# Why are (most) people so vengeful? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 9, 2014, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-most-people-so-vengeful/688061 "2014-05-09T16:24:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Lowdown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/c57346/32.png) [@Lowdown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lowdown)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2014, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-most-people-so-vengeful/688061/41 "2014-06-27T18:42:09Z")
(Most) people are full of shit and spew opinions about situations they’ve never personally had to face. It’s easy to talk big game. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2014, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-most-people-so-vengeful/688061/42 "2014-06-27T20:50:42Z")
> [@protoboard](#): > > Is punishment really about protecting society #1 by me. Nothing wrong with vengeance though. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Claverhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/13edae/32.png) [@Claverhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claverhouse)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2014, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-most-people-so-vengeful/688061/43 "2014-06-27T21:52:32Z")
Although belonging to the persuasion that\* people who want to torture the wicked merely want to torture\* — and whilst understanding simple revenge, can’t allow physical or mental cruelty or any emotion if undertaking revenge or any ‘justice’ — it is well to understand opposing positions, and I found this interesting, if not appealing to me personally, as one particularist American mindset that still informs the modern thinking of the vengeful moralists: The death penalty was first instituted by God Himself in Genesis 9:6: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” Man didn’t invent the death penalty, so man has no right to abandon it. We live in an age when everyone is far too concerned with “human rights”, and God has been practically ignored, as if He had no rights at all. Let’s take it a step further. Did you know that God has actually promised to BLESS us if we follow His plan of using the death penalty? Notice Deuteronomy 19:11-13 I personally think we need TELEVISED executions every night at 8:00 p.m. on national television. Forget the movie of the week. Let’s just have about 50,000,000 Americans sit down every night and see some little children crying about their mother who was raped and murdered. Let’s see some moms and dads mourning over their little girl who was molested and murdered by some wicked devil, and then let’s see the rascal get what he deserves. I bet that would deter some crime! You say, “Man, you’re crazy!” Am I? Did you ever read how God commanded the Israelites to execute people? It was a PUBLIC STONING? Is God crazy too? Friend, you just read what God’s word has to say about the death penalty. If you don’t support it, then right now is the time for you to start. You should get on your knees and ask God to forgive you for ignoring His word and being ignorant of His will concerning the death penalty. Then contact us and order about fifty of these tracts to give to your friends and family members. **[The Reverend Pastor James L. Melton ( Baptist ) 1997](http://www.biblebelievers.com/jmelton/punish.html)**. Secularists generally gain their ethical beliefs from society’s overall moral climate ( other than the Nietzscheans ) and if the pool is suffused with the strong-minded eschatology common to religionists and bolsheviks, then no less than the believers some will be tainted also by corrupt visions of justified punishment. ---
**Author:** ![Jragon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Jragon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jragon)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2014, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-most-people-so-vengeful/688061/44 "2014-06-27T22:06:43Z")
I think there’s a bit of a difference between vengeance and **gleeful** vengeance. Like, I don’t think there was anything wrong with killing Bin Laden. I think it was just and, well, maybe not necessary, but generally a net positive. It worked towards the greater good. What I can absolutely not comprehend was all the dancing on his grave. That was just gross to me. Yeah, his actions caused a lot of deaths and hardship. I get it. I still felt sad that things had to come to that. I mean, even if he honestly reformed and wanted to become Gandhi and preach peace for the rest of his life, he still **should** have had retribution for his primes – rather that be prison or death, but I just can’t get behind all the gleeful “ding dong the witch is dead” parties people had. The other day a friend of mind posted a mug shot of a sex trafficker who had resisted arrest, he was visibly beaten and bloodied. The caption on the picture was all ecstatic about the beating he received due to resisting arrest. I’m glad the guy was caught, and support whatever legal punishment he faces. I don’t even begrudge the police for hurting him since it was necessary to get him under arrest. But the sheer glee people showed at the **harm** the police did to him, rather than a simple celebration that the world is safer with his arrest is hard for me to get behind. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [June 27, 2014, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-most-people-so-vengeful/688061/45 "2014-06-27T22:16:31Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > [A timely recent artcle:](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/04/opinion/sunday/revenge-my-lovely.html?partner=rss&emc=rss) > > The article goes on to discuss the progression from blood vengence to institutionalized revenge/justice. That evolution is also covered in Deuteronomy 19 (happens to be part of my daughter’s Bat Mitzvah Torah portion) … part of the bigger section that includes the famous: “Justice, justice shall you pursue …” The established system of blood vengence, where kinships avenged the death of one of their own, was replaced with asylum cities for the accused to escape to and to be judged with a standard of proof (two witnesses). But if the person was found guilty then “hand him over to the blood-avenger to be put to death; you must show him no pity.” > > Now I am not a believer in the death penalty but without question an institutionalized death penalty and a sense of proportionate punishment based on proof of guilt, was a large improvement over Hatfield and McCoy type blood feuds. > > Revenge is hard-wired into us and many studies document that when we feel we have been wronged punishing the transgressor is highly valued even at significant additional cost to ourselves. > > Another [pertinent article](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/revenge-evolution/): > > Our social brains are evolved to cheat if the risk of getting caught times the cost of getting caught are less than the benefit gained by cheating. Functional society therefore requires equal brain power devoted to detecting and punishing the cheaters at levels suffiicent to deter that choice. Another factor is that in simulations of cooperation, if there is no ability to punish cheaters then people stop cooperating. If you have a group where 80% of people are honest and 20% of cheaters, but no method of punishing and expelling the cheaters, then the 80% stop cooperating. But if you give them an option to punish the cheaters then cooperation resumes. Also revenge can have some good evolutionary influences. Supposedly in pre-agrarian times humans would gang up on and beat to death asshole alpha males (or throw rocks at them, stoning them to death). This moved early human societies towards a more egalitarian bend. Once agricultural society came about and the violence of the state was overpowering this stopped and the assholes took over again but for a time our capacity for revenge and violence helped early humans overpower and kill assholes, making society as a whole more fair and safe. Had it not been for this desire for revenge, human society may be even more fucked up than it is (more authoritarian and less egalitarian). But as far as the OP, I often wonder this myself. People get worked up into a murderous lather over something they didn’t know existed 2 minutes ago all the time if you read comments sections in the news whenever something bad happens. And people are viciously, gleefully vengeful, far beyond what should be necessary to punish threats and cheaters. Maybe people are just a lot more fucked up than they act in real life and the internet makes it safe to be anonymous. You can tell a lot about a person by how much cruelty they express towards those society doesn’t care about or is openly aggressive towards, irrespective of how respectfully they act towards those society values. People who leap at any opportunity to dump their violent rage at socially sanctioned targets probably have a lot of other issues and should be avoided. ---
**Author:** ![smokey78](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/82dd89/32.png) [@smokey78](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smokey78)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2014, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-most-people-so-vengeful/688061/46 "2014-06-29T16:56:01Z")
revenge = satisfaction That is like the theme to so many Asian films I can’t even count. I’m a fan of forensic files and a third of the stories the motive was revenge. The biggest one I remember the story of a rape survivor who did a taped testimony against her perp. She moved to San Diego to get away from her nightmare and that rapist tracked her down to kill her to prevent her from testifying in court and revenge too for having the gads to report the rape to police. However, he didn’t know that the Taped testimony was admissable in court, so he went to jail for rape AND murder. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2014, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-most-people-so-vengeful/688061/47 "2014-06-29T17:08:03Z")
> [@Claverhouse](#): > > Although belonging to the persuasion that\* people who want to torture the wicked merely want to torture\* — and whilst understanding simple revenge, can’t allow physical or mental cruelty or any emotion if undertaking revenge or any ‘justice’ — it is well to understand opposing positions, and I found this interesting, if not appealing to me personally, as one particularist American mindset that still informs the modern thinking of the vengeful moralists: > The death penalty was first instituted by God Himself in Genesis 9:6: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man.” Man didn’t invent the death penalty, so man has no right to abandon it. We live in an age when everyone is far too concerned with “human rights”, and God has been practically ignored, as if He had no rights at all. > Let’s take it a step further. Did you know that God has actually promised to BLESS us if we follow His plan of using the death penalty? Notice Deuteronomy 19:11-13 > I personally think we need TELEVISED executions every night at 8:00 p.m. on national television. Forget the movie of the week. Let’s just have about 50,000,000 Americans sit down every night and see some little children crying about their mother who was raped and murdered. Let’s see some moms and dads mourning over their little girl who was molested and murdered by some wicked devil, and then let’s see the rascal get what he deserves. I bet that would deter some crime! You say, “Man, you’re crazy!” Am I? Did you ever read how God commanded the Israelites to execute people? It was a PUBLIC STONING? Is God crazy too? > Friend, you just read what God’s word has to say about the death penalty. If you don’t support it, then right now is the time for you to start. You should get on your knees and ask God to forgive you for ignoring His word and being ignorant of His will concerning the death penalty. Then contact us and order about fifty of these tracts to give to your friends and family members. > **[The Reverend Pastor James L. Melton ( Baptist ) 1997](http://www.biblebelievers.com/jmelton/punish.html)**. > Secularists generally gain their ethical beliefs from society’s overall moral climate ( other than the Nietzscheans ) and if the pool is suffused with the strong-minded eschatology common to religionists and bolsheviks, then no less than the believers some will be tainted also by corrupt visions of justified punishment. The Christian counterargument to Melton is that Jesus Christ on the Cross, by his torture and death, already paid the price for all sin- past, present, and future. While it’s legitimate and a good thing to desire revenge on the child-murderer, the need for vengeance has already been satisfied, on the body of Jesus Christ. And that while he was on this earth, while he didn’t rule out the death penalty, he came pretty close (see John 8). I don’t know if I completely buy that, but the older I get the more it seems convincing to me. I support the death penalty for treason and related crimes, for a few reasons, but I no longer support it for murderers or any other common criminals. And I think my eschatology is as strong minded as any religionist or communist: it’s just that the scriptural arguments here, not the eschatological ones, ought to be controlling. ---
**Author:** ![protoboard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/fbc32d/32.png) [@protoboard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/protoboard)\ **Post date:** [June 29, 2014, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-most-people-so-vengeful/688061/48 "2014-06-29T18:59:57Z")
Yeah, though personally I think mercy is better than justice if justice simply means retribution I cannot get behind people’s torturous fantasies. We might want to beat up or even kill a child molester or someone who beats up an old lady, but what does that say about us? Is it because people are genuinely outraged, or do they simply want to brutalize an untouchable because they know they can get away with it and hardly anyone will object? Maybe a bit of both? :dubious: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-most-people-so-vengeful/688061.md?page=2)