It is hard to believe that there are people who do not know the motive revengeSomeone has hurt you. bowl, perhaps even unintentionally, and you automatically have the desire to do something to make that person suffer too, despite the fact that you've probably already learned that someone else's suffering doesn't have to bring you anything.
Yes, it is exactly as nonsensical as it sounds when retold. Despite this, for some people revenge turns into a passion and consumes their entire lives. Many parents know the power of that impulse. Someone hurts a child (or at least he experiences a situation that way) and the adult feels that he has to resolve the situation. Threaten the other child or even punish him, so that he too cries as much as his child cried. Everything is incomparably more intense if the pain was initially caused by an adult. The same can be true of taunts or punches experienced in the schoolyard, sports rivalries, romantic disappointments, business failures, and even inter-ethnic relations, wars and betrayals.
REPRESENTATIONS FROM ART AND THROUGH ART
Almost everyone has seen this in at least one movie. In perhaps the most famous version, a young man is sent, neither guilty nor guilty, to life imprisonment. While he rots, chained, on an island near Marseilles, one of the conspirators marries his fiancée. In prison, however, the young man learns not only the most diverse languages, sciences and manners, but also how to escape and where to find treasure. When he comes back, no one will recognize him. Fourteen years will pass, and he will only think about revenge and will begin to carry it out, at any cost, uncompromisingly, if necessary and brutally. The Count of Monte Cristo familiar to you as a novel, television series or film (including a bloody modern variation entitled Sweeney Todd). But there is something in "high" art as well.
Revenge is sung about in many Italian operas, so, for example, the tragic part of the plot in Rigoletto culminating in his "Si, vendetta, tremenda vendetta!" In an even older age, the whole genre of "revenge drama" was quite popular at the time when Shakespeare first heard of the theater.
Art can also be a means of revenge. The most tragic is certainly the example of Artemisia Gentilesca. As the daughter of a painter, she was talented herself, with the desire to express that talent. However, one of the painters she was supposed to study with raped her, and then dishonestly offered her marriage. When the trial came - the case was about family honor, not about the trauma and humiliation she experienced - the court also exposed the young girl to some kind of torture during her testimony. The trial gave her nothing, just like the previous attempt to defend herself with a knife. What, then, was her revenge?
There it is in the "Uffizi", thousands of people see it every day. Judith obviously has her image, and Holofernes, they say, is a portrait of her rapist. The painting is more striking and convincing than even Caravaggio's, as his Judith holds the sword as if it were a pen, retreats, and has a strange expression of disgust and concern on her face. Artemisia's Judith is dangerous, furious and determined. With her strong hands, she holds Holofernes' right ear, while she cuts his throat with her sword and almost cuts off his head, blood gushes everywhere.
Given that this painting dates from 1620, there is no doubt that Artemisia, born and raised in Rome, must have known that Michelangelo had also taken revenge on Pietro Aretino by immortalizing him on his The Last Judgment (and he allegedly depicted his other critics and enemies as demons on that fresco). Does this mean that the thirst for revenge can be brought under control and turned into something sublime and socially acceptable (as Freud liked to say - sublimate)? Or is it just a reflection of the artist's inability to fight for justice in the "prose world"? Because we have to ask ourselves, in what way should artistic depictions of revenge hurt the one who in reality went unpunished?
We have at our disposal an elaborate experiment on this topic. When Hamlet begins, any uninitiated viewer would expect it to be the most typical revenge drama. They killed his father whom he loved (perhaps even idealized), so he, having gathered enough evidence, will now begin to shine. But, everything becomes incomparably more complicated and the last two centuries have offered many answers to the question - why Hamlet postpones revenge. One aspect that seems particularly important is that he repeats the same thing about himself all the time - that he is a weakling, a coward, a woman, a hypocrite... He does not sanctify himself, but constantly thinks and talks about revenge. Everything ends with a chaotic scene in which Hamlet wakes up only after he knows that he himself is dying.
INHERENT DRIVE?
This feeling, too, could be universal. It's as if we have the feeling that there are only two ways out of pain - either to take revenge or to remain humiliated; he who does not take revenge will forever bear the shame of being weak, fearful and dishonored. Maybe no one even has to tell us that, maybe we torture ourselves with such judgments and self-criticism.
Now an even deeper and more complicated question opens up. Namely, there is no dilemma that some children are taught that they have to fight back at every blow, which, again, is seen as a sign of strength and dignity. The importance of this mechanism is also evident in the fact that sometimes we "displace" revenge and get relief from expressing our anger on someone else, who has not done us any harm or is not even related to the one we are angry at. But do examples like Hamlet's mean that the drive for revenge is innate? Do we all have it, regardless of whether we are taught that way or not?
The fact that revenge is present among animals speaks in favor of innateness. As grateful as they are, different species of mammals and primates either forget immediately or not, and when they get the chance, in some cases, reportedly, even years later. This would have to mean that revenge has some sort of evolutionary function since it is not a product of human interactions over the past few hundred or thousands of years. This, however, only leads us to the following mystery: is it important to sanctify ourselves because - in nature and human societies - there are dangers and predators to which we need to clearly show that we are strong enough to defend ourselves, that we are not prey that will allow themselves to be killed or even exterminated? However, as much as it makes sense on one level, does it have to be achieved by becoming predators ourselves and/or chasing revenge?
WHAT ABOUT REVENGE? (NE) RESOLVES
The problem becomes even more obvious when we remember that revenge doesn't really solve anything about the root of the problem. If someone hurts me, revenge gives me a sense of power, control, and initiative, but it can mask the pain, never remove it. And it still can't, as even Vito Corleone realized, bring back someone we've lost or alleviate his suffering. Therefore, there can be passionate hatred and attacks on the other side, which are often generalized (I will take revenge on all men, all women, all neighboring peoples, Vilotići of various other species), without getting a real solution to the problem.
When it comes to large groups or individuals whom we say are vindictive, things can become even more problematic and lead to terrible crimes and wars, since belonging to a group frees us from some basic moral scruples. Thus revenge was at the root of the Roman destruction of Carthage, the planning described in Mountain wreath, Srebrenica as revenge against the "Turks" and the current Israeli genocide that uses a terrorist crime as an excuse for completely disproportionate revenge.
THE TASK OF DEFENDING GOOD
In this ocean of revenge, which unites practically all eras and all continents, the New Testament message seems isolated and utopian. Even if we ignore the connection of the church (or, if you will, churches) with the most various wars and destructions more or less from the first moment when there was enough power for such a thing, how should that message be understood and then applied? We've all heard of it: if someone slaps you, you should offer to slap you on the other cheek as well; if someone throws a stone at you, you should give him a piece of bread. Not only does revenge not even come into consideration, but the very enemy should be offered love. Perhaps it is possible to believe in such a God, infinitely compassionate (not to mention empathetic), the lamb that was offered as a sacrifice and if it could be defended without any problems. But how should man achieve this? How should a limited being, subject to impulses, to whom anger and fear are at least as strong as love and mercy, not only overcome the desire for revenge but also discover within himself the capacity to love the enemy!?
How is the only mystery here. Of course, the only way for the survival of humanity is not to transfer revenge, like a contagion, to each other and, even worse, to the next generations, ad infinitum. Of course, if someone hurts the person I love, I have to stay focused on caring for them, and not on hating the perpetrator, that is, if someone I love hurts me, I have to defend that love inside me from the urge to fight back.
Why is quite clear. Each of us has a task to try to overcome ourselves, not to do what would be impulsive and expected, to defend goodness and love. No one else can give us a recipe for overcoming ourselves, but success in this is the only true path to inner peace.
The author is a psychologist
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