prey mechanism. However, I don't think they know it is intentional cruelty. Humans perceive it as such.

Good thread. Makes me check myself.

My dog pees on the floor a few times a week around dinner time. My mom swears it's because she's mad she didn't get soft food. I think it's because she's old and senile (and deaf and blind - so possibly disoriented to boot). But who knows what's going through her head when it happens?

My cat is pretty spiteful toward other cats, but I don't think it's vengeful. I think he pretty much lives in the moment.

I don't believe in the death penalty, but if you look at human history, it seems to me like there has been a long-lived thirst for blood. I kinda think the death penalty might keep it in check.

There was a really interesting podcast a while back - here's the transcript.

Tidbits:

Today, "Getting Revenge and Forgiveness." Michael McCullough is a professor of psychology at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida, where he directs the Laboratory for Social and Clinical Psychology and also teaches in the Department of Religious Studies. I spoke with him in 2008, after the publication of his book Beyond Revenge. For that work, he analyzed extensive data from social scientific studies on humans and animals as well as biology and brain chemistry. We'll spend most of this hour talking about what Michael McCullough is learning about forgiveness. But he stresses that to reimagine the human capacity for forgiveness, we must first challenge our ideas about the human inclination to seek revenge.

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Mr. McCullough: Japanese macaques are very status-conscious individuals. They're very intimidated by power; let's just put it that way...So if you're a high-ranking Japanese macaque and you harm a low-ranking Japanese macaque, that low-ranking individual is not going to harm you back, right? It's just too intimidating. It's too anxiety provoking. But what they do instead, and this still astonishes me, is they will find a relative of that high-ranking individual and go seek that low-ranking cousin out or nephew and harm him in retaliation.

Tippett: Really?

Mr. McCullough: Yeah. So it's as if they're saying, 'You know, I'm not powerful enough to get you back, but what I'm going to do is I'm going to go harm your nephew.'

Tippett: Now that does sound like human behavior, doesn't it?

Mr. McCullough: Right. And here's the kicker, is when they're harming this nephew, most of the time they're doing it while the high-ranking individual is watching. They want the high-ranking individual to know that, you know, you can harm me. I know you can harm me. I know you're more powerful than I am. But rest assured, I know how to get at what you care about and what you value.

Tippett: You know, I had this realization a few years ago when we did a program on the death penalty. It might seem simple but it seems so stunning to me to realize that the criminal justice system, and even, and especially, the death penalty in history, was progress because before there was any kind of criminal justice system, human societies regulated themselves by precisely that kind of revenge you're describing.

Mr. McCullough: Throughout most of human history we have not lived in complex societies with governments and states and law enforcement and prisons and contracts that we could enforce in a court to get people to do what they agreed to do. So the mechanism that individuals relied upon to protect themselves and to protect their loved ones and to protect their property was fear of retaliation. And if they could broadcast that fear of retaliation to the individuals they lived with, to their neighbors, to the people on the other side of the hill, and you could cultivate a reputation as a hothead so people knew not to mess with you, that was like an insurance policy. And you're absolutely right that in a lot of the world this is still going on.

Tippett: Right.

Mr. McCullough: And any time you disrupt that system, that system of government, that system of policing, that system of law enforcement, so people can't trust that their interests are going to be protected, that desire for revenge comes back. And people will take revenge back into their own hands to protect themselves.

Tippett: And I think you're also saying in your research that — and also in terms of what we know about the brain — that the emotions, the reactions, that arise in response to grievance are also — we are hard-wired to have those reactions, that they serve a purpose. I mean, I remember Sister Helen Prejean saying to me when we did that work on the death penalty, you know, she's a great opponent of the death penalty — she said, "Anger is a moral response," you know?

Mr. McCullough: That's right. It certainly is. Anger in response to injustice is as reliable a human emotional response as happiness is to winning the lottery, or grief is to losing a loved one. And if you look at the brain of somebody who has just been harmed by someone — they've been ridiculed or harassed or insulted — we can put those people into technology that allows us to see what their brains are doing, right? So we can look at sort of what your brain looks like on revenge. It looks exactly like the brain of somebody who is thirsty and is just about to get a sweet drink to drink or somebody who's hungry who's about to get a piece of chocolate to eat.

Tippett: It's like the satisfaction of a craving?

Mr. McCullough: It is exactly like that. It is literally a craving. What you see is high activation in the brain's reward system. So, again, this is one of the messages it's important for me to try to get across. The desire for revenge does not come from some sick dark part of how our minds operate. It is a craving to solve a problem and accomplish a goal.