Revenge

Basically, this isn't much more than an attempted justification of my desire to revenge myself on those who wrong me. Which sounds very grand, but that revenge usually consists of little more than epic and intricate levels of personal abuse.



Have you ever heard the phrase "To err is human, to forgive divine"? I always liked that saying; it carried the implication that the many and varied cock-ups I was going to make in my life were expected and would simply be par for the course. As to the idea of forgiveness being some sort of superhuman feat; that merely helped reinforce my overwhelming sense of self-satisfaction when I didn't react to a real or imagined slight against me. Not that I needed any excuse to be unbearably smug about myself, but it's always nice to have an excuse!

Anyway, I spent an awful lot of time in blissful arrogance, happy that anyone who couldn't bring themselves to drop whatever petty little grievances that they had accumulated over time was simply not as good a person as I was. Happily, (or unhappily depending on ones viewpoint) I've had to revise this point of view rather substantially over the last couple of years. You see, despite all of my best efforts, it turns out that I'm really a quite frighteningly vindictive sort of person. Not to the extent of overkill (for example, a group of ratboys set their Staffordshire Bull Terrier onto one of my cats a few weeks ago. Had I reacted the way I wanted to, I would almost certainly be on remand for charges of false imprisonment, ABH, and GBH etc), but rather I find that I simply MUST have my pound of flesh so that I can accept that the matter is settled and so that I can move on. An eye for an eye is still too harsh an ideal for me, but I don't have any problems with a tooth for a tooth.

Now I don't pretend that my attitude in this respect is the correct one. But I don't think it makes me particularly unique, or even a hugely bad person. I think it just makes me a typical example of how humanity deals with being dumped on. On a small (i.e. personal) scale, this isn't particularly harmful or destructive. Okay, so maybe it can be for the person on the receiving end of somebody's ire, but that is part of the process of living your life. It's when others get pulled into the vortex of anger and revenge that things start to get ugly. Again, as a personal example, I once found myself dragging two complete innocents into a dispute I was having with somebody. It had nothing to do with them whatsoever, and the net result was that everybody ended up being pissed off at everybody else. I suppose that, if nothing else, this taught me the valuable lesson of not allowing ones anger to overwhelm ones reason (or, if I were to admit to being as big a Star Wars fan as I actually am, I learned not to give in to the Dark Side...). Sackcloth and ashes were duly donned, and I think that I and the people whom I still care about have come out of the sorry little mess wiser and, for the most part, unscathed.

Okay, so I think that pretty much establishes that to err is indeed human. I know that all of my friends have made mistakes in their lives, and when I look at the news I can see mistakes being made on a daily basis and with global implications; Palestinian suicide bombers, Israeli occupation, American belligerence, European self-righteousness, African chaos...all of these things can be seen and read about on a daily basis (though it can get pretty bloody depressing should you choose to do so). But to stick with the idea of mistakes on a much larger scale, are we right to just expect all the involved parties to behave in a way that is entirely human (i.e. involves the total and unconditional hatred of a group of people whom one has never met and whom one may get along famously with if they met at a party, purely on the basis of something arbitrary like their religion or the colour of their skin)?

For example, the situation in Israel at the moment is the result of a numerous mistakes being made by both Palestinians and Israeli's since the late 1940's. The Palestinians were mistaken in their (and their Arab neighbours) efforts to wipe Israel from the map. Israel was mistaken in their attempt to colonise occupied Palestinian territory. The Palestinians are just plain wrong in their continued guerilla war against Israel that sees more and more innocent Israeli's being blown apart for the crime of going about their daily business. The Israeli's are equally as wrong in their seeming determination to level every Palestinian occupied building in range of their tank shells. We're told that both sides quite simply hate each other with venom not seen since Trotsky called Stalin a big, fat, moustachioed poofter. But was it really as simple as that? Did two whole nations wake up one day and decide that they HAD to commit some barbarous act or other to get revenge for some sort of wrong committed against them?

No, I don't really think that they did. I think a very small group of people is responsible for this particular conflagration. Unfortunately, those people form the leadership of both sides. Yasser Arafat has grievances against the Israeli people that he seemingly cannot forgive. Likewise for Ariel Sharon and his feelings toward the Palestinians. However, because of the vindictiveness of these two people and their attendant cronies, millions of people get the unrivalled opportunity to live in fear, hate, and discord. If the two of them were locked into a room and only one of them were allowed to walk out, I'm inclined to think that it would be a much better way of helping them settle their differences. Instead, a whole nation is used to get revenge by proxy.

I'll restate my point again; two individuals feeling the need to gain petty revenge on each other is A-okay as far as I'm concerned. Two individuals dragging others into their dispute is a bad thing. And if they drag whole nations and cost them their lives...well, it becomes divine in that a truly biblical level of carnage ensues, but that's about it. I think what I'm trying to say is that there is nothing monstrous, or evil, or inhuman about many of the world leaders who sentence a random number of their populace to death for the international equivalent of what their Kev said about our Sharon. They're behaving in just the kind of blinkered, selfish, and petty way that is exactly what we should expect from a human being.

Not that I'm saying that we should simply say "Well that's okay then. We may as well let them carry on until no one has any eyes or teeth left". Going back to revenge on a personal level, I believe that it can be a positive thing (allowing one to let go of whatever dislike has been consuming us, and so allowing one to get on with ones life). But it can very easily become negative and destructive, to the point where revenge is all that matters above and beyond everything else. We usually have the benefit of a friend telling us to calm the hell down, and perhaps to rethink, for example, sending ones enemy a forged letter from a hospital informing them that one of their recent sexual partners has been diagnosed as HIV +. No one close to him is going to tell Dubya that declaring war on Iraq because Saddam pissed daddy off is a bad idea. Maybe I am being unreasonable to expect a little more of the divine in our leaders, but when they are making decisions that will affect my life based predominantly on their personal grudges, I doubt I'll be alone in making that wish.