Submitted by DeletedButArchived in AskRaddle
I've been writing a fictional / artistic argument for solving the problems of police brutality and dealing with shit heads who victimize people. I think one of the strongest stances against how many anarchists deal with abusers without the law falls under this idea that vigilantes getting vengeance just creates more vigilantes who are going to get vengeance. Ie. You kill your rapist so the mother of the rapist kills you. Your significant other kills the rapists mother to get vengeance. The husband of the mother of the rapists then kills the person who was raped's significant other. This just goes on and on.
Most of the philosophy is just kinda do whatever you want without really calculating if getting revenge is even helpful. I'm not really trying to make a point I'm just thinking about the concept and I really enjoy hearing raddle users thoughts on stuff like this since often something profound is said. So my questions
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Do you think the concept that an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind is correct?
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Are you concerned about vengeance making more victims who need to get vengeance
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Do you think murder as punishment rather than self defense is ever a good idea?
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What kind of philosophy do you have for dealing with abusers and shit heads in your life without using the state. I.e. I try to forgive them and make sure I and those I care about are protected, do the same violence against them as revenge, do the same violence against them so maybe they can empathize with their victim and change their behavior, or something else?
Obviously it matters a lot of the individual circumstance but I few like a lot of the vigilante dealing with issues continuates and reaffirms some toxicly masculine ideas maybe. Not saying thats wrong but I think individuals dealing with abusers inherently deal with some framework so this question is still relevant despite these philosophies needing lots of adjustments at the individual level.
As usual I'm quite thankful to anyone who takes their time to interact with my questions. Peoples responses often end up leading to me changing how I view the world in some way so I'm quite thankful.
rot wrote
i don't think revenge is as useful as we want it to be. we feel pain and think that if we make the people who caused it to feel that pain then somehow we'll be healed.
Except it doesn't work like that. Revenge doesn't heal anything , you get revenge and then still need help, still need to recover. I'm not a pacifist but you have to think about when you use violence and the outcome of the action.
So yes, violence can often lead to nothing but more pain.