Why revenge is the highest passion: an exercise in dialectics

[The Heretic]

How can I ever hope to explain a very private and personal and moreover, terribly subjective feeling, when it is little more than a brainfart of chemicals, and especially, all I have is my own experiences, and any attempt to empathize with another's feelings are still filtered through my own perceptive, my own perception? A small hope that someone can understand (even if it is by second hand, distorted by language and its superficial meanings) is to invent a dialectic, an explanation why the need to reciprocate is raw and felt so deeply, why an act of revenge takes place. Then, hopefully the reader can see why a vengeful person does what he/she does, why they said what they said.

The relationship between the intense passions of love and hate is far more complex than the simplistic duality of black and white/presence and absence/positive and negative/good and bad. Basically, hate is the necessary condition of love just as much oxygen is the necessary condition for the continued existence of animals. It also applies to revenge, where love is the necessary condition for the passion of revenge. Then, it follows that revenge is the consequence of love.

Chemically speaking, love is a brainfart: neuropeptides are released and floods the amgdalya, which leads to a tangible surge of the sensation of one's wellbeing (chemical euphoria).

If hate is the preexisting condition for love, then revenge is the ultimate expression of love, for it also implies the hate that created the initial circumstances, and this works as well forwards as backwards. In the soap opera context this swinging pendulum between the extremes is called "romance."

However, revenge is quite interesting, for it is the final resolution, the death-knell of the original passions. Then the best way to express "I love you" is to take revenge. When someone is in a vengeful mood, that implies the antecedent passions of love and hate. A person taking revenge is in essence admitting that another has affected his/her very life so deeply and so profoundly that he/she must return the provoking emotion, redirect it, reciprocate and retaliate, even if it is a mere futile effort to inflict some sort of cheap suffering, perhaps the same sort that has branded the vengeful person in the first place. "Since you have branded me, I must brand you as well, for we are chattel stuck in the same pen of resentment."

That is the very formula of the desire of the vengeful. It is practically indistinguishable from lust: one desires to possess the other in order to show what has happened to him/her: to reveal the burn marks of the brand of love and hate in both members of the relationship. The acts of love, hate, despair and revenge are demonstrations how much emotion and passion are felt or experienced. To take revenge is to show how much hatred there is, and to show how much love was inflicted in order to emphasize its debilitating effects, to prove everyone it was real, and it is to prove the hatred for what both were like before they were "in love" or could have been, or have changed since then.

Conclusion: revenge is the most dramatic, the most effective and the greatest form of passion. The revengeful completely surrenders to the other he/she him/herself may still hope to show love to; yet they are trapped by the requirement to also show hatred - but not as they were or are, but for what they are not, and never could be. The sole reason to love another is to have an emotion that looks beyond what the other is not and see what they can be.
Nobody ever truly loves another for who or what they are. What a person can be is always beyond what they already are. Therefore, there is no love - only hate and revenge. The rest is merely a commercial break between the two episodes, a day's work between the sunrise and the sunset of passions all people show each other, futilely, always in the attempt to arrest the flux of life, and freeze the subjective and temporal nature of existence.

Hence, we delude ourselves with such fetid and rather insipid notions like "Eternal bliss under God" and listen to songs preaching rhetoric of some universal emotion or such promises of fairy tales romance will be experienced "happily ever after."

 

[Cookie Monster]

Welcome back Heretic after a lenghty repreive. I must admit I had a brainfart just by looking at such "flowered-up" language you had there.

Can you be a dear and type in laymen's terms? Millions of kisses!!

 

[The Heretic]

reductionism, or posting for the adhd audience

Welcome back Heretic after a lenghty repreive. I must admit I had a brainfart just by looking at such "flowered-up" language you had there.

Can you be a dear and type in laymen's terms? Millions of kisses!!

I believe I've posted in layman's terms. But if you were unable to boil down my post to its bare essentials, then here's a summary:

Love is a necessary condition of hate.
Hate is a necessary condition for revenge.
Therefore, revenge is the ultimate expression of love.

Believe it or not, I could've rendered my OP in a technical language far more abtruse and difficult. So, I refuse to dumb down my post for the following reason: there are people on this forum who can read above the 5th grade level, and I refuse to submi my writing style for the sake of the audience. That would be like demanding picasso to paint in realistic portraits so his audience could appreciate them.

 

[Liza]

However, revenge is quite interesting, for it is the final resolution, the death-knell of the original passions. Then the best way to express "I love you" is to take revenge. When someone is in a vengeful mood, that implies the antecedent passions of love and hate. A person taking revenge is in essence admitting that another has affected his/her very life so deeply and so profoundly that he/she must return the provoking emotion, redirect it, reciprocate and retaliate, even if it is a mere futile effort to inflict some sort of cheap suffering, perhaps the same sort that has branded the vengeful person in the first place. "Since you have branded me, I must brand you as well, for we are chattel stuck in the same pen of resentment."

To hate... one must care first in order to do that, eh?

That is the very formula of the desire of the vengeful. It is practically indistinguishable from lust: one desires to possess the other in order to show what has happened to him/her: to reveal the burn marks of the brand of love and hate in both members of the relationship. The acts of love, hate, despair and revenge are demonstrations how much emotion and passion are felt or experienced. To take revenge is to show how much hatred there is, and to show how much love was inflicted in order to emphasize its debilitating effects, to prove everyone it was real, and it is to prove the hatred for what both were like before they were "in love" or could have been, or have changed since then.

If hate, despair and revenge are on one extreme to another extreme... both of these two extremes being consequences of love- the extreme opposite of hate, compassion can also breed kindness, acceptance, and allowance.

Conclusion: revenge is the most dramatic, the most effective and the greatest form of passion. The revengeful completely surrenders to the other he/she him/herself may still hope to show love to; yet they are trapped by the requirement to also show hatred - but not as they were or are, but for what they are not, and never could be. The sole reason to love another is to have an emotion that looks beyond what the other is not and see what they can be.
Nobody ever truly loves another for who or what they are. What a person can be is always beyond what they already are. Therefore, there is no love - only hate and revenge. The rest is merely a commercial break between the two episodes, a day's work between the sunrise and the sunset of passions all people show each other, futilely, always in the attempt to arrest the flux of life, and freeze the subjective and temporal nature of existence.

Hence, we delude ourselves with such fetid and rather insipid notions like "Eternal bliss under God" and listen to songs preaching rhetoric of some universal emotion or such promises of fairy tales romance will be experienced "happily ever after."

Since you have defined love as an illusion through biochemistry, this could be logically an accurate conclusion to make based on that premise.

However, if we are aware that love is an illusion or mistakened for biochemistry, then we are NOT deluded. We're just either false or true to ourselves without the added benefit of adhering to others' standards of what is false and what is true. Furthermore, I propose that there are implied conditions/clauses such as having filters; the logical assertions you have boldly made on love and experience relating to that.. are indeed, affected by your own filters (childhood/social/educational/et cetera programming & passions of what may be important to you) - so the next person to you would have to take your words with a grain of salt, because they have a similar filter that affects their way of thinking differently.

With this in mind, I believe it takes great courage to own up to his/her own shiz.. and because THAT exists along with the knowledge between what is true and what is false, there is always an internal fighting chance. As long as that exists, love, hate, or any emotion will serve as fuel in addition to individuals' filters created from childhood programming and past relationships. To deny that based on this suggested premise, would create the ultimate form of illusion if such a thing exists.

 

[Liza]

Forgot this little piece...

To break the cycle of desiring revenge or taking others down to your level of pain, one would have to take responsibility for oneself; and be willing to break this self destructive cycle by being true to oneself by following positive ideals even when it hurts to do so.

If a mainstream Christian truly believes in his/her ideals, the objective is to live out these ideals as long as these remains his/her integrity. If something changes along the way, it could easily become an illusion and a painful attachment.

Therefore, the same idea could apply to the idea of love. Deluded people stray from their ideals with justifications and avoidance of responsibility, IMO. They believe it is allright to do so, because they have something or someone to blame for it without being willing to own up to their own pain and expecting others to admit to their pain for them. (edited)

 

[Cookie Monster]

Believe it or not, I could've rendered my OP in a technical language far more abtruse and difficult. So, I refuse to dumb down my post for the following reason: there are people on this forum who can read above the 5th grade level, and I refuse to submi my writing style for the sake of the audience. That would be like demanding picasso to paint in realistic portraits so his audience could appreciate them.

C'or! I didn't ask you to dumb down your post, just merely put it in understandable terminologies. Hmmm, no millions of kisses for you from me!

 

[AJ]

C'or! I didn't ask you to dumb down your post, just merely put it in understandable terminologies. Hmmm, no millions of kisses for you from me!

i want kisses.

 

[Gemtun]

Jeez, verrrrrrrrrrrry deep insights but I get the gist.

You've explained and confirmed what I've been feeling/thinking lately. My man isn't deep like me but will explain to him in simple terms.

Kisses to all around.

 

[cady75]

Hmm.. very interesting, Herectic. I get what you're saying. But at the moment I'm falling asleep where I sit, so I'll get back to you.

Keep posting. Nice to have something different around here.

Oh, and don't dumb it down. I like it.

 

[cady75]

I would like to point out some fallacies. First, you begin off by applying such a vague word as "love". Love is experienced in many different ways and varies across cultures. For the sake of arguement, let us assume that you are speaking of "love", as "eros", the inflamed passion that we feel for someone that we are chemically, and biologically attracted to- the person we brainfart for. Love. Hate. What is it? How can you argue that love leads to revenge when you have not even defined what love is? Love is just chemistry, you say. Yet, what is this love, that exists between father and daughter? Sisters? Friends? What is this love that exists between me and my brother, who is a Bush-supporting gas-guzzling Republican I would normally never give the time of day to? The most successful marriages begin with eros and end in this kind of love. Where does eros end, and where does agape begin?

You also made the arguement that from A = B, B=C, therefore C is a direct result of A. This is a fallacious arguement. Just necessarily because someone experiences love/hate, does not mean that they desire revenge. They do not necessarily chose to perperate an act of revenge because they are in love. Conversely, are there not other reasons a person might contemplate acts of revenge? Do you need to love someone to desire revenge? You said, "the need to reciprocate is raw and felt so deeply". Agreed. But where does this need come from? Does it come from our love? Or does it come from a deeper fear of loss? Of betrayal? Is it simply a carryover from our infant days, born shrieking in a cold, hard world, desiriing only to be back in that warm womb? Does not that same desire drive us, even today, in our materialistic pursuits?

You cannot argue that love leads to revenge, if revenge is not always a direct result of love. The question really is, what does? What leads to revenge? What drives us to do the things we do? Do we hurt someone because we love them? If you carry out revenge on someone, is it an act of love? Or violence? The breaking down of the barrier, the rash attack, the cold shoulder, those are all acts of violence. No. I would argue that we hurt them because we are hurting ourselves. We hurt them because our primal soul has been breached in some way.

If the relationship between love and revenge is nothing more than indirect, how can it be claimed that love is only a reprieve between hate and revenge. Cannot Love be the bulwark, the leeve, that holds back those emotions? Is it not love that stops a lover's hand before it hits their loved one? Cannot love be the civilizing influence that slows the passion, quiets the agony of our primal soul, infusing purpose in a life that is seemingly, on the surface, random, purposeless and tragic?

Why should we not shout the praise of Love to the roofs, dance, sing and indulge in a million silly B-movies and sappy songs, to praise the soothing light that comes in our lives?

 

[Cookie Monster]

i want kisses.

Alrighty, everyone gets million of kisses from me but only Chris gets this from me... :boink:

/me cheeky!

 

[gnarlydorkette]

[printing Heretic, Liza, cady's responses out for my husband and I to debate in person.]
My husband and I love to debate. We debated about the fine line between the mediums of documentary and art... and is manipulation an art element and if so, why is Michael Moore and Dorothea Lange using manipulation in their works to evoke strong emotions when they are supposed to be "documentarians"? What is the exact definition of documentary? Cannot a person give the raw footage/original picture, without manipulation, to keep a viewer's interest?

What a wonderful-written thread, Heretic! I actually smirked as I went through your post because I can completely understand and relate to that situation. "Since you have branded me, I must brand you as well, for we are chattel stuck in the same pen of resentment" is my favorite quote about Love, so thank to you for bringing this to our attention.

 

[Liza]

Another thought occurred to me this morning...

A biological imbalance might subscribe to the realm of mental illness (I am not thoroughly educated in this psychological avenue), so could love be a symptom of mental illness? If that is the case... more people than we realized have a serious problem with mental illness. LOL

On the other hand, there are people like Mother Theresa who expected nothing else in return except only to share the concept of her love. If I can be a bit more bold with another assertion: To deny such additional use of love in action, would be deluding oneself.

If there can be a concept in love, concepts can be created.

Can concepts be combined to give a more fuller meaning to love?

This being the case: A lust for revenge & manipulation can be fueled by such passion, but the very same passion can be shared with the lust for kindness, acceptance & allowance.

In your case, gnarlydorkette, we can say that Michael Moore is fueled by his passion to use manipulative words in his documentaries and emails to us; but do we call it love?

 

[Liza]

C'or! I didn't ask you to dumb down your post, just merely put it in understandable terminologies. Hmmm, no millions of kisses for you from me!

I commend you, Cookie, on this bold reply. LOL

I have my own language that I am comforable with, but I am willing to learn another language to make myself understood with others.

From what I understand of Mr Heretic's argument, he wants to exercise the use of logic on the subject of revenge's place in our lives. He seems to use a certain formula of logic to test the validity of love with the existence of that dark need to avenge one's pain (I could be wrong there, tho).

Call it a practice, if you wish to - I do. The objective is to make assertions after building up to them for me, through questioning others' positions. Feel free to join in the fray!

 

[The Heretic]

Hi Liza, thank you for your responses.

To hate... one must care first in order to do that, eh?

It is rather irrelevant whether an emotion is experience before another. My point in this passage was to explain the nature of revenge as the result of a hatred that emerged from some failed love.

If hate, despair and revenge are on one extreme to another extreme... both of these two extremes being consequences of love- the extreme opposite of hate, compassion can also breed kindness, acceptance, and allowance.

While true, this is also irrelevant. I am not really interested in staying within the bounds of the initial thesis of "love" and its attendant effects.

Since you have defined love as an illusion through biochemistry, this could be logically an accurate conclusion to make based on that premise.

Only according to the reductionist logic of scientific description of brain states. We can point to brain activity when someone is experiencing a certain emotion, but that description does not actually capture the immediate experience of the person. I proposed the "brainfart" definition of love only incidentally, not as the premise of the argument.

Furthermore, I propose that there are implied conditions/clauses such as having filters; the logical assertions you have boldly made on love and experience relating to that.. are indeed, affected by your own filters (childhood/social/educational/et cetera programming & passions of what may be important to you) - so the next person to you would have to take your words with a grain of salt, because they have a similar filter that affects their way of thinking differently.

Actually I did not derive this from my personal experience, because the logic of the dialectic does not depend on subjective experience in the least. Cultural filters go only so far.

With this in mind, I believe it takes great courage to own up to his/her own shiz.. and because THAT exists along with the knowledge between what is true and what is false, there is always an internal fighting chance. As long as that exists, love, hate, or any emotion will serve as fuel in addition to individuals' filters created from childhood programming and past relationships. To deny that based on this suggested premise, would create the ultimate form of illusion if such a thing exists.

To be frank I don't find Freud's deterministic psychology to be persuasive. Self-consciousness transcends the limitations of the past by virtue of being free.

 

[The Heretic]

My Internet connection gave up the ghost last night...

To break the cycle of desiring revenge or taking others down to your level of pain, one would have to take responsibility for oneself; and be willing to break this self destructive cycle by being true to oneself by following positive ideals even when it hurts to do so.

I don't see how "taking responsibility" will "break the cycle of desiring revenge" at all. If I take responsibility for my actions, and act with the full awareness that I am acting according to my wishes, there is nothing to stop me from taking revenge.

I also don't see how "being true to oneself" helps either, especially if the person is the very same person who is responsible for deciding which "ideals" are positive. That means there are no "positive" ideals in themselves, because they are always dependent on someone to decide their value in the first place. Therefore, there is nothing "in me" to be true to, because I am free to determine which ideals are positive.

If a mainstream Christian truly believes in his/her ideals, the objective is to live out these ideals as long as these remains his/her integrity. If something changes along the way, it could easily become an illusion and a painful attachment.

This passage struck me as confusing...

Therefore, the same idea could apply to the idea of love. Deluded people stray from their ideals with justifications and avoidance of responsibility, IMO. They believe it is allright to do so, because they have something or someone to blame for it without being willing to own up to their own pain and expecting others to admit to their pain for them. (edited)

I don't think you can characterize the "deluded" that easily, because one can be deluded and adhere to an ideal in the face of reality. People do it all the time, when they deceive themselves by ignoring blatant evidence for the sake of cherished beliefs: say, a prideful father overlooking obvious signs that his son is a flaming homo. ;-)

 

[The Heretic]

Jeez, verrrrrrrrrrrry deep insights but I get the gist. You've explained and confirmed what I've been feeling/thinking lately. My man isn't deep like me but will explain to him in simple terms. Kisses to all around.

Perhaps you can explain this to Cookie Monster, as well, for I have no stomach to dumb down my OP. Even boiling it down to a single argument was too much, seems.

 

[The Heretic]

Hmm.. very interesting, Herectic. I get what you're saying. But at the moment I'm falling asleep where I sit, so I'll get back to you. Keep posting. Nice to have something different around here. Oh, and don't dumb it down. I like it.

Why, thanks, Cady!

You can always do a search and look up my old posts. I've been here since 2003, i think.

 

[The Heretic]

Deconstructing a rebuttal

I would like to point out some fallacies. First, you begin off by applying such a vague word as "love". Love is experienced in many different ways and varies across cultures.

Quite, but not too dramatically different to abstract from the particular instances into a general noun that encompasses all the different ways it is manifest across different cultures. If we keep a nose-to-grindstone approach, we will note the differences are pronounced, but taking several steps back we can generalize by highlighting the common resemblances between all the particular instances. I have intentionally left it undefined in order for the reader to fill in the blank with her own preconceptions.

For the sake of arguement, let us assume that you are speaking of "love", as "eros", the inflamed passion that we feel for someone that we are chemically, and biologically attracted to- the person we brainfart for.

Eros is, in psychology, the sexual drive, or libido. I proposed the scientific interpretation as only one aspect - not as the be-all and end-all definition of love. While it is true that religious beliefs and emotions are scientific phenomena, scientific reductionism will always fail to include the phenomena.

Love. Hate. What is it? How can you argue that love leads to revenge when you have not even defined what love is? Love is just chemistry, you say. Yet, what is this love, that exists between father and daughter? Sisters? Friends? What is this love that exists between me and my brother, who is a Bush-supporting gas-guzzling Republican I would normally never give the time of day to? The most successful marriages begin with eros and end in this kind of love.

Depends on how you determine "successful" marriages. The ones that don't end in divorce, out of fear of committing a taboo? Raising healthy kids without killing each other?

Where does eros end, and where does agape begin?

Ah, i detect a streak of Christianity in this contrived line of questioning. If you forced me into a corner, i would deny that eros and agape were related, and that my OP does not indicate "spiritual love" which is also in itself a "delusion." What do you think?

You also made the arguement that from A = B, B=C, therefore C is a direct result of A. This is a fallacious arguement.

You might want to re-read my OP, for i never made such superficial equations.

A short summary of dialectic is in order.

If you were to interpret my post according to my own terms, then you would recognize the distinction between subjectivity and dialectical logic. For instance, the wobbly line of a triangle drawn on a blackboard is irrelevant to the essential structure of the triangle.

Then, the private and all-too-inconstant subjective experience of "love"
is equally irrelevant to the thesis of love in dialetical logic.

The rejection or negation of dialectics enacts a philosophical move which is in itself dialectical and implictly a Hegelian move. In order to refute the dialectic one deploys a dialectical mode of reasoning. An argument against the logic of the dialectic will only be its own antithesis, which will in turn yeild a new synthesis that transcends the initial thesis and the antithesis. Therefore, dialectical logic is a cannibal of philosophy for it gobbles up the opposition by transforming them into antitheses.

I find the technique of dialectical arguments charming, even seductive, due to their gift of demonstrating the incoherence of particular concepts. Incidentally, I know how to avoid meet the dialectical logic of hegel head-on, but this is another issue.

Just necessarily because someone experiences love/hate, does not mean that they desire revenge. They do not necessarily chose to perperate an act of revenge because they are in love. Conversely, are there not other reasons a person might contemplate acts of revenge? Do you need to love someone to desire revenge?

I recommend you to look into this much further than the surface level of consciousness. If a person desired revenge, then his ideal of love has been found wanting, and that has inspired strong emotional responses, which we understand as hatred. The expression of this raw emotion, if not repressed or sublimated, is enacted in revenge.

You said, "the need to reciprocate is raw and felt so deeply". Agreed. But where does this need come from? Does it come from our love? Or does it come from a deeper fear of loss? Of betrayal?

If you can argue a "deeper fear of loss" as something distinct from the emotion of love, then i'd be interested in reading it.

Is it simply a carryover from our infant days, born shrieking in a cold, hard world, desiriing only to be back in that warm womb? Does not that same desire drive us, even today, in our materialistic pursuits?

Great. Another Freudian! :rl:

You cannot argue that love leads to revenge, if revenge is not always a direct result of love. The question really is, what does? What leads to revenge? What drives us to do the things we do? Do we hurt someone because we love them? If you carry out revenge on someone, is it an act of love? Or violence?

An act of revenge is not an act of love, please try and understand that, or re-read my OP carefully. I never made such blatant assertions. An act of revenge is violent, but love has a violent impact on the passions.

Instead of watching stilted soap operas or reading idealistic romance novels, i recommend watching/observing the relationship between two people who fall madly in love. It often ends in disaster, and i also recommend instead of determining who to blame, carefully observe the emotion of love in its manifestations and the results.

The breaking down of the barrier, the rash attack, the cold shoulder, those are all acts of violence. No. I would argue that we hurt them because we are hurting ourselves. We hurt them because our primal soul has been breached in some way.

I'm sure this belongs in a best selling self-help book.

If the relationship between love and revenge is nothing more than indirect, how can it be claimed that love is only a reprieve between hate and revenge. Cannot Love be the bulwark, the leeve, that holds back those emotions? Is it not love that stops a lover's hand before it hits their loved one? Cannot love be the civilizing influence that slows the passion, quiets the agony of our primal soul, infusing purpose in a life that is seemingly, on the surface, random, purposeless and tragic?

I disagree, for love is the very spring that inspires the lover to smack their loved. Apathy is the true opposite or "absence" of both love and hate. Your questions contain a fairy-tale perception of love that romance authors have exploited in female audiences for thousands of years that do not resemble reality in the slightest.

Why should we not shout the praise of Love to the roofs, dance, sing and indulge in a million silly B-movies and sappy songs, to praise the soothing light that comes in our lives?

Because those activities inspire a false consciousness that prevents us from seeing the world/reality in its entirety, and remain a prisoner of our transient emotions, never capable of overcoming them and mastering them.

 

[The Heretic]

What a wonderful-written thread, Heretic! I actually smirked as I went through your post because I can completely understand and relate to that situation. "Since you have branded me, I must brand you as well, for we are chattel stuck in the same pen of resentment" is my favorite quote about Love, so thank to you for bringing this to our attention.

Wow! You've made my day, Gnarly dorkette! :fruit: