By way of explanation as opposed to preaching, I see them as different degrees of the same thing: you hurt me so I hurt you. There doesn’t seem to be an element of education in either one (reform); and justice doesn’t seem to play a part either because the motivation of the first actor is seldom taken into consideration(reconciliation) before retalliation ensues; so it seems like it’s really all about pride.
What am I missing? Is it really all about making someone suffer because they’ve made someone else suffer?
I’m convinced that there’s no such thing as a bad emotion. All emotions serve a purpose. Jealousy motivates one to protect their interests and strive to gather more securities. Anger motivates someone similarly. These are typically considered “bad” things but they aren’t always.
So what’s the deal with revenge? The fact that we’re talking about it shows that you don’t need to experience it to know it exists. And that’s how it acts as a deterrent. The only reason I don’t steal people’s purses, break into cars, or hit on people’s wives is because I’m afraid of revenge/punishment. It’s not out of some desire to make a faceless stranger happy.
So that’s the role revenge plays. It protects you from harm from others. It’s not just about making someone suffer because they’ve made someone else suffer- it’s about making them suffer so they (and others) think twice next time.
Is that really true? There’s not another part of you that recoils from doing harm to others? It’s not empathy that deters you, but simply the desire to avoid trouble for yourself?
Well, there’s an emotion that stops me from punching you in the face, sure. I don’t want to cause harm right in front of my eyes. But stealing your iPod that you left at my house? “Nope, sorry. Haven’t seen it.”? Especially if you’re not a friend…or even an enemy, for that matter? Nah, that’s just punishment.
But my point is, it’s a completely legitimate thing. There are many, many “bad” things that you avoid not out of moral revulsion but because you fear the punishment. Cheating on your taxes, for instance. Speeding. Lifting office supplies. No one really has a problem with those things on the individual level. We only care about them “wholesale”…that is, when everyone is doing it.
So how do we stop people from harming us a little bit at a time? By fining them. By ticketing them. By firing them. Do these “reform” the offender? Is there any restitution happening? No. It’s strictly to punish them - to get back at them - for hurting “the collective”.
I would consider punishment, at least in the law and order sense, to be about making certain actions have negative consequences for the perpetrator.
This is partly to act as a deterrent, partly to make amends for a crime (e.g. damages) and partly to reform the individual – to change the way they look at their actions.
Revenge OTOH is just about trying to quell victims’ or society’s anger with a vicious or spiteful act.
I would agree however, that politics being what it is, laws are often written in a way to appeal to the angry mob, especially in America. So there’s a grey area in practice between punishment and revenge.
Also, there are MANY times in life where not only is there no recoil from doing harm, but it’s actually socially acceptable or expected that you hurt the other person. When I play cometitive chess, for instance, and I scoop the prize money, that hurts someone else. Had I just given up and forfeited, someone else would be better off. When I nab the best parking spot or buy the last ticket for something, same thing. For a bigger example, consider when three candidates vie for the same job. Two of those people are going to be thrown out empty-handed…they might not be able to put food on the table! And those teams that play in the Super Bowl? That’s millions of dollars of “harm” for the losing team!
But does anyone expect you to recoil from doing them harm? No, of course not. Ergo, there is nothing inherently wrong with doing others harm. In other words, saying “this harms me” does not necessarily make it an evil action.
That’s competetition where “harm” is an expected consequence of participation. Being first/best is not the same thing as stealing or cheating. I suppose the argument could be advanced that life IS competition, but the difference is participation in life is hardly voluntary in any practical sense.
That’s precisely my point. They both cause harm to someone else by depriving them of property they’d otherwise have. My point is that since one of those conditions is “OK” while the other is “Bad”, it proves that harming others isn’t automatically a bad thing. By extension, if harming isn’t necessarily a bad thing, then revenge isn’t necessarily a bad thing either.
If you’re going to say “Revenge is the same thing as punishment”, then I’m going to come back and say “Then revenge isn’t always a bad thing. Only sometimes.”
The difference being that in one case you’re doing something helpful for yourself and I’ve lost, in the other you’re doing something harmful to me. Your intent, or rather my perception of it, is largely going to determine whether I want to exact revenge.
A friend’s student set up an interesting experiment a few years ago. Two subjects would be paired up, though they never actually met face to face. Each was presented with four beverages. They were something like milk, water, juice, and something really nasty. Each was told to select a beverage for the other to drink. Subject A would choose first, then subject B would choose. If A selected the nasty stuff, would B also select it?
The point of the experiment was to see if B was willing to retaliate against a complete stranger. Overwhelmingly, subjects did, though there was variation by certain personality traits.
(In reality, there was no subject A, and no one was made to drink anything.)
Revenge is done by an individual or group that was specifically wronged against the group they feel has wronged them and they gain something from it, even it is just ‘satisfaction’. With punishment, the act is done to the party that was perceived to have done wrong, but there may not necessarily be a gain to the one issuing the punishment.
In other words, if I was wronged and I have the ability to bring a lawsuit and win, I get both revenge and punishment for you. From the court’s standpoint, however, they are just issuing the punishment and no revenge is involved.
I don’t think the example of winning a Super Bowl or beating out a job candidate is comparable because the rules are clear up front to all parties involved, including the rule that there can be only one winner. All parties enter the arrangement with the understanding there is a chance they will win and a chance they will lose. It only becomes a punishment/revenge situation when one or more parties cheat to influence the outcome beyond what is considered fair and reasonable by people generally in that type of arrangement. Even in illegal transactions, there really is some ‘honor among thieves’. That’s why murders feel they have the right to beat up child molesters in prison.
And if this is some kind of philosophical question of “why punish or get revenge?”, then I think others have answered it correctly by saying it persuades the person receiving the revenge/punishment from doing it again. I work in the defense industry, and there are plenty of people who don’t do anything illegal, but they do regularly ride the edge of the law to the point where their behavior is considered ‘wrong’. These people defend their actions by saying things like ‘hey, it’s not illegal’, or ‘it’s just business’, but their reputations suffer as a result, and their companies have high employee turnover. This is an effective ‘punishment’ by the marketplace in and of itself, because no one will do business with them in the future, and former employees will talk badly about them, which will cause them additional ‘punishment’. In some cases, the person or group may also be sociopathic, in which case the ‘punishment’ and/or ‘revenge’ may actually be needed simply because the group doesn’t know or care they are doing wrong to others. I hate to Godwin myself, but think of the approach the Nazis took and how much damage was done by Hitler relying on other countries being reluctant to retaliate against him when they weren’t immediately affected by his actions.
For me, punishment and revenge aren’t exactly the same.
For example, if someone borrows one of my books and drops it in a puddle, although not meaning to, and the book is ruined, this would call for punishment, the severity of which, in my view, should be commensurate with the outcome of the act. He would therefore be required to replace the book immediately, and be barred, for some undetermined period of time, from borrowing books from me again.
If, on the other hand, he borrows my book with the intent of destroying it, and does, and his motivation becomes evident to me, this would call for revenge, in which case not only would he have to replace the book he destroyed, he would be subjected to me destroying something equally valuable to him.
It’s a matter of degree, with revenge being more severe than punishment.
In a criminal enterprise both parties have the understanding there is a chance they will win or lose. If you leave your bike unlocked you understand there is a change someone will steal it. If someone steals a bike they understand there is a chance they will be caught and punished. The punishment aspect of crime is what sets the cost/benefit ratio.
I would say the difference between revenge and punishment is if society is doing it, it is punishment. If the wronged party is doing it, it is revenge. I would also say that punishment is clearly defined before hand by society, while revenge is emotional and the extent of the revenge can swing widely.
I disagree with this a little. If a child wrongs a parent, the parent will probably dole out some sort of punishment. A parent would usually never commit an act of revenge on their child, regardless the severity of the act committed by the child. I guess one way your premise would make sense to me is if you consider the parent in my scenario always to be akin to society.
I think it comes from a very basic human belief in reciprocity. If you give me something, you expect something in return. If you do me a favor, you’re going to expect a favor from me. If I hurt you, you get to hurt me. Fair’s fair.
Contrary to all physical evidence, people believe - or want to believe - in an orderly universe with clear cause and effect. The desire for revenge is just one aspect of this.
People will say justice when they really want is revenge. You see this all the time in auto accidents. You will have a person killed and the relative wants blood. OK that’s understandable you’d be mad, but almost all the time the person in the car didn’t mean to kill that other person. It was an accident.
OK one with serious results but it wasn’t intended. Yet we seek to punish this person out of proportion.
This is what justice really is, a sense of fairness and punishment that is propotional to the crime (or act) and makes sense.
Another part of the confusion is we in America fall into the “I served my time,” thing. In otherwords, I do something wrong serve my time and expect all to be forgiven.
This was a bad idea because it simply isn’t true, nor should it be. Unless one can restore their victim to the postion they were in prior to the crime, you have not really done anything to warrant you’re forgiveness.
The problem is the rewards for bad behaviour have become so great it makes cheating and crime very attractive. Even if you get caught there’s no shame becauses you gained and all you have to do is make it through your jail time and then bitch at the world for not understanding.
Ostracism from society is the most effective means to motovate someone to change their behaviour but we don’t. A family member who shuns someone is considered a poor person in character today, even though to shun that person would result in said person being more likely to change.
As for no such thing as a bad emotion, that is only true if the emotion is correct. Jealousy is horribe if it’s unwarranted. Anger that is misplaced does no good. And the list goes on.
Too many times a person’s emotions are not reflecting the reality of the situtation and that leads to bad decsions.
Finally one has to remember, though two wrongs don’t make a right, sometimes two wrongs cancel each other out
I think this a generally alien concept for those who aren’t ill. Traumatic emotion passes with time, but that’s not what you’re talking about I think. Which is interesting (if I may hijack for a second) because this condition is ultimately what spawned the OP. I have to keep my emotions on a short leash and that has made me view human interaction much more deliberately and logically. As a result, I’ve come to realize there are certain emotion-based actions (like revenge) that make no sense logically–they don’t undo an act and if the last 10,000 years is any indication, they are largely ineffective at curbing unwanted behavior. Society clings to the concepts of deterrence, justice or reform, but the reality seems to be these are fig leafs for a more base aspect of human nature we want neither to abandon nor acknowlege.
