The Revenge Thread

Have had to tell myself over and over for a few months now to just "let it go" and move on, but I still loathe my ex's very existence...and the existence of that stupid money pit of a motorcyle of his. Have fought the urge on several occasions to maim it in some way...sugar in the engine, nail in the tire, keying off that obnoxious yellow paint that he thought was so cool :mad: But alas, the only revenge I've got is what I imagine in my dreams...
 
Larinda McRaven said:
A student of mine's wife was brutally murder walking her puppy one morning. The daughter was so vengeful throughout the trial. Then at the last moment she addressed the judge to not deal the death penalty. She realized that his suffering would not change her life one bit. She watched him be sentenced to prison and then walked away to live a joyous life. I love this woman for her courage to let it go.
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I would be unlikely to argue for the death penalty as revenge. That's not an effective revenge strategy. An effective revenge strategy isn't directly hurting the person who killed your loved one, it's getting at them through THEIR loved ones. (Obviously this doesn't work with a sociopath a la Ted Bundy as they don't HAVE loved ones. They're incapable of caring about other people.) And it's unlikely I personally would carry out that kind of revenge fantasy, simply because I have no desire to go to jail myself (though I can't speak for what would happen were I placed in a situation where I did not consider my life to have any further value to me.)

No, I'd argue for the death penalty for the same reason there are some animals who simply have to be destroyed. (Anyone who tells you there is NO animal who can't be redeemed doesn't have any business working with animals. Or deserves to get eaten/mauled by them.) There are some dogs so damaged they can never be made safe. There are some horses so viscious that there is no justification for keeping them alive (or worse, passing on their genes.) Likewise there are some humans (not a lot, but your average child rapist/killer springs to mind, along with the aforementioned Mr. Bundy and other sociopaths) whose danger to others so overwhelmingly outweighs their value to society that there is no justification for keeping them alive other than a detatched moral/intellectual argument. At that point, putting them down is the humane option, for the same reason destroying a dog who attacks children is. They can never be released, they can never be rehabilitated, and their redemption is between them and whatever higher power they may or may not believe in. As long as they're alive, there's a risk of escape or release. And unlike certain breeds of animals (Kodiak grizzlies, Siberian tigers, etc) you can't really say there's a risk to the breeding population.

That's not revenge. That's protecting the good of the whole in the most efficient way possible.

In general, for much less serious offenses (ie anything short of killing or assaulting someone I care about) I find it can be fun to THINK of revenge, but far too much work to carry it out. Well, except the rubbing-their-nose-in-it kind. All I have to do there is what I'm capable of anyway, and driving someone who tried to "get" me up a wall in the process is gravy.
 
Tolerance Vs Acceptance

"Acceptance, he pointed out, requires true understanding, recognition that the obvious difference - the accent, the skin color, the style of dress- are mere decoration on the person beneath. It is a meeting of peoples that delves under the surface to a knowledge of the full humanity of the other.

Tolerance, on the other hand, is far more fragile, for it requires not knowledge, but willful ignorance, a purposeful turning away from the accent, the skin color and the style of dress. It is a shrug of indifference that entails more than a hint of condescension."

Robertson Davies
 
bordertangoman said:
yes I'm a bl**dy curmudgeon; because democracy relies on governments being popular rather than sensible; becuause we're wrecking the climate and people aren't able to see the consequences of their actions or inactions. Because planning legislation stifles innovation and creativity and promotes mediocrity.
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You want fries with that?
 
danceronice said:
In general, for much less serious offenses (ie anything short of killing or assaulting someone I care about) I find it can be fun to THINK of revenge, but far too much work to carry it out. Well, except the rubbing-their-nose-in-it kind. All I have to do there is what I'm capable of anyway, and driving someone who tried to "get" me up a wall in the process is gravy.
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Theirin lies the essence. Thinking of revenge is entirely different from actually enacting it. Thinking can be one way of dealing with unbearable hurt. In most of the world revenge for crimes is formalized through the police/court/penal system, and respecting this is what keeps us civilized - and is the reason we very rarely have 'shootouts at the OK coral' ;).
 
good idea.

love your signature, larinda. i know that blessing from my kundalini yoga vids...where did you learn it?
 
One of my dancing friends won’t dance with women who rejected him back when he was a beginner. That’s his revenge.

When he talks to me about this, which he does frequently because he’s still angry about it, I tell him the story of how I met a former dance partner. I asked her to dance, and she said, “no.”

Later, she asked me to dance, and I said, “yes.” We had a lot of fun dancing together and became dance buddies. We went social dancing, did demos, and went on dance vacations with mutual friends. We were good friends for several years, and her initial rejection of me became just a funny story to tell.

Ultimately, our partnership ended when she married somebody else. But, that in no way changes the point of the story, which is that if I had been set on revenge, I would have missed out on all those good years with her.
 
Hank said:
We were good friends for several years, and her initial rejection of me became just a funny story to tell.

.....the point of the story, which is that if I had been set on revenge, I would have missed out on all those good years with her.
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Hence the adage, "Revenge is a double edged sword".
 
Hank said:
One of my dancing friends won’t dance with women who rejected him back when he was a beginner. That’s his revenge.
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Nice approach. Very principle. I like this.

Now he has to be sure that he was rejected because he was a beginner.
I remember inviting a teacher and she said no. I wasn't a beginner but yes there was a huge gap of level between us. I felt offended and began to consider boycotting her classes and making her bad publicity and so on. Until I met her again at the door of the milonga when she left. She apologized for declining, explained she was very tired, and had to keep all the stamina she could (she was over 60) for a performance the same night. She had only came here to practise a little with our teacher, not to dance socially. She added that she could not afford skipping a performance but it would be difficult because her thoughts were with her husband, a former A.T teacher too, who she said was "not too well". He died three weeks later.
 
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