Revenge is hurting someone because you feel they have hurt you.
The revenge can be on a group of people or just one person.
Now pretend that someone steals your
teddy bear, you then get revenge by stealing their teddy bear from them. Were your actions right or wrong? I am honestly not sure, we could debate over that for
8 lifetimes and not get a right answer. But what if someone steals your teddy bear and you kill them. Well I hope we all feel that this example was definitely wrong (if you don’t, go see a psychiatrist). My question is if the second example is definitely wrong, why would the first one be right?
If you look at it this way you might consider that revenge is wrong. Well the thing is that we don’t have a clear line between
revenge and
punishment. Punishment being something you do to prevent the action from being done again (by anyone not just that person). You could admit that revenge is wrong, and say that the first example was a punishment. The second example was a punishment too, it was just really unjust and cruel (and illegal in most societies). So then we now have to decide who gets to punish who and who doesn’t. This is where everything gets really sketchy.
Authorities are stupid and are not always going to know what actions occured by whome, and hence will not always give the right punishment. When people take stuff into their own hands, some will always go overboard. Maybe revenge can be right and moral if it is a punishment to the offender. But then what if the guy who got punished feels like he needs revenge, and punishes the guy who punished him. This is how our society is. It’s all messed up and none of the lines are clear.
So my
solution is don’t get revenge. If someone does something to you don’t do anything to punish them on your own. If a mutually agreed authority (A.K.A. the
government) chooses to intervene and punish them then that is fine. As for you yourself taking action, don’t. This is a philosophy that is universal. This is also
biblical (for those who want to know my true motivation in my thinking). I know we have all heard to
turn the other cheek. Well, yeah, do it. It is most definitely a good and true philosophy to live by.