RAGE and Revenge

I guess today was my turn to get the finger. I was driving to Lake Lousie ( A beautiful lake some 200 kms west of Calgary) I was in the passing and driving at 120 kmph. I was talking to friend and didn’t glance in the rear view mirror for stretch of 20-30 secs and before I realized what was happening a car suddenly cut to my lane. I didn’t even have time to realize what was happening. Everyone in my car managed to let of shill shriek. I instantly went back to right lane. My friend later told me that the driver in that car gave me a finger. What did he achieve by ‘fingering’ me? What did achieve by cutting in front of me? Other than scaring the wits out of us?

No idea! If he wanted to teach me lesson a loud honk would have carried the message loud and clear, but a finger? No idea, may it made him feel good. It made him feel that he has extracted revenge. I recently read that revenge is literally sweet. Scientists found that when we humans extract revenge, the pleasure regions in our brains are all active and light up. We take revenge to feel good. Not only that. People watching someone extract revenge also feel good. Strange isn’t it? Maybe not, if look back, revenge has been the underlying thread running throughout the history of mankind.

Both in Ramayana and Mahabharata, famous Indian epics, the main theme is avenging the wrongs done to the good guys by the bad guys. World wars were big revenge fests. There is no need to look that far, the current flag waving posturing we are witnessing is nothing but revenge.

Sure revenge feels good, but doesn’t this cycle avenging and ‘re’venging continue forever? Doesn’t Israel and Palestinian conflict come into mind when talking about this? Does one justify the human bombs who detonate themselves in markets and kill innocent children and civilians? or in turn does one justify the Israeli tanks firing mortars at Palestinian children throwing stones? Both the parties justify it as revenge, where does this buck stop?

No, I don’t know, Gandhi said it stops with him. One of the main mantras of his Philosophy of Ahimsa is 'no retaliation'. Does this work in real world? It worked in India though. I guess so, but, I believe that we could have gotten independence much earlier if we had kicked some good English butt.

As for me I would sleep tight if that dude who gave me birde would be pulled over by a cop and fined a good couple of hundred $, wouldn’t that be sweet?