Natural is not always Good
Current Music: Stunned silence
I've just read an April New Yorker article by Collapse's Jared Diamond. (Coincidentally, I'd heard part of a radio interview with Diamond about this very article a month ago, in Perth, without getting the gist of it.) It's about vengeance, and is mostly concerned with describing the absurd and horrifying cycle of tit-for-tat revenge killing which plagues New Guinea to this day. What I found incomprehensibly bizarre-and the reason I'm blogging this-is that Diamond concludes the article with the story of his uncle, who chose not to avenge the murder of the uncle's mother, sister and niece during WWII and, Diamond claims, regretted that decision for the rest of his life. Diamond concludes by arguing from this observation that we shouldn't define vengeful feelings as bad; that instead we should encourage the acknowledgment of those feelings, and indeed attempt as far as possible-within the confines of State control-to satisfy them.
As I see it, the desire for revenge is a wholly negative emotion. Sure, it may be "natural" in that it has been bred into us by millennia as wandering barbarians, but then so are a lot of other unwelcome behavioural traits we're struggling to eliminate from our collective psyche. The lust for vengeance is a social wrong, pure and simple-and those who indulge it are acting from weakness. I'd have thought this was a fairly uncontroversial opinion, though. Isn't it?
I've just read an April New Yorker article by Collapse's Jared Diamond. (Coincidentally, I'd heard part of a radio interview with Diamond about this very article a month ago, in Perth, without getting the gist of it.) It's about vengeance, and is mostly concerned with describing the absurd and horrifying cycle of tit-for-tat revenge killing which plagues New Guinea to this day. What I found incomprehensibly bizarre-and the reason I'm blogging this-is that Diamond concludes the article with the story of his uncle, who chose not to avenge the murder of the uncle's mother, sister and niece during WWII and, Diamond claims, regretted that decision for the rest of his life. Diamond concludes by arguing from this observation that we shouldn't define vengeful feelings as bad; that instead we should encourage the acknowledgment of those feelings, and indeed attempt as far as possible-within the confines of State control-to satisfy them.
As I see it, the desire for revenge is a wholly negative emotion. Sure, it may be "natural" in that it has been bred into us by millennia as wandering barbarians, but then so are a lot of other unwelcome behavioural traits we're struggling to eliminate from our collective psyche. The lust for vengeance is a social wrong, pure and simple-and those who indulge it are acting from weakness. I'd have thought this was a fairly uncontroversial opinion, though. Isn't it?