The impulse to strike back at those who hit us seems built in. But culture can cultivate and magnify that need for revenge.
When we look at how revenge impacts the human world, it becomes clear that that vengeful impulse is part of the problem, not the solution.
When the man whom Christendom declares the most perfect human being ever (Jesus) says "turn the other cheek," and the man who is one of the worst human beings we've ever seen (Trump) says "hit back ten-fold," that's certainly a clue about how Revenge fits into that battle at the center of the human drama: Namely,
The battle between two coherent forces, one of which consistently works to make the human world more whole, and one which works just as consistently to make the human world more broken. In other words, what might reasonably be called "The Battle Between Good and Evil."
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In a previous posting — “War College: Understanding the Reality of a ‘Force of Evil’ in the Human World” — I defined “Evil” as “a coherent force that consistently makes the human world worse (or more broken).” And I showed that a Force meeting that description actually exists, and that this destructive force plays a major role in the Human Story. And that the coherence of this force is revealed in the network of causes and effects tracing connections in our world,
The role of Revenge is best understood in terms of how brokenness moves through the human world through cause-and-effect:
Each bit of “brokenness” in our world — whether it be a war, or an injustice, or someone’s greed, etc. — can be seen to be the consequenceof other forms of brokenness. And when we ask what is the impact on the world of any given bit of brokenness, we discover that it becomes the causeof other forms of brokenness. (E.g. A war breaks out because of various things amiss in the human world, and then that war creates other kind of brokenness.)
The major principle at work delineating the “coherent force” that is reasonable to call “Evil” because it acts as “Evil” has traditionally been understood to act, is that Brokenness Begets Brokenness.
Which serves to make clear how it is that “Revenge” — in which an injury suffered by one person leads directly to injury inflicted in return — fits into the workings of that Force of Brokenness.
It is reasonable to call that Force a “Force of Evil,” as it so clearly perpetuates “a coherent force that moves through the human world over time making the human world more broken.”
Which makes sense of how it is that Donald Trump — the most vindictive person (even compulsively vengeful) we’ve ever seen on the public stage in America (he must strike back at the prosecutors who did what it was their job to do, and even at a pollster whose findings in Iowa made him look like a loser) — is a President who in all his other actions — whether on climate change, on the Rule of Law, wielding a wrecking ball on the American government, backing the fascist aggressor rather than the victim in Ukraine, on relationships among the races, on Democracy vs. Fascism — consistently makes things more broken.