“An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind,” Gandhi warned.
“Turn the other cheek,” Jesus advised.
Seek “the wisdom of forgiveness,” the Dalai Lama suggests.
High ideals indeed. But the opposite impulse - vengeance - remains one of the most primal, powerful and uncontrollable of human urges.
Whether stemming from playground squabbles, marital grudges or deadly blood feuds, the desire for payback is, for many, impossible to resist.
If revenge seems a fundamental part of human nature, scientists say, that’s because it is woven into our genes. As Benedict Carey reported in The Times , brain-wave technology has found that when people are insulted there is a spike in activity in the same part of the brain that is related to hunger and cravings.
“We’ve shown many times that expressing anger often escalates and leads to more aggression,” Dr. Brad Bushman, a psychologist at the University of Maryland, told Mr. Carey. “But people express it for the same reason they eat chocolate.”
If revenge is so sweet that people crave it like candy, then what chance do societies have of rising above it, of living the ideals of the great spiritual teachers?
In a few places around the world, there are some hopeful examples. Last December, a rampage erupted in Kenya, triggered by a flawed election but rooted in seething ethnic tensions. More than 1,000 people died.
Now, the Reverend Daniele Moschetti is trying to disrupt the cycle of rage.
In September, Father Dan led 25 Kenyans from all ethnic backgrounds up the 5,000-meter Mount Kenya. As Jeffrey Gettleman recently reported in The Times, the group of Muslims and Christians battled extreme fatigue and cold, but 23 of the Kenyans - Kambas, Kikuyus, Luos and Luhyas - struggled to the top, some holding hands, and planted a peace flag.
“There better not be another war,” one exhausted climber said. “Because I ain’t doing this again.”
In America’s inner cities, similar warfare - that between rival gangs - plays out like an endless Greek tragedy. But in Chicago, a group called CeaseFire is trying to break the cycle with “violence interrupters,” ex-members of gangs who risk their own lives to prevent disputes from escalating.
“How do you not do a shooting if someone has insulted you, if all of your friends are expecting you to do that-” the founder of CeaseFire, Gary Slutkin, explained to Alex Kotlowitz of the New York Times Magazine. “What our interrupters do is put social pressure in the other direction.”
A similar technique is being tried in Albania, where a centuries-old code demands that “blood must be paid with blood.” Since 1991, as many as 9,500 people have died in these family vendettas. Thousands of others are virtual prisoners in their homes, fearing retaliation .
Alexander Kola, a mediator of blood feuds, told Dan Bilefsky of The Times that some of the longest-running feuds began with incidents as trivial as a sheep grazing on another family’s land. He negotiates by bringing together influential family members or friends. Sometimes he pays off families in gold.
“I tell the families of the victims that forgiveness is more important than revenge,” he said.
While it may not be quite what the Dalai Lama has in mind, forgiveness might also be its own form of revenge.
John Sawyer, a Denver businessman, told Mr. Carey that after he was shot by robbers in 1987, he fantasized about retaliation. Eventually he forgave his assailants.
“It showed they hadn’t defeated me,” he said. “It was like I had risen above what had happened and above them.”