Desire For Revenge: What Is It Really And How To Combat It?
Revenge is often seen as a path that leads us to a mental state of serenity once we have settled some pending accounts we had with something or someone. From this perspective, the desire to take revenge is nothing more than the natural result of having gone through humiliation or having been harmed in a very significant way, sometimes without the person who has done that harm to us having anything in return.
However, The desire for revenge is not a feeling that in itself is healthy. In fact, it can make us enter into a destructive logic that is not good for us or the society in which we live.
Revenge is a set of behaviors aimed at harming a person or group who is perceived as guilty or responsible for harm caused to others or, frequently, to the person with vengeful desires.
In short, revenge is a way to manage behaviors linked to aggression. Sometimes, instead of adopting a behavior that involves directly confronting the person who has harmed us at the moment in which he has just done it, we opt for a medium or long-term strategy, which would allow us to have a greater probability of inflicting harm. desired harm by being able to benefit from the time and preparation of resources to plan the physical or psychological attack.
On the other hand, it has been seen that the people most likely to embrace revenge behaviors are those who score high in the personality trait linked to sadism. Sadistic people are those who are relatively likely to enjoy the suffering of others.
Since childhood we are educated with the idea that negative acts have negative consequences, and positive acts produce beneficial changes. This idea is often valid in the context of the education that parents give to young children, but in adult life things do not work that way. Many times, by default, The damages remain there, and the universe will not conspire to provide compensation
Faced with this reality, the desire for justice appears as a human quality aimed at creating a better society in which the principle prevails that all people have the same rights and in which compensation mechanisms must exist. However, the desire for revenge is not born from the will to make a better world, but from a much more visceral feeling. It is not something that has to do with a way of seeing the world or with desires for how society should be, but rather It has to do with hate and resentment.
Thus, desires for revenge can become a way of entering into a conflict dynamic that makes the problem bigger than it already is, due to its passionate and unsystematic nature. If a vengeful attitude has to do with the desire to channel negative feelings through harm to those who we consider “should pay” for something, justice is rather a human construction that is applied on the social scale, and in which people participate. various agents: investigators, members of the judicial system, etc.
Furthermore, in justice, the existence of the law is very important, a series of codes that exist independently of each specific case and whose function is to seek, to the extent possible, that penalties are always applied under the same criteria. and from ideas that everyone can know in advance (although with nuances, since there is always room for interpretation).
If the purpose of justice is to discourage the act of committing illegalities and to participate in the reintegration of those who receive punishments, revenge only seeks an effect on whoever takes revenge, acting as a kind of self-therapy (although without scientific evidence of effectiveness).
Why are desires for revenge something negative?
Beyond the feeling that once revenge is achieved, a certain compensatory relief will be experienced for the suffering caused previously, Getting carried away by this motivational force often leads to harmful results. These are some of the reasons.
1. There are no limits to doing harm
In revenge there are only the limits that one sets for oneself, as it is a unilateral act and is not subject to criteria other than those that one applies oneself. That’s why, It’s easy to go too far in wanting to harm someone. Justifications appear at any indication that many thresholds are crossed, and this can lead to a situation in which control is lost and a lot of pain is produced.
2. Untapped potential
There are people who invest a lot of time and effort in getting revenge. It is very easy, once this stage has passed, to look back and see this period as a waste of time, a gap in the calendar, because nothing that is enjoyed in the future in a sustained way is due to those Actions.
3. The escalation of violence
It’s easy to forget why it all started, and that an action has its reaction indefinitely. In this way, an initiative that seemed to be liberating at the beginning (since in theory it served to feel at peace) comes to enslave, demanding more and more time and effort.
4. It does not seek to transform society or the behavior of the other individual
Although in colloquial language revenge is sometimes spoken of as “teaching someone a lesson”, the truth is that pedagogical interest does not exist in these cases. The perception that the person who suffers this act of revenge has is secondary in comparison to the experience of revenge on the part of the person who attacks. Therefore, as we have seen, that person can even be encouraged to continue harming others (or those who have taken revenge), as we have seen. Revenge is individualistic in nature, but the fact is that ethics and morality exist on the social level.
To do?
Given the desire for revenge, it is best to opt for one of two options.
On the one hand, it is good to look for distractions that help make intrusive thoughts about it appear again and again. With the change of habits, the tendency to always think about the same thing or to fantasize about getting revenge is broken.
On the other hand, you can also choose to reach take revenge in a very indirect and relatively constructive and benign way. It is the option of the lesser evil. For example, using that desire for compensation by making personal progress serve as a lesson for those who wanted to harm us, showing that their attempts to harm us were in vain.
In any case, it is clear that each case is unique depending on each person’s philosophy of life. Of course, that does not mean that there is not a battle to fight (and win) against the desire for revenge.
