Vengeance
Published February 8th, 2007From what base instinct does revenge spring? How has vengeance been selected for? When we are done wrong, why do we wish to inflict pain back? Is it because we instinctively see that hurtful entity as a threat and wish to eliminate it, even at further risk of pain?
And is schadenfreude really just the same thing, but you’re instinctively too afraid to confront the threat, so you are pleased when ill befalls that entity? Maybe. But does either emotion serve a purpose anymore? Yet we all feel it. We all feel jealous and angry, vengeful and we have all been filled with righteous indignation. We all have a high horse to ride on. Sometimes it’s justified, sometimes it’s not.
So how does guilt factor in? This is what I hate about emotions - they’re so messy. You can feel vengeful, spiteful, experience schadenfreude…and then feel completely guilty for it. What purpose does guilt serve? It’s an emotion that makes us feel bad about feeling other emotions. It’s the antidote to extremes - after the fact, which is barely effective most of the time.
A person in my past, a person I cared for very much, hurt me deeply. I still bear anger. The thought of her sometimes makes me physically ill. The only word that comes to mind is ‘filth’, it’s that strong - and then I feel guilty. I am not a vengeful, spiteful person. I don’t want to feel this way about this person (I’d much prefer to feel nothing at all), or anyone for that matter. And so when I do, I feel guilty.
Rationally, given the situation, I’m expected to feel these emotions on some scale. But they’re not helpful emotions. I don’t want them. I don’t like being nauseated by someone who is, for the most part, just a regular old person. I don’t want to feel schadenfreude about most people, because I would not want others relishing my personal miseries. And I try to treat people how I’d want to be treated. It’s a simple philosophy that apparently goes against human nature. And so, I feel guilt - the most awkward emotion of all. It’s the emotion where you betray yourself.
Sadly sometimes I just can’t help it. May the world forgive me.
Some evolutionary psychologists believe that revenge comes, not from individual evolution, but from the evolution of clans and society — cultural evolution, in other words. If another clan was stealing your resources or harming your members, it may have benefited you to harm their clan so they would either be less willing to or unable to continue that activity, thereby increasing your clan’s chances of survival.
Revenge, for our intents and purposes, is the interplay between our fantasies and our anger as a response to being hurt. That is the real issue here. Lots of people displace that anger, either by taking it out on someone else or themselves (as self-sabotage or guilt) to avoid acknowledging and fully feeling the hurt they’ve experienced. It’s almost like the emotional equivalent of argumentum ad hominem.
But, sooner or later, that hurt and that anger resurfaces. Where do you carry your stress? If it makes you feel ill, does that mean you carry yours in your gut? When I was trying to avoid dealing with my last breakup, I couldn’t get rid of small knots in my upper back, no matter how hot the water in the shower was.
Philosophically, guilt serves only the person who feels it. Camus argued, in The Stranger, that there was thus no point of guilt because it didn’t benefit the thing we were feeling guilty about. I think it’s more complex than that, because most people have emotional responses to provide a bulwark against feeling weak. Perhaps guilt, here, then awkwardly serves to make us feel that we’re not bad people, that we know that whatever twisted fantasies of revenge we may have are not morally right. Perhaps there is a way of re-framing your guilt in a more positive light?
No matter what happens, you have to know that it’s okay to feel these things. In fact, you must feel these things or this could prove a major hangup in your life.
But one thing to remember: The human mind is not rational. We do and feel things, even while thinking to ourselves that it doesn’t make any sense. That was one thing that tripped up most people in Psych 1 and it was the first sentence of the text.