There’s No Such Thing as Justice, Not Really! (Part One)
Ever wonder why so many people just love the type of movie in which the “bad guys get what they deserve,” especially when it comes from a tainted hero who has to go around the law in some way to give it to them? Think of Dirty Harry, The Crow and, more recently, Watchmen.
Typically, we see the villain victimizing innocent people without any remorse and, often, with a cruel sense of enjoyment. And he seems to get away with his crimes, by either outsmarting or buying off the authorities. Then, finally, the hero comes along, catches up to him, and “gives him a taste of his own medicine,” often putting him to death in some painful fashion.
I have to confess that I, too, have found myself enjoying these revenge movies and telling myself it’s somehow OK to indulge. Even though, when we think about it later on, we know it would be wrong for someone to actually behave in this vengeful way, that knowledge doesn’t keep us from taking some sort of satisfaction, if not, out and out enjoyment from watching these bad guys get pummeled and killed.
Why?
Actually, it’s no secret why we find these stories entertaining–they give us a chance to, vicariously, get revenge, to get back at all the people who have wronged us and hurt us, all those who never apologized, who never realized, who never admitted what they did was wrong and who never seemed to suffer in the same manner. Unless you’ve lived your entire life on a rock all by yourself, you’ve been hurt by someone, that hurt is still there to one degree or another, and years, decades later, there’s no reasonable hope that person will ever show up at your door to say, “I’m really sorry,” or you hear that your victimizer’s behavior “caught up to him,” and he ended up getting hurt the way he hurt you. So guess what? When we’re watching some show in which we see other innocents similarly hurt, but their victimizer gets the “justice” you never got…it feels almost as if the same happened to you!
But why should we have this need to “get even”? Rationally speaking, it makes no sense. Hurting someone who hurt you doesn’t bandage your wounds, reset bones or serve as a drug to ease the pain. Only in rare cases, is it even possible to be re-paid, to have what was taken given back. Certainly, the time spent suffering is lost forever, and even if you get some sort of compensation, it’s almost always just a token.
The reality is there is no such thing as justice or getting even or getting revenge!
I think I need to repeat that, in reality, regardless of how much you may so very want to see someone “get it” for having done something really bad, either to yourself, a loved one or anyone for that matter, it’s never going to happen! Not really. Sure, sometimes people who do bad things get caught, they might experience some “karma” and suffer from the same behavior to a degree, but even when you get your revenge, and even were it to be to exact same degree (however that is measured) as what that person did, that “sweet taste of revenge,” goes sour in very little time.
So why do we want revenge or so-called “justice” so badly? Especially since none of us have ever experienced any lasting satisfaction from it in the few cases when we thought we’d obtained it?
Well, the answer is that we just can’t help it, because we’re “hard-wired” to want to get even. The desire for revenge is an instinctive feeling, actually, more of a biological drive. It comes from somewhere deep in the “lizard” part of our brain.
At some point along the path of evolution, living beings who had a tendency to strike back at other creatures who struck at them (for food, territory or mates) tended to survive better than those who were, for lack of a better term, “forgiving.” The Sabertooth who got smacked by the tusk of a large male Mammoth was not as likely to attack him again. Better to hunt for a smaller, less-aggressive female or a wounded male unable to fight back. For hundreds of millions of years, getting revenge, at least for short periods of time, made sense in terms of who was going to win the game of survival and reproductive success.
We humans inherited this tendency to want to strike back from our primitive ancestors. But when hominids began to grow larger brains, what was a mechanism of deterrance that preoccuppied the smaller brains of our forebears only for a few minutes of anger, turned into an ability (or maybe it’s better to call it a disability) to retain that feeling for a lot longer, even indefinitely.
You could almost say that one of the reasons why human existence has been characterized by war has to do with, at least in part, our inability to let bygones be bygones.
End of Part One. Part Two is coming soon.
January 14, 2012 at 12:49 am
Rick, I think you’ve made an interesting point. Interestingly, in the Old Testament, there was never any suggestion that people would be judged or punished after death. Even the worst people at the worst times were not threatened with judgment or punishment after death. When the Hebrew prophets had visions of what sounds like heaven, they spoke of place where there was no suffering and no death. But if suffering and death are not possible, then evil is not possible, because the definition of evil is to cause someone to suffer or die unjustly.
If there is a realm where there is no suffering and no death, there is no need for “justice” or punishment.
Hell was not a biblical idea. Instead, the concept of hell was introduced into Judaism by the Pharisees, who “borrowed” it from the ancient Greeks after Alexander the Great conquered the Middle East during the dead period between the writing of the last books of the OT and the first books of the NT. Greek philosophers like
Celsus freely admitted that “hell” had been invented to keep the unwashed masses under control, and Celsus pointed out that no wise Greek person believed in hell.
If there is a heaven, there is no need for hell. If Hitler can’t hurt anyone, is there any need for Hitler to be punished for all eternity?
The idea that a compassionate man like Jesus would send billions of people to hell for not “believing” in him — when he was either unable or unwilling to speak to them personally — only makes Jesus seem like a petty, unjust tyrant.
But when people see Jesus in Near Death Experiences, he is nothing like the monster of Revelation. When he speaks to people, as far as I can tell, he never warns them to tell all the world to believe in him, or go to hell.
If Christians are going to believe in Jesus, it seems to me that they at least give him the benefit of the doubt, and not make him seem like a petty, unjust monster willing to write off most of the human race over highly dubious points of religious dogma.
When I was a young boy, and Christian adults told me that God and Jesus were going to send billions of human beings to hell, I wanted nothing to do with them, or Christianity. This was not “good news” to me back then, and I still feel the same way today.
January 14, 2012 at 6:36 am
Yes, Rick, I think you are right. That part of us that wants revenge is like the base animal or “beast” part of us. I have found that in myself many times. I find I have to turn away from it and pass it to God.
Michael,
Jesus never preached on Hell. He didn’t believe in Hell and is more concerned in saving mankind, from Hell? No! From ourselves! He never said that there would be no suffering though. The Old Testament is replete with man’s hatred for man and nothing has changed throughout the ages.