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GRAPPLING WITH REVENGE
by
ROBERT J. LEWIS
___________________________________
While
seeking revenge, dig two graves - one for yourself.
Douglas Horton
The best revenge is to be unlike him who performed the injury.
Marcus Aurelius
Nature can be vanquished
only if we recognize her authority
and allow her fatalities their true role.
Claude Levi-Strauss
Decidedly unimpressed with the prerogatives of human nature,
the sages, when reviewing the long list of candidates for the
exclusive Seven Deadly Sins club, decided that revenge -- as
a manifestation of Wrath (anger, hatred) – should be included.
Thus, the laws
of most lands ask that we refrain from taking revenge because,
pace the logical positivists, the passions are to be mistrusted,
and deliberately causing serious if not fatal injury to someone
in the name of revenge reflects poorly on the individual and
the values of the society he represents. At the same time,
we feel there is a natural kinship between revenge and justice
as it concerns rules of conduct and their application. Ralph
Waldo Emerson writes that the innate existence of the retributory
faculty predicts the imperfect world we inhabit, as the wings
of a bird in the egg presuppose air. Properly channeled, revenge
motivates the individual and, by extension, society to address
(correct) unacceptable behaviour. Revenge is the passionate
implementation of society’s dispassionate laws.
When an angry
man turns on the drunk driver who has killed his child, or
when the masses turn on their tyrannical leaders (Ceausescu,
Saddam, Gaddafi), we usually don't debate the legality of
it but conclude that the brutes got what they deserved, that
justice was served. We note that the courts will exonerate
the man who kills the person caught red-handed strangling
his wife, but will punish him for taking the law into his
own hands if he kills the guilty party at a later date. Such
are the unreasonable if not prodigious demands imposed on
human nature by the law and its categorical rejection of retributive
justice.
Prior to the
formal establishment of law, revenge served as an invaluable
deterrent and played a major role in shaping a society's values
and regulating its conduct.
When our primal
predecessors lived in tribes, those who were—by nature—short-changed
on revenge would soon find themselves overwhelmed by an unrevenged
enemy that, with impunity, took what it needed and wanted—
when it wanted. Since the enemy survived and propagated its
own, wrongdoing ended up doing right.
And yet from
Confucius to Ghandi—“an eye for an eye only ends
up making the whole world blind”—our wisest have
counseled against revenge, though conceding that the feeling
is perfectly natural. Today, for the sake of the greater society,
we are asked to sublimate the instinct by devolving the responsibility
of taking revenge to our more responsible (dispassionate)
institutions of justice. But if the much adored and copiously
downloaded revenge-film genre is any indication, we do so
reluctantly, contre nature.
Brain-imaging
scans show that when we anticipate eating a favourite food
or contemplating revenge, the dorsal striatum part of the
brain is rewarded; that same area lights up following nicotine
and cocaine consumption. That 'revenge feels good' is not
merely a figure of speech but a quantifiable physiological
response to unacceptable personal affront.
Revenge is a
dish best served cold. However, when acted upon, it is seldom
as sweet as anticipated because it does not undo the original
offense that triggered it, which makes it, as a practical
consideration, more of an adjunct of law and order than a
lust to be satisfied.
In Daniel Grou’s
gruesome film, The 7 Days of Retaliation, the protagonist's
(Dr. Hamel) 8-year-old daughter has been brutally raped and
murdered. The doctor finds himself deeply unsatisfied with
the pace of justice and decides to take matters into his own
hands. He arranges to kidnap the murderer—whose DNA
leaves no doubt as to his guilt—and in the spirit of
retribution announces to the authorities that he’s going
to torture and murder the pervert and then give himself up
a week later, on the day his daughter would have turned nine.
The cabin where
the revenge tryst takes place is arranged to resemble a slaughterhouse,
the lighting is grim save for Caravaggio-like flames of interior
light falling on the naked squirming pedophile’s morgue-white
body whose cries for mercy go unheeded. If revenge porn is
your thing, this film presses all the right buttons. The blood
reckoning is off the charts and I couldn’t wait for
the good doctor to surgically remove the murderer’s
penis without the benefit of an anaesthestic. Wish granted.
And when the avenger finally turns himself over to the authorities,
without having, as promised, killed his daughter's killer,
we want the laws of the land to acquit—which speaks
to the ambiguity unleashed by the emotion of revenge: on the
one hand it’s barbaric, on the other hand it’s
natural and right.
Playing both hands
with impartial conviction, the film forces the viewer to confront
his own appetite for revenge—and then the utility of
its operations when left unhinged. The film asks: since revenge
is deeply embedded in the human psyche (it cannot be talked
away) what is the individual to do when the law fails to extinguish
its fires?
Reduced to its
lowest common denominator, revenge is the unapologetic (demi)urge
to eliminate the genes of the person who has committed an
unpardonable crime not only against an individual, but society:
its core beliefs, its organizing principles, its present and
future face. Revenge, with nature’s blessings, identifies,
condemns and executes in order to extirpate toxic genes from
the body politic. As an enforcement tool, it shapes and affirms
the ethical codes upon which every stable society depends.
The pedophile
who has raped and murdered has not only broken the law, he
has broken and violated a sacred trust. For the sake and vigour
of the gene pool and the ideals and hopes it carries and transmits
from one generation to the next, not only do we desire revenge,
but upon calm reflection, we may very well deem the taking
of revenge a duty to both self and society, and to ignore
that imperial 'calling of conscience' is to risk leaving ourselves
civilizationally wracked with discontent—the Freudian
formula for neurosis. The film makes the argument that whatever
revenge is, it should not be one of the Seven Deadly Sins.
Is it fair or
reasonable for society to expect someone whose family has
been butchered to be satisfied with a lengthy incarceration,
which if long enough is tantamount to eliminating the offender's
genes?
Time does not
heal 'all' wounds nor does it heal uniformly In Canada, a
young man who murders at 18 may find himself free before the
age of 40, and potentially capable of passing on his defective
genes and/or defective behavioural disposition to his offspring,
which raises the question of capital punishment, which raises
the even greater question of intractable errors in the judicial
system, which is why most civilized countries explicitly outlaw
the death penalty. But even in the best case scenario, we
know that the maximum punishment prescribed by the courts
often falls short of the injured party's understanding of
what constitutes just punishment. Which begs the question:
should our laws concerning crime and punishment be tweaked
to be better aligned with human nature?
If we decide that
it is barbaric to execute the pedophile who has raped and
murdered, should the law, at a very minimum, grant the aggrieved
a say in the punishment—the manner in which the felon
will pass his incarceration, at least until he either deceases
in prison or is set free?
Is it reasonable
to suggest that as long as the pedophile-murderer lives, he
should be obliged to serve the family he has violated; meaning
during and after his sentence has been served, all fruits
of his life’s endeavours, however paltry, should go
to the family? Should the surviving family members, in addition
to the prison sentence, be offered the option of prescribing
either castration or lobotomy? Of course the latter precludes
repentance and rehabilitation. More generally, what concessions,
if any, should be made to the cause and effect engendered
by revenge that will do a society proud before the nations
of the world?
The more thought
we offer to revenge and all that it implies, the thornier
the issue becomes. If we are to get the better of the reflex,
that is learn how to more productively work with it, we will
have to stand unflinching before the mirror and shake hands
not only with the executioner but also the person who has
a score to settle and a broken heart to mend. Only then will
we be in a position to better understand our conflicted nature
and the kind of freedom we are seeking.
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