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Revenge is it sweet or not......

If we practice an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, soon the whole world will be blind and toothless!!!
Mahatma Gandhi

Revenge or Justice???



The driver who cuts you up in traffic, the cheating lover, the people who break into other peoples homes, the youths who run around in gangs and cause all sorts of grief, all are regular targets for much loved revenge, ranging from the petty to the psychotic.

Most of us settle for fantasizing about revenge scenarios or getting back in small ways, BUT some people become so consumed with rage at their own bad treatment (whether it be real or imagined) that they act out their most shocking crimes of our time.

In 1996, Thomas Watt Hamilton shot and killed 16 primary school children and their teacher in Dunblane, Scotland. His motive was revenge for what he saw as an unjust way he had been prevented from working with children. A year earlier, Timothy McVeigh, Blaming the FBI for the loss of life at the end of the 1993 Branch Davidian siege in Waco, Texas, carried out his own terrible revenge. His bombing of a Federal Government building in Oklahoma City took the lives of 168 people – including children- and injured 500 more.

Family Feud

Historically, societies that provided little in the way of law and order or justice have been fertile grounds for escalation of Private Vengeance.

Sicily and Corsica are known for Vendettas, whereby the relatives of a murder victim would murder a family member of his family.

Similarly, there have been instances of blood feuds extending from generation to generation in a cycle of violence until the original cause is all but forgot and the reason lost.

The feuding houses of Montague and Capulet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet are a fictional representation of something that has often existed. Even the Bible suggests a form of justice that is little more than vengeance “breach for breach, eye for eye, tooth for tooth”.

However, modern systems of justice are no longer based on simple vengeance and some people feel the punishment meted out to those who have wronged them is simply not enough, leading them to seek out their own vengeful “justice”. In other instances, the wrongs are not actual crimes, and the state can provide no restitution at all. Finally, some people feel that they have been badly dealt with by the state itself and must extract their own “justice”. The wronged wife who takes scissors to her husband’s clothes has become something of a media cliché - convenient shorthand for female revenge on male infidelity. However regardless of the media’s fondness for the “bunny boiler” character, these women rarely graduate to more serious crimes. Lorena Bobbitt, who cut off her husband’s p***s, made the headlines everywhere, not just because her crime spoke powerfully to some women’s fantasies and men’s primal fears, but also because the crime was so unusual.

The real perpetrators of vengeful violence are usually men. Even so, despite what defendants might claim, this violence is often either part of a long standing pattern of violence and poor impulse control (i.e. the revenge motive is just another excuse) or is it the final act of a history of serious personality disorders, especially paranoia.

The rewards of revenge!!!

Recent research suggests that revenge really is sweet- stimulating the parts of the brain that make us feel good!!!






Scientists in Switzerland have been studying the brain activity of people as they plan and carry out revenge, and their findings suggest that punishing wrongdoers, even when it brings no personal gain or actually has a personal cost, stimulates the parts of the brain associated with enjoyment and satisfaction.

The experiment was conducted on people playing a game in which they could co-operate and share the winnings or double-cross each other and get an unfair share. When a double-cross was deliberate, all the players chose to retaliate if the revenge was free. BUT the vast majority of players chose to retaliate when it cost them their own winnings to do so. Different people were simulated to varying degrees and the amount of simulation helped to predict who would go to the greatest lengths to get revenge.

The same brain circuitry seems to be involved in providing an incentive for co-operation between strangers, too. So, it may be that revenge is the dark side of more acceptable social behaviour. Getting on with others makes us feel good, BUT so does punishing people who break the social rules to their own advantage.

Revenge – The desire to hurt someone in retaliation for received wrongs. Everyone has felt the desire to get their own back, but not everyone acts upon these instincts!!!

I myself have felt these urges for REVENGE BUT somehow i have never followed through with those hideous thoughts, which i am glad as they can be pretty cruel. OH i am bad!!!!!!!!

“REVENGE IS, SWEET, SWEETER THAN LIFE ITSELF- SO SAY FOOLS” Juvenal.