I’m mostly gone now, but this topic is especially important to me because it goes to the foundation of all of human morality and suffering.
Firstly, I want to say that feelings of remorse and guilt (when healthy and realistic) are a precious and beautiful gift, so I’m not one to encourage dismissal of these. Honest guilt is hope that we can be better than we were. When I was in fourth grade I participated in ostracizing a girl in my class, and while I can blame it on the current church fight among adults, having an unstable childhood environment, etc., that isn’t nearly as important as my ability to feel guilt at the time. My apology to the girl was limited in terms of recompense, but it changed me so that in high school I become the person my guilt promised I could be. I was able to be kind to the misfits and ostracized kids.
Secondly I will say without specifics that I was in a relationship for six years that left me violated physically, psychologically, financially, and emotionally. I can understand that the acting out of revenge could plausibly help a person let go, but I didn’t do it. Perhaps in part because I was still beholden to feelings of pity for him that initially enabled the abuse (both projected from my own piteous state and some that belonged to him). What I did do in that relationship was tell him the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I stand behind everything I said to him, and I managed to say everything I thought he needed to hear. That has given me tremendous relief and reclaiming of myself. I don’t care so much now how this sounds, but I think losing me was its own punishment because I did love him absolutely and was kind to him, but he couldn’t reciprocate and violated that love deeply. Further revenge, acts of intentional harm, only lessens the cost of that loss.
Thirdly, I think it is important to factor in the limitation of human perception. I say this with caution because I know about victims being gaslighted regarding their perceptions, and I have been as well. Still, though there is a way to calculate the cost of being wrong in perception. It is also true that many abusers genuinely, honestly believe their victims are evil and harming them. I’ve known innocent people with brain damage actually hear someone using aggressive and cursing words when it never happened in reality. If we all enact revenge aggressively choosing to inflict harm, then we get exactly the result we see humanity experiencing. It all FEELS justified, no matter how cruel, sadistic, and horrendous. We have to become something profoundly different from the harm that violated us.
Fourthly, while I know the above leans in the direction of someone who does not exact justice entirely in a concrete way, I am a person who strives for perfect justice in the world. I care about directing the price towards the individual who caused harm with zero collateral damage. The moment I allow collateral damage or any harm to an innocent person, or greater punishment for lesser violations, then I am no better and deserve no better.
