“An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”
Yeah…no. Not at all.
That thinking’s a cynical, fear-driven childishness born of a paranoid, unrealistic worst-case scenario. It assumes everyone is bad…which they’re not. Most people are good. If most people are good most people will keep their sight.
But the wrongness of it empowers the wicked while hamstringing their victims – makes being bad OK as long as you take the initiative.
Whenever someone does something bad to another, the canned “wisdom” you get is something along the lines of “don’t stoop to their level, don’t retaliate…just let it go and be the ‘bigger’ person. Just you wait: people like that get their comeuppance/the universe tends to unfold as it should/blah blah blah.”
…but wait a minute: that’s saying to not retaliate against someone who’s wronged you because one of their past misdeeds will eventually come back to haunt them and (hopefully) make them pay for their bad behavior. But THAT means that one of the people wronged by the smaller person’s bad behavior will decide they’re not OK with just letting it go – that they’re going to take action to punish that bad behavior by channeling the anger and frustration it’s imposed on them back onto its original source.
…Which means the entire crux of the strategy is that one of the smaller person’s other victims will NOT be the “bigger” person. That they’ll punish the smaller person by directly or indirectly retaliating against their shitty behavior.
…which means that the canned “wisdom” of letting it go and being the “bigger” person is based on a self-defeating illogic.
Following the “wisdom” of just letting it go when wronged forces a victim to internalize the resulting frustration and anger, making bad feelings that aren’t their fault their responsibility. And it forces this undeserved, ongoing psychological pain onto the wronged while protecting their aggressor(s). It’s a mindfuck – kinda like not removing a burst, septic appendix.
Worse, if that undeserved pain and frustration don’t get constructively vented (and they rarely do), they build up to a point where they hurt too much to keep bottled up inside… eventually exploding onto an innocent bystander. This leaves two innocent victims confused and damaged… while the original source is left alone.
This is shit rolling downhill in the worst of ways – like telling the wronged to swallow acid then smile. It’s backwards morality. Wrong, counter-evolutionary thinking that’s literally the opposite of what it should be.
The only people left blind by true eye-for-an-eye justice are the victim (which sucks but is unavoidable due to them being hit first) and the aggressor (who deserves and needs the retaliation in both principle and practice).
Leaving the aggressor “blind” has 3 powerful, world-bettering benefits: (1) It directly punishes them for their bad behavior, which is the definition of justice and a progressive, evolutionary act; (2) If done effectively, it can diminish (or eliminate) the aggressor’s ability to behave badly in the future; and (3) It has the potential of educating the aggressor against future bad behavior by forcing them to endure and hopefully fear its repercussions. True, they may not learn…but they *definitely* won’t learn anything if their behavior is simply tolerated without incident. Trying to change them is better than not trying.
Contrary to popular belief and “wisdom,” two wrongs can and DO make a right *IF* the second “wrong” is in direct, targeted service to the first. This is the definition of justice and an evolutionary correction in action. Allowing an aggressor’s wrong to stand without retribution is immoral: a failure of human thought and society.
At this point many say something along the lines of: “Well of course you retaliate…by going to the proper authorities and having them punish the aggressor.”
True: this should always be the first course of action taken whenever available. Sometimes it works.
… But sometimes it doesn’t. Authority is often constrained by lack of material evidence and resources, red tape, outside manipulation, incompetence, corruption, and/or any number of other inadequacies that prevent it from doing what it’s supposed to. The sad truth is that humanity is generally-bad at governing itself and reliably, effectively serving justice. It’s part of why history’s gone the way it has and why we’re still in the “same-shit-different-day” we can’t seem to get out of.
It’s at this point one of the most stunted, regressive statements ever conceived is dismissively uttered: “Life’s not fair. Deal with it.”
Understand: this is inherently wrong. Fairness is the key measure of human social progress. Saying “life’s not fair” is weak laziness born of the bother of having to hear about someone else’s suffering. It’s an admission that power is achieved by those who do bad best. Sure, it’s technically true…but also totally dismissible. It signals to the victimized that the only justice they’ll get is the justice they make.
Essentially, fuck anyone and everyone who says it. It helps nothing and inflames suffering. If you’re tempted to say it, please, just say “that sucks” instead, or just say nothing. Seriously.
Forgiveness is NOT divine when it punishes victims and emboldens bad. In these cases, it makes the world worse. In these cases, forgiveness is wrong.