Vengeance

During the Cold War, strategic thinkers in the United States and the Soviet Union operated under a principle of “mutually assured destruction.” It was a simple idea — a nuclear detente achieved via the assumption that if one party attacked the other, the response would make sure that both were destroyed in the exchange. This assumed an element of vengeance. If the Russian missiles were in the air, and our annihilation was already a given, we would still make sure they joined us in the ashes. Pure revenge, even posthumously so, but the assumption of vengeance is what kept the detente stable.

I’m a great believer in vengeance. There is a myth that it leads only to oblivion — “an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” — but this is facile. The Biblical take is more on the money. “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth,” etc. The idea of revenge is deeply baked into human perspective and experience, and even manifests in other intelligent species. Whales and apes have been known to harbor grudges and exact revenge years after an inciting incident. It’s complex behavior beyond immediate needs like food and shelter, and yet it still aligns with nature and its attendant imperatives. Think of it as a behavioral expression of Newton’s Third Law of Motion. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. It speaks to an effort to preserve a natural order, to keep chaos at bay.

In more complex societies, the right of vengeance is often reserved by the state. But this is still built upon the logic of intertribal relationships. If I kill a member of this clan, I can expect his brethren to respond in kind, or worse. And so I avoid committing the act in the first place, or think very hard about it before I do. Wars often break out when the chance of reprisal is considered low or at least acceptable. That’s why you often see a series of probing actions before the real outbreak of hostilities. A slight border violation here, a diplomatic offense there. It’s a diagnostic, like when a doctor checks your patellar reflex by hitting your knee with a test hammer. String together enough weak responses, and you encourage the trigger pull.

The promise of great vengeance is one of the most effective means to prevent violence. Always be suspicious of those trying to convince you otherwise. They’re usually up to a retributive project of their own.