The Vicious Cycle of Revenge

There is a natural human tendency to want to serve out justice when someone has done us wrong. But in broad and messy conflicts between parties with roughly equal power over each other, this tenancy can escalate to a point where the actions being taken are extreme compared to the instigating incident. In the following paragraphs, I will explore the interplay between revenge and justice and how we can break the vicious cycle.

The first aspect of this issue I will discuss is the vicious cycle that it creates. An example David French used in his recent book “Divided We Fall” (sold here) is from his time serving in the Iraq war. He mentions his conversations with the Sunnis and Shiites about what they specifically disagreed on. And while they would often point to specific policy differences, their overall worldviews were very similar. If they could set aside their grievances, they could have found reasonable compromises. French said that the conversations about the policy differences would dissolve into each party listing all the things the other side had done wrong, at first rhetorically. Then, as things escalated, violently.

The Sunnis and Shiites that French talked about were victims of a vicious cycle where one small grievance led to a response that felt justified by the aggrieved party and felt disproportionate by the aggrieving party. Using American politics as an example, shortly after we elected Obama with majorities in both the House and Senate, the Democrats used that majority to pass some consequential bills with no Republican support. Many Democrats felt this was justified because they did not think the Republicans were arguing in good faith (and to their credit, some weren’t). Republicans and conservatives saw this refusal to make any compromises as an attack. They rallied support that lead to their taking the House in 2010 and to use their new power to stop any significant legislation entirely. Senate Republicans did their best to block Obama appointees on partisan grounds. Republicans thought this was justified as they had been shut out of the conversation around the Affordable Care Act and other bills. Democrats and liberals saw these actions as attacks, and they did not see them as justified, as in their minds, the passing of ACA along party lines was justified. Because the Democrats felt attacked, they felt justified in ending the filibuster for many appointments, and Obama felt justified in using more executive authority to enact his agenda.

This cycle continues to this day with Republicans gaining the majority in the Senate, shutting down the government, blocking judicial appointments, gaining the presidency, ending the filibuster for supreme court confirmation hearings, passing a tax bill on party lines, and a whole slew of aggressive rhetoric from Trump. Democrats have played their part by shutting down the government, using executive orders to enact immigration policies, their presidential nominee calling half of all conservatives “deplorable”, spending years promoting claims that the Trump campaign worked with Russians, promoting a shaky character attack on Justice Kavanaugh, gaining the majority in the House, and impeaching the president. I have left off many grievances and non-national stories from those lists. Still, the overall point in that each time one side of the political divide does something that angers the other side, they feel justified in doing so because of the actions that the other side did first.

I wrote last week about nutpicking, and it is worth noting that nutpicking plays a role in this escalation cycle. It is effortless to see one person on the extreme side of an issue and use them as an excuse to respond disproportionately to the entire side of that issue. For example, people see the positions Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez takes and use that to justify treating every Democrat as a socialist, even though the majority of Democrats would distance themselves from that definition. The same can be said of liberals who treat every conservative as if they are Alex Jones or Rush Limbaugh.

The fundamental driver of the escalation is each side wanting to “get even” for something. However, the other side thinks that what they did was justified, so the “getting even” is perceived as a new grievance and evidence that the other side did not learn its lesson. It also escalates because we consider losses more than we consider gains of equal value; Daniel Kahneman writes about this phenomenon in his book Thinking Fast and Slow. When we are wronged, we respond with what feels like a proportionate action, but objectively it is disproportionate.

So far, I have used the word “justice” or “justified” quite a bit to talk about how a party feels when taking action to get back at the other side of an issue. The ideas of justice and revenge are very closely intertwined, and revenge is often mistaken for justice. Using an extreme example to make a point, I will talk about a hypothetical murder trial. We will assume that the defendant did commit the murder, and there is irrefutable evidence present. When the judge and jury determine what an appropriate punishment would be for the murderer, we expect them not to have any conflicts of interest in either direction. We would not think it is just if the victim’s spouse and children were on the jury as they would not know objectively how egregious the murder was. We rely on the judge and jury’s impartiality to ensure that a mass murderer who has no remorse receives a sticker punishment than a reckless driver who accidentally ran over someone and shows every sign that they want to reform their ways. In a perfect world, for justice to not be revenge, it must be mediated and administered by impartial outsiders.

I say in a perfect world because there is no such thing as a genuinely impartial outsider in the real world, especially in messy areas like politics and religion. The first thing we must recognize before we seek to enact justice for a perceived injustice done upon us is that the closer we are to the situation, the less able we are to administer a fair punishment. Next, we should recognize the perspective that comes from time. Instead of responding immediately, if we take our time and let ourselves think longer about what has happened and the motivations of the people who “harmed” us, we will often find that our immediate reaction was overblown. If we respond immediately, we lock ourselves into a likely more extreme position than what we had intended. Lastly, we should recognize the wisdom of large numbers — especially when those large numbers are diverse. Before responding to an injustice, we should consult with those around us. Everyone has different perspectives and experiences. There may be people closer to the issue than you who want a more extreme response, and there may be people who have gone through something similar and think a moderate reaction is best. There may even be people closer to the grievance who think it is not as important as we do. With our current technology, it is simple to expose ourselves to a wide variety of perspectives. We can use the tools that often drive us apart to instead educate ourselves on what other people think about any given issue. By exposing ourselves to different perspectives, we gain the context needed to understand why the “injustice” occurred and what an appropriate response would be.

The final aspect of this issue I would like to discuss is the lack of satisfaction that getting justice or revenge provides. When we think about getting back at someone who wronged us, it brings a sense of giddiness and anticipation of how it will feel to send that zinger of a response. We think about our favorite movies and how amazing it was when the good guy finally shuts down the bad guy, and we imagine ourselves being a glorified hero when we serve out the justice the other side so richly deserves. But in reality, when you send that message, or vote for that candidate, or enact that policy, it never lives up to those expectations. Going back to Kahneman, our brains are not wired to appreciate the gains we have made; they are wired to find the smallest losses. As soon as we have taken whatever revenge we thought was appropriate, we move on and stop thinking about it until the other side gains their leg up again.