- study about Christian forgiveness.
- study about Buddhist need-not-want-not.
- study about the divine providence and heavenly justice
- anger consumes those who are angry; it is more damaging than fear or than worry.
- there are only two ways to get rid of vengeful anger: to retaliate or to forgive.
- you have weighed your options, and you decided to not retaliate.
- so your only option is to forgive if you want to live again

The social contract forbidding one to act alone in retribution for grievous harm has always been the most difficult thing to accept. It is not a "modern" problem. It is the one we have had since people could say there is a problem.

Revenge is usually a fantasy. A war with yourself in your own head. A invitation to re-civilise yourself.

Forgiveness may be divine but revenge is human. And isn’t Justice a form of revenge?

I think it’s worth thinking about what ultimate end goal are you trying to achieve with your revenge plan. If you trying to be happy, then revenge is unlikely to make you happy in the end. If you are trying to reduce suffering in your life, then revenge will likely to make you suffer more. If you are trying to make others happy or reduce the suffering of others, then revenge would also make things worse in this regard. If you want to have more meaningful accomplishments in life, revenge is not likely going to be a meaningful accomplishment for you and it will interfere with your ability to attain meaningful accomplishments. If you’re trying to attain knowledge and wisdom, then revenge will not give you either. If you’re trying to prolong your life span, then revenge is a good way to potentially shorten it. If you are trying to insure that you create as many copies of your DNA as possible, then I still don’t see how revenge would be helpful. In the end, it’s not clear to me how taking revenge could fulfill any important end goal in life. Unless you think revenge should be valued as an important end goal for its own sake. Then you have to explain to yourself what would justify pursuing that end goal above all the other potential end goals I listed above.

You don't think it's possible that thoughts of revenge could be human nature inviting you to un-civilize yourself? Instead of re-civilizing?

While justice is a form of revenge, most of the time the average person isn't at liberty to carry out justice as they please. It still leaves you waiting and hoping for justice to be served. Are people just supposed to sit by and hope that one day justice will be carried out? That leads to such an unpleasant way of living.

it’s not clear to me how taking revenge could fulfill any important end goal in life — TheHedoMinimalist

Revenge could fulfill an import end goal in life by giving you the peace of mind that you stood up for what you care about. Is this not an important accomplishment? Could this not give you wisdom?

Revenge could fulfill an import end goal in life by giving you the peace of mind that you stood up for what you care about. Is this not an important accomplishment? Could this not give you wisdom? — Etzsche

I don’t think that revenge will give you piece of mind. It is more likely to torture you for needless reason. I think it’s easier to learn how to control your impulses for revenge than it is to carry out revenge and then deal with the unexpected emotional consequences of that decision.

Revenge can give someone back their sense of dignity. If someone wrongs me and I take revenge, that might make me feel better. I know it’s taboo to say that publicly, but I view most feeling that come natural to us have a certain value. I have never believed that a natural feeling can be all bad.

From the prospective of game theory, there might be a case made for the prudence of revenge. It might be argued that those who have a reputation of taking revenge are less likely to be messed with in the first place. This implies a counterintuitive prudence to revenge. Although, I actually don’t think that people who harm others in modern times take into account your willingness to seek revenge since they don’t usually know if you would or not. This is because vengeful behavior patterns mostly evolved in humans in a sparsely populated environment of the African savannas where there were few people and everyone knew everyone else very well. This means that people were far more aware of everyone’s reputation than they are in modern times. So, it’s less useful to focus too much on your reputation of not letting people fuck with you in modern times than it was in Paleolithic times.

Revenge can give someone back their sense of dignity. If someone wrongs me and I take revenge, that might make me feel better. I know it’s taboo to say that publicly, but I view most feeling that come natural to us have a certain value. I have never believed that a natural feeling can be all bad. — halo

Why do you think it is important to have a sense of dignity? Is having a sense of dignity good for its own sake or is it good only because of something else that it allows you to obtain?

Dignity leads to self respect, which can lead to a happy life.

Dignity leads to self respect, which can lead to a happy life. — Etzsche

What’s the difference between dignity and self respect?

Well I guess dignity and self respect are the same thing. But my statement still stands nonetheless. Dignity can lead to a happy life.

Dignity can lead to a happy life. — Etzsche

Fair enough, but is dignity ever necessary for a happy life?

If you can't feel comfortable in your own skin, then you've got no place else to go. I think dignity is something that people need in order to get by on a day to day basis. For example, if I don't respect myself and I have no pride in anything I do, I feel that my quality of life would decrease drastically.

If you can't feel comfortable in your own skin, then you've got no place else to go. — Etzsche

That’s interesting, but this comment raises another question. Imagine someone who is shameless and has lost all self respect yet has become comfortable with his lack of self respect. Someone that allows himself to be humiliated and yet is unfazed by the humiliation. Could such a person exist and yet be happy?

What’s the difference between dignity and self respect? — TheHedoMinimalist

Dignity is the response by the community when the community senses you have high self-respect AND they feel it justified for you to have it.

"If you have to ask, you don't have it." -- Ogden Nussbaum, the discoverer of the condition "carpal tunnel syndrome".

While justice is a form of revenge, most of the time the average person isn't at liberty to carry out justice as they please. It still leaves you waiting and hoping for justice to be served. Are people just supposed to sit by and hope that one day justice will be carried out? That leads to such an unpleasant way of living. — Etzsche

Revenge is a form of justice, not justice is a form of revenge. You get revenge in our western democratic societies by the law finding the guilty party and punishing him.

This has several connotations. The law, as it is structured these days, or ever, is not about justice. It's about applying the law. Many people come to court and seek justice and find none, since the law does not meddle with justice.

The law, instead, finds someone guilty of a crime when there is no reasonable doubt that he or she committed a crime. The guilty verdict has nothing, absolutely nothing, with the perpetrator of the crime. The guilty verdict is applied when there is no reasonable doubt that the person is guilty.

It is just luck and reasonable expectation, that most people who get a guilty verdict ARE indeed the persons who had committed the criminal act for which the court finds them guilty.

Could such a person exist and yet be happy? — TheHedoMinimalist

I believe the only way this person who has lost all respect for himself can be happy is by means of materialistic pleasures and other outside influences like that. This person cannot produce anything that they are proud of, which allows them to only feel temporary happiness from outside influences. I think long term happiness comes from self respect and pride.

While revenge is a form of justice, most of the time the average person isn't at liberty to carry out justice as they please. {edited for logical correctness.} — Etzsche

There is a reason for that, a deep and satisfying reason. A lot of the time (not most o the time; in a tiny fraction of instances, but it is grave and horrible when it happens) the courts find a person guilty who had not commit the crime he or she is charged with. In other words, the police investigation and the court proceedings produce the wrong result. But it is a very small percentage of guilty verdicts.

On the other hand, personal revenge is often misdirected. If we, as a society, allowed personal revenge to take place, much more not guilty people would suffer unjust punishment than now.

You see, the private person who carries out revenge does not always reliably know who the guilty party is. He or she may have strong suspicions, but they will still be wrong in selecting the person as guilty.

The courts have a more reliable and fool-proof way of selecting the treu perpetrator than any single human being. Except for Detective Inspector Hector Poirot, of course.

You see, the private person who carries out revenge does not always reliably know who the guilty party is. — god must be atheist

I understand your point about the risks of letting people run free and make others suffer for crimes they possibly didn't commit, but what if the private person who carries out revenge DOES reliably know who the guilty party is? And in this scenario, there is almost no chance that police or law interference is going to take place. What happens? As a human being are we supposed to just let this one slide under the rug? There must be something that can be done. Or maybe it's just one of life's cruel realities.

As a human being are we supposed to just let this one slide under the rug? — Etzsche

Without specifics even God could not answer your question. You made a legal problem into an ethics question. This is a shift that logic and reason can't bridge.

Aboriginal tribes in Australia have, and possibly still do have, a system of ‘payback’. Someone has to pay for a crime against another person. If not the perpetrator then a family member. This seems to be a form of revenge but with a result that satisfies all.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/accused-killer-speared-in-aboriginal-payback-20021008-gdfpf8.html

This is a shift that logic and reason can't bridge. — god must be atheist

In that case, maybe logic and reason is sometimes looked too highly upon. I feel at times that individual emotions are discarded, due to an obsession with logic and reason. All though I see the importance of logic, it is almost dehumanizing to take such a simple emotion like frustration, and try to solve it with logic.

I tend to agree. Sometimes I feel a nagging distrust of logic.

If you elevate your own emotions to be supreme, which you just did, you had better obey them. But you don't obey them because you are afraid of the law. So what do you want us to do? Change the law for you? Or what? You ask this impossible, whining, unanswerable question, and when you get a reply that makes sense, you dismiss it because you prefer to wallow in your own self-pity of being impotent (not sexually, I presume) in getting justice.

Well, either pee, or get off the pot. If you ask us to find a solution for you, without the specifics of the problem, you are asking us a favour we can't fulfill. We gave our best shots to explain to you why you could do this but could not do that, but ultimately it is a course of action that you have to take, so you have to decide whether to take a course of action, and which one of the many available.

We can't do it for you. We can give you emotional and moral support, we can give you legal advice (such as it is), we can give you reasoned opinions, but you prefer to whine about the fact that you are too much of a coward to carry out justice. Because this is essentially what you do.

So, like I said, pee or get off the pot. Enough has been said to enable you now to make a decision. So make it, please. Do not wait. Do not procrastinate. Do not try to hang an imaginary and unreasonable guilt for your own grief on society.

believe the only way this person who has lost all respect for himself can be happy is by means of materialistic pleasures and other outside influences like that. This person cannot produce anything that they are proud of, which allows them to only feel temporary happiness from outside influences. I think long term happiness comes from self respect and pride. — Etzsche

I would like to entertain you with a story. There once lived a wanderer who was passing by a local town and he saw a little boy who was caught after pulling a prank which humiliated a wealthy and powerful aristocrat in the town. The aristocrat decided it was appropriate to punish the boy by humiliating him. Except the proposed humiliation was far more cruel than the prank. The prank simply involved a whoopee cushion yet the aristocrat wanted the boy to be stripped naked and have the boy thrown into a cage with a dozen skunks who will spray him in front of everyone as punishment for the prank. Horrified at this ordeal, the wanderer told the aristocrat that the boy was his son and he would like to take the punishment for him. The aristocrat was happy to have the wonderer take his place since he thought it might humiliate the boy even more to see his supposed father get sprayed by skunks while naked. After the humiliating ordeal, the wonderer felt no resentment or temptation for revenge. This is despite the fact that he happened to be a runaway prince who could of summoned his father, who was the King of the his nation, to punish the aristocrat for his actions. He did not want to do so partly because he knew his father would overreact and have the aristocrat beheaded for something that doesn’t seem to warrant a beheading in the opinion of the wonderer. The wonderer believed that he could be happy by traveling around the country and helping those in need. He shunned his pride to save the boy from the wrath of the aristocrat and to spare the life of the aristocrat from the wrath of his father. He also shunned the materialistic pleasures which came with his royal life to pursue a life of impoverished adventure and compassion. Is it psychologically possible for someone like the wanderer in the story to exist in real life?

I tend to agree. Sometimes I feel a nagging distrust of logic. — Brett

What is the reason for you to feel this nagging?