Is revenge OK?

[J. Mason]

Originally Posted by atomiczombie

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?

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

But again that is just my opinion!

[Reader]

Originally Posted by J. Mason

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

But again that is just my opinion!

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?

[Corkey]

Originally Posted by Hunter Green

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?

You must not herd of the Chimpanzees who will go after other tribes. It is granted a rarity, but it does happen.

[Dominique]

Originally Posted by Hunter Green

. 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.

[Nat]

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.

....................

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.

[Sparx1_1]

Plotting revenge as a nice de-stressing exercise for the imagination can feel wonderful, but actually carrying it out usually causes way more problems than it solves.

That said - forgiveness is not necessary either. Too many people mess themselves up with the idea that choosing not to express anger somehow means they have to forgive and forget.

[Gemme]

I believe in revenge. There's a time and a reason for all things, even the dark and ugly that we try to sweep under the rug when no one's looking.

[softheart]

I will probably burn in the eternal fires but, I don't care. Sometimes it feels so good. (giggling)

[Dominique]

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind ~ Ghandi

[SuddenlyWestFemme]

Originally Posted by softheart

I will probably burn in the eternal fires but, I don't care. Sometimes it feels so good. (giggling)

There is a scientific reaason for that. According to Scientific American: "We have learned that revenge can activate pleasure centers in the brain and lead to that so-called "sweet taste of revenge." See their website article: http://www.scientificamerican.com/ar...enge-evolution

Yes, there is a lot of Science around how we feel good when we get revenge (and some of the studies show men get more pleasure from revenge than women - but that's another issue). But it is a pleasure that doesn't really last.

I find this topic interesting. When my ex (not on this site) left under really bad circumstances, I wanted to 'act-out' and get revenge. But being sober, it wasn't an option. I had to keep chanting "Do no harm" as I can't afford the instant pleasure that revenge would have brought no matter how much I wanted it. So now I do yoga and listen to Buddhist meditations and time has worked its magic on healing. I feel much better about myself than I would have - had I gotten revenge.

When I was so sad on the floor crying, I did a lot of research around the science of being left and wanting revenge (and friends sent me articles). I found that being left hits a part of the brain that is hit when burning hot coffee is spilled on you. It actually is physically painful! And wanting relief is just natural human behavior! It was good to know that there was a reason I was feeling so badly and I just had to do the next right thing and hold on for dear life until my brain was back to itself.

It is wonderfully hard to remain kind in the face of being treated horribly. But in the long run, it is worth it. And even losing my best friend in the 9-11 attacks and living 26 blocks from the trade centers did not make me want revenge as I knew it wouldn't help anything in the long run. In fact, I am sad about all that has been done in the name of those attacks. But I guess that is another thread as well.

Interesting topic.

[Reader]

Originally Posted by Yellow band

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.

Hi Yellow. :) Thanks for the post. I thought this part of your post was really interesting in particular: "However, I don't think they know it is intentional cruelty. Humans perceive it as such."

It never would have occurred to me to that perhaps revenge or cruelty was perceived. But, I guess when you see documentaries where a lion hunts a zebra and wins, it is cruel in a manner, though clearly revenge is not involved in that case. Perhaps perception is a part of the equation. I never thought of that.

That makes me also think of that phrase "cruel to be kind." Is there such a thing? Thoughts?

[uniquetobeme]

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
~Mahatma Gandhi

I don't believe in Karma. I spent some time thinking about karma. In my mind, if karma were a real thing, bad things wouldn't happen to good people. I see a lot of good people who have tremendous struggles in their lives.
What I do believe is the universe, or God, or whatever force there is out there gives us lessons to learn.

I try not to wish bad things on anyone, but I often hope that life gives the them the lessons they need to learn in life.

I believe the world is a place full of wounded souls, and why would I want to add to that pain?

I can't say that it is easy and that I'm always successful. I can't say I don't have a little pleasure in seeing someone who has wronged me have something happen to them-but not anything terribly bad.

Yet, deep down I have to admit, if someone injured my children, I would hope the police were able to find the person before I do. It wouldn't even seem like revenge, it would seem like instinct to me, like a mama bear...don't mess with her kids, she'll come after you!

[princessbelle]

I haven't seen this thread before. I admit i've not read all the posts here, but wanted to share my thoughts on this.

I've thought about this concept before. There are so many, many ways to wrong someone that has wronged "you". Revenge is easy. I can think of a million ways. I knew a girl once that had 1000 tons of rocks delivered to her ex's yard after she caught him cheating. She of course had his credit card.

I've worked along side some winners who i could have easily got into trouble with their jobs. Or friends or exes, loads of people can try and be jerks, and it is relatively easy to get revenge on people. All you have to do is put your mind to it. But, seeking revenge and waiting for it are two very different ways of living. I USUALLY choose the latter, living with peace in my heart, knowing that i didn't deserve the type of treatment i was given and knowing i took the high road and didn't cause anyone any pain even if they deserved it. But, pain came anyway.

I've learned over the years, if someone is an ass they usually get what's coming to them in the long run. I've seen it soooooooo many times, over and over. I honestly cannot think of one person who has wronged me that hasn't ended up getting "wronged" by at least one other person, or a situation, or gotten fired, or lost friends and became somewhat isolated.

Call it karma or whatever you want. But, i've learned to just wait. Watch. Then, when karma or life or their bad choices happen, smile to myself silently and walk away, and secretly give myself a high five.

Revenge would be easy. Really easy. A piece of cake really. But, waiting, watching....that is what makes me strong and then...very happy at the end result. Every. Single. Time.

[J. Mason]

Originally Posted by Hunter Green

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?

I don't think you can convince others, but brainwash yes, like a cult does. But my opinion again!

But I have seen animals partake in revenge and it is not a pretty picture, my dog has the scars to prove it too.

[Nat]

Originally Posted by Hunter Green

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?

I thought I'd quote a bit more from that transcript, because it may be some of the meat you are looking for:

...............

Tippett: And then I guess what is especially intriguing about your work as well, and perhaps even more surprising, even kind of takes us out of our boxes, than the fact that revenge is natural is that you are really suggesting also from a scientific perspective that we have a forgiveness instinct, an aptitude for forgiveness, and that has been crafted by natural selection just like revenge.

Mr. McCullough: I expected to find, frankly, less research as I dug through hundreds of scientific articles on the naturalness of forgiveness but, boy, was I wrong. As it turns out, a lot of biologists have been trying to figure out what allows human beings to be the cooperative creatures that we are. We're cooperative with each other in a way that really makes us pretty unique among mammals for sure. You know, we cooperate with our relatives, but lots of animals do that. But we go further and we cooperate with people we've never met. We cooperate with people that we're not related to. And by virtue of our abilities to cooperate with each other, we can build magnificent cities and radio stations and do all kinds of wonderful things. But one of the ingredients you have to have to get individuals to cooperate with each other is a tolerance for mistakes.

Tippett: Hmm. Interesting.

Mr. McCullough: You can't get organisms that are willing to hang in there with each other through thick and thin and make good things happen despite the roadblocks and the bumps along the way if they aren't willing to tolerate each other's mistakes. Sometimes if we're cooperatively hunting — let's say we're some sort of animal, that we're some sort of animal that works together to hunt — sometimes I'm going to let you down. And maybe it's not even intentional, but I'm going to get distracted and I'm going to make a mistake. And if you take each of those mistakes as the last word about my cooperative disposition, you might just give up and so no cooperation gets done. So, really, our ability, and across the animal kingdom many animals' ability to cooperate with each other and make things happen that they can't do on their own is undergirded by an ability to forgive each other for occasional defections and mistakes.

Tippett: Here's a passage from your book — which, again, a lot of this just seems so basic, doesn't it, when you articulate it, but it's things we don't see or think about. I mean, you know, you said that everyday acts of forgiveness are incredibly common among people who know each other.

Mr. McCullough: Right.

Tippett: You know, we think of forgiveness as these heroic acts and there are always these heroic examples of forgiveness. But you said we think of it as this balm for great wounds. But you said, "Yet, in daily life, forgiveness is more often like a Band-Aid on a scrape and at first glance perhaps only slightly more interesting. But, of course, uninteresting doesn't mean unimportant."

Mr. McCullough: Right. And this, again, was part of my attempt to do violence, I guess, to this metaphor of forgiveness as this difficult thing that we have to consciously practice and learn, because we don't know how to do it on their own. I forgive my seven-year-old son every day. Right?

Tippett: Right.

Mr. McCullough: Because he's an active, inquisitive seven-year-old who sometimes accidentally elbows me in the mouth when we're cuddling and sometimes puts Crayons on the walls. And yet it seems demeaning to call it forgiveness.

Tippett: To even call it forgiveness. Right.

Mr. McCullough: Right. I wouldn't dignify it with the term forgiveness. It's just what you do with your children. You know, you accept their limitations and you move on. He broke my tooth once when I was drinking out of a water glass.

Tippett: Right. Right.

Mr. McCullough: I mean, parents have a million of these stories, right?

Tippett: Right.

Mr. McCullough: But you don't put any effort into forgiving. It naturally happens and you move on. And there's a great evolutionary story about why it comes so easy in those kinds of circumstances too.

Tippett: Mm-hmm. Which is pretty obvious, I guess.

Mr. McCullough: Yeah. I mean, evolution wasn't kind to individuals who would seek revenge against their genetic relatives, bottom line, right? So we have this natural tolerance for the misbehavior of our children. So it is at that level you're talking about incredibly mundane. We put no effort into it. It happens every day a thousand times. We would never even give it a second thought. And yet we do it over and over again.

Tippett: One of the most high-profile figures of public forgiveness in the U.S. in recent years was Bud Welch. His 23-year-old daughter Julie died in the bombing of the Murrah Federal building in Oklahoma City in April 1995. Here's a statement Bud Welch made prior to the 2001 execution of Timothy McVeigh, the terrorist responsible for the bombing.


Bud Welch: The first month after the bombing, I didn't even want Tim McVeigh and Terry McNichols to even have trials. I simply wanted them fried. And then I finally come to realize that the reason that Julie and 167 others were dead is because of vengeance and rage. And when we take him out of his cage to kill him, it's going to be the same thing. We will keep the circle of violence going. Number 169 dead is not going to help the family members of the first 168.

Tippett: You do talk about some amazing examples of forgiveness, of public forgiveness, one of them being Bud Welch. But I sometimes think that those kinds of examples that do make the news, like the bombing, also exalt forgiveness as something that's really beyond the reach of most of us most of the time. You know, we kind of wish — we hope that we would be that gracious, perhaps, but it almost feels superhuman.

Mr. McCullough: Right. And if you look at Bud Welch and you look at that story from the outside and you ask yourself how can this man whose daughter was killed in this terrible explosion ever get over his rage, from the outside we have a really hard time imagining that. But if you look at the story of Bud Welch, actually what you find is he had a lot of help along the way. And if you look at the story very carefully, you can actually learn a lot about how the human mind evolved to forgive and what kind of conditions activate that instinct in human minds, because a lot of those conditions ended up falling into place for Bud. In fact, he doesn't talk about forgiveness even for himself in that case as having been some massive struggle.

Tippett: Well, it was incremental, also, wasn't it? I mean, it gets reported as an act, but in fact it was a process.

Mr. McCullough: Yeah, that's right. And along the way, there were events that he actually made happen for himself that turned forgiveness into one of these things that can be easier. For example, he actually sought out Timothy McVeigh's father and visited him one day at the McVeigh home and had this moment he describes when he saw Timothy's picture on the mantle. It was a high school graduation picture. And they were just making small talk and Bud said to McVeigh's father, he said, "God, that's a good-looking kid." And the tears just began pouring out of the elder McVeigh. And what he realized then was that here was another father on the verge of losing a son, of losing a child. And that immediate experience of sympathy and compassion went a tremendous way in facilitating the forgiveness process for Bud.

So right off the bat, this real human interaction starts to turn forgiveness from something difficult to do to something that's easier to do, because this compassion has happened naturally in the course of real human interaction and then suddenly forgiveness is a little easier.

Tippett: So this is getting to one of the really important points I think you make with your work, that if we can understand this forgiveness instinct and how, that even understanding in terms of evolution, that we can start to create conditions where it can be empowered.

Mr. McCullough: Right. The first is safety. Human beings are naturally prone to forgive individuals that they feel safe around. So if we have an offender that is apologizing in a way that seems heartfelt and convincing and has really convinced us that they can't and won't harm us in the same way again, OK, that's a point for forgiveness. A point on the forgiveness side. Again, the human mind evolved for forgiveness to be something worth its while, and any successful organism is unlikely to have a mechanism in it that says, you know, 'Just keep stepping on my neck. It's OK.'

Tippett: Right. Right. Right.

Mr. McCullough: Right. 'But if you can convince me that you're safe, that I don't have to worry about being harmed in the same way a second time, maybe I'm willing to move a little bit forward.'

Tippett: But it seems like that would be the hardest condition or assumption to put in place in the context of many of the worst cycles of revenge in our world.

Mr. McCullough: Sometimes safety comes through things like the rule of law, right?

Tippett: Mm-hmm.

Mr. McCullough: Sometimes safety comes through you as a small-business owner dusting off that employee manual that you don't think about anymore and asking yourself what is in here that would instruct an employee on what to do if they were being systematically harassed by a co-worker and that if there was a real serious infraction it would be dealt with in a way that restored that employee's sense of safety, right?

Tippett: Mm-hmm.

Mr. McCullough: What can you do in your associations? Your condo association, you know, when somebody has a grievance, when the neighbor has a band that he's hired for a party playing at 12:30 on a Friday night, that you know how to make sure that doesn't happen a second time, right? So that you don't then have to say, 'Well, I'm going to get back at that guy myself.'

Tippett: Right.

Mr. McCullough: 'I'm going to leave my garbage cans out all weekend long, which I know he hates,' right?

Tippett: You're talking about revenge in ordinary life, which is where I think we're more comfortable talking about it in terms of warring tribes across the globe.

Mr. McCullough: Well, the thing I like about these principles is they're scalable, right? So we can talk — actually, usually people when they ask me about the book, they're actually less interested in the geopolitical stuff.

Tippett: OK.

Mr. McCullough: But I can, you know …

Tippett: Well, yeah, we'll get there. So what's the second after safety?

Mr. McCullough: Value. We are inclined to forgive individuals who are likely to have benefit for us in the future. So we find it really easy, as I was saying, to forgive our loved ones or forgive our friends or forgive our neighbors or our business partners because there's something in it for us in the future. And the costs sometimes of destroying a relationship that's been damaged are just too high, because establishing a new one is so difficult to do. So relationships that have value in them are ones in which we're naturally prone to forgive.