Regrettably, revenge is in the spotlight. Just to mention three recent examples, the
news
1
(15th November 2015) defined the bombs dropped by France on Islamic State Jihadi training
camp after the Paris shootings as “revenge.” Only 2 days after, president Putin literally
claimed on TV that “revenge is unavoidable”
2
(17th November 2015) toward the Syrian rebels responsible for the Russian jet downed
the day before. More recently, the Iranian supreme Ayatollah leader vowed for “divine
revenge”
3
(3rd January 2016) on Saudi Arabia after the execution of one of their prominent clerics.
Such an intricate international scenario of aggression demands reflection on the factors
involved in human vengeance as well as on its causes and solutions. That is why I
recover Payback from the shelves, a 209 pages book written by a married couple (he
an evolutionary biologist, she a psychiatrist) that matches all the current breaking
news on revenge despite dating back from 2011.
Firstly, the subtitle of the book is not pointless. There is some difficulty to find
a subtle English native differentiation between the what-so-called “three Rs” (retaliation,
revenge, and redirected aggression). In this sense, the authors provide clarifying
definitions in the very first chapter (pp. 4–5):
“When one being hurts another, several things may happen. Sometimes, the pain is immediately
reflected back onto the perpetrator. This is retaliation. It is prompt and straightforward.
(…) Then there is revenge. (…) The response is delayed–often for a long while and
with much prior contemplation. (…) The strangest form of payback (…) is redirected
aggression (…)–the targeting of an innocent bystander in response to one's own pain
and injury.”
However, this exercise of clarification with the core terms of the book unfortunately
vanishes across the book due to lack of scientific support to the ideas argued. This
is because Payback grounds on a personal experience more than on a defined line of
research. In the Preface, the authors confess that the boost to write a book like
this appeared after a marital problem coming from how they had transmitted their political
commitment to their children. The reading of a Buddhist essay eventually helped them
(and it was a crush indeed provided that one of the authors published a book exclusively
focused on Buddhism afterwards, Barash, 2013). Their personal revelation consisted
of writing a book based on how to avoid “pain passing” (sic.) and fostering forgiveness.
That is why by reading the Preface the audience learns that Payback is not going to
be a regular monograph on aggression offering different theoretical backgrounds plus
empirical studies but a compilation of anecdotes on aggression plus a Buddhist proposal
on forgiving. Then, which are the advantages and disadvantages of reading Payback
for a scientific audience?
Regarding advantages, one of the book's strongest points is the authors' ability to
shred payback from different disciplines whereas doing an exquisite labor of documentation.
The eclectic index provides with first contact to different fields that may help any
researcher interested in aggression to rethink their line of research from a renewed
perspective. Chapter 1 lists popular examples (i.e., a Tim Burton's film, conflicts
in Bosnia, Gaza) to illustrate the differences among the three Rs. Chapter 2 discards
retaliation and revenge from the evolutionary perspective and focuses on redirected
aggression in non-human animals. Chapter 3 refers to victimization (i.e., bullying,
sexual abuse) and scapegoating with references to religion, literature, and economics.
Chapter 4 mixes Sociology and History examining different group conflicts (i.e., tribes,
World War I). Chapter 5 reviews mythology, Ancient Greek theater (i.e., Oresteia,
Medea), and classical authors (i.e., Shakespeare, Dostoevsky). Chapter 6 separates
gut need for revenge with social need for impartial justice stressing the victims'
feeling of satisfaction. Chapter 7 runs through the visions of different religions
and disciplines to overcome pain passing. Finally, the one-page conclusion (Chapter
8) proposes somewhat as a self-pray to focus on decreasing pain.
The main contribution of this book for the current course of international events
mentioned at the beginning of this review is found in Chapter 7. It offers a fully
detailed description of how different perspectives (Islam, Christianity, and Judaism
among others) deal with aggression and conciliation. Of course, this chapter can only
work as an introductory approach for those researchers interested in intervention
against aggressive behavior from the point of view of cultural background. However,
it fulfills the expectations of those interested in learning the motivations and needs
that the counterparts of conflicts might harbor.
Regarding disadvantages, covering payback too widely makes extremely difficult to
find a concrete target of readers, as already mentioned by Sung (2011). Is Payback
for evolutionary biologists or comparative psychologists? It lacks of the background
that could be better found in McCullough (2008). Is Payback for literature or religious
scholars? Wild Justice by Susan Jacoby (1983) might be a better first option instead.
This book may be eligible for students in social sciences as well as for a general
audience interested in reciprocity and forgiveness that enjoy continuous references
to folk culture, cases, and anecdotes.
In addition, a book inspired by a personal experience makes the authors' subjective
view perfectly recognizable across the book. This is especially evident in their last
chapter, close to a self-help book (p. 199):
“When evaluating alternative actions, I will ask myself whether each is likely to
increase or decrease the total amount of pain in the world, and I will always choose
the latter”
In conclusion, Payback succeeds at pinpointing aggression and conciliation in a whole
array of fields theoretically-related and from different cultural perspectives. This
broad picture may be useful for researchers so that it promotes the collaboration
between different disciplines as well as it helps to elucidate the non-univocal causes
for the current political scenario.
Author contributions
The author confirms being the sole contributor of this work and approved it for publication.
Funding
The author grants a FPU scholarship from the Spanish Ministry of Education. Ref. FPU12/00409.
Conflict of interest statement
The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial
or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.