Our striking ability to nurse a grudge is a uniquely human quality. Thoughts of revenge reflect our deep capacity to recall old wounds, and the urge for payback is as old as human consciousness.
The code of Hammurabi (circa 1754 BC) provides the admonition “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.” This “eye for an eye” instruction was a proposal that justice be proportionate – don’t respond with greater injury than the damage done to you. Jesus cited Hammurabi in his Sermon on the Mount, suggesting instead that we turn the other cheek. God went Jesus one better and said that revenge was his, alone.
Freud postulated competing instincts: Eros, the will to live, and Thanatos, our more aggressive nature. Freud argued that Thanatos is a subconscious will to die.
These perspectives have a connection. With growing nationalism and rising hostilities, Thanatos seems now ascendant. The current conflict with Iran is a classic example of how acts of requital escalate. If human self-destruction is the inevitable last act, payback will play a central role in the denouement.
The urge for revenge can actually alter cognitive processes. As Michael Corleone noted in Godfather III: “Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgement.” Violence breeds violence. We see that trauma and abuse run in families. Trauma as psychological damage plays a leading role in the drama of reprisal. Trauma is the engine that powers payback thinking.
Despots know to take advantage of these dynamics, to scapegoat and blame the “other” for all the public’s ills. Trauma increases susceptibility to such manipulations.
The payback game is an endless seesaw of ramping up old disputes and tit-for-tat, until finally the pendulum swings. In our democracy, pendulum swings happen mostly without bloodshed. If the American Republic is no longer viable, the usual constraints are gone. Thanatos dominates, and the revolution will be anything but peaceful.
In the fantasy life of MAGA folks, it will be a cleansing tide that washes away all that is not right and White and Christian. Trump crusaders are devoted to this idea. Trump has openly threatened civil war, should he be removed from office.
Are we headed towards the suffocated last gasp of Reagan’s “shining city upon a hill,” exploitation by our enemies, despotism and capitulation to tyranny? Perhaps. A rational option is to reject the relentless squabbles and internecine combat that characterizes our current social order.
We need a common enemy.
We need a cause to fight on which we can more or less agree. But where do you find an enemy that is not defined by religion, nationality, gender, race, age? Look around. See how the tornados are more violent, seas are sweeping higher on the shore, hurricanes and cyclones vastly more powerful, rivers raging over their banks – or the forests dying, waterfalls that no longer run, permafrost that isn’t? Our common enemy is pollution, environmental destruction and global climate change.
The GOP were not always opponents of environmental stewardship. Remember Teddy Roosevelt? His party supported clean water and clean air legislation. Politicians are soon going to be forced to care, if they represent any coastal state, any state that depends on agriculture or herd animals, or the continued survival of, well, practically anything.
Donald Trump has zero interest in the environment, and an active distain for regulation. He has no capacity for cathedral thinking. He will never be persuaded that averting the coming calamity is any kind of useful goal, because it has no personal transactional benefit to him.
The public response to Greta Thunberg has shown us that a surprisingly large voting bloc – young people – can be motivated by a pro-environment activist. They are signing up to vote in surprising numbers. If a candidate would rise up and declare saving the planet as job one, the man in the Oval might be defeated from the flank he failed to protect.
In the “us versus them” playbook, nobody wins. With an “us versus environmental destruction” strategy, everybody wins. Donald Trump is not a “win-win” kind of person. His narcissism and pettiness reveal his own traumas. Trump is a payback kind of guy – and everyone is the worse for it.
Through global climate action, the U.S. could retake the lead in foreign policy. This position could be leveraged to justify practically any agenda: on immigration, economic policy, trade. Real action on the environment could be a staggering windfall for America, particularly in light of the alternatives.
“Climate apartheid” is one proposed outcome. According to this scenario, human rights will not survive the coming global disaster, with wealthy people buying protections from the worst effects while vast numbers of poor succumb to heat, malnutrition, dehydration and disease.
Perhaps, or not. People who count on mass extinction as a survival strategy are ignoring the nature of payback.
