According to our book, revenge is a behavior based on the notion, "an eye for an eye. “One wants to follow evil with more evil. When a conflict occurs and is not solved effectively with any of the concepts the book has provided us, revenge can occur. I recently watched a movie called, "Never Back Down,' and I saw an interesting side to revenge. The movie talks about never giving up in something you believe in. The main character Jake trains at a Mixed Martial Arts gym, and one of the rules is to never fight outside the gym or you will be kicked out. In the meantime at school, the bully brutally beats up Jakes best friend. Jake decided to retaliate and wants a fair fight with him. Jakes trainer tries to stop Jake because he doesn’t want Jake to fight out of revenge. Jake said that he is not fighting because he wants to, but he is fighting to stand up to the bully and attempt to stop what he has been doing. I found this interesting because it is so true. Revenge usually takes place in a negative environment, but Jake simply wants justice e for what has been happening.
I appreciated how you pointed out the difference between justice and revenge. Like the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation, it seems that many people think that they are synonymous (forgiveness is an internal process, reconciliation is action between two people). I think that we more often see people exclaiming that they want “justice”, when what they really want is revenge (they are filled with anger, rage, disgust and just want to make the other person feel pain). It seemed that in your movie scenario, the fighter was simply trying to stop the injustice, and had no other alternative than to do it through honorable force. I wish more of us were as they say, “to noble for revenge.”
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