Retaliation and Escalation
Complete this for me:
“An eye for an eye _______”
Which one did you first think of? There are two well-known versions of this platitude.
There’s the original one, the biblical one (actually first found in the Code of Hammurabi). And a tooth for a tooth. And there’s the bumper-sticker one. Will make the world go blind.
That’s actually the one that first comes to my mind. Not sure why. I guess it has the alliterative advantage of assonant rhyming, eye & blind.
Anyway, both are making very big statements. Make the World Go Blind is as elegant a rebuttal as can be made. In terms of endorsement, it’s the far more popular one: you never see Tooth for a Tooth bumper-stickers.
But there’s a problem. It’s not true. Not even a little bit. Let’s explore why.
First, observe that it has never happened. The world has never gone blind.
Next, observe that conflict, retaliation and escalation has occurred countlessly over the years, and continues to occur, in every family, every community, every society, and every nation. And yet the world has never gone blind.
Indeed, it could not go blind. Not from Tooth for a Tooth. Let’s explore why.
First let’s explore the assumed escalation. Cuz, that’s why Tooth for a Tooth is a purported problem, right? Escalation is how the world will go blind, if such a thing were true. Someone pokes out someone’s eye, and so it is decreed by cold judgmental institutions without compassion, that their eye must be poked out in return. Right? OK, and then what next? Who’s eye gets poked out, next? By whom and why?
Escalation happens, of course. We’ve seen plenty of that. We’ve seen people retaliate against people not involved, or only peripherally involved. That can instigate more retaliation, sure. I have no idea how bad the worst escalation chain that ever happened was, but again, the world is not blind. It can not happen.
Even leaving aside the eye/tooth metaphors aside, any form of violence, of retaliation & escalation, has not led to every ankle broken, or every family bombed, or every dollar stolen, or anything of the sort.
But even if eye-poking or whatever can’t escalate until the whole world is afflicted, the platitude could still be true in a limited and general sense, and it could still be sage advice to avoid escalation because it rather brings more damage and solves no conflict. So abiding by Make the Whole World Blind still could be the best way to live, right?
I’d say it’s important to avoid unnecessary escalation, and you ought to be a bigger person than to just retaliate every transgression out of pettiness. But it’s also important to sue for justice, and not only peace, for without justice there is no peace.
To abide by not making the world go blind, arguably, is to forsake the pursuit of justice in the face of real injustice. So not making the world go blind -- possibly originally coined by Mahatma Gandhi -- is precarious advice at best.
But there’s more. Make the Whole World Blind criticizes something that it doesn’t understand.
Tooth for a Tooth is not a justification for escalation. It is rather a principle that prevents escalation.
It is a principle of proportional retribution. The idea is, it’s not an eye for your whole head. It’s not a tooth for your whole family.
It’s only an eye for an eye, only a tooth for a tooth. If retaliation were allowed to escalate beyond what is proportional to the transgression, that is a perversion of justice and undermines the pursuit of legitimate justice, which can cause further decay.
How just would it be, for someone to scam $100 from you and you demand $1,000 back? There is such a thing as punitive damages, or incidental or consequential damages for putting someone through the trouble of some sort of unjust situation. Justice isn’t always done with only compensatory damages.
But the idea is to keep retribution proportional to the damages inflicted. And there’s no tacit endorsement of vigilante justice, or taking justice into your own hands. A proportional, Tooth for a Tooth kind of punishment can be administered by a judge in a thorough system of justice.
So Tooth for a Tooth is an efficacious system for the pursuit of justice.
And Make the Whole World Blind is a false platitude predicated on the fundamental misunderstanding of justice.
But for Christians, we have a major problem here.
And it comes in red letters in the Gospel of Matthew.
You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
So what do we do with that???
Part 2 coming soon
“An eye for an eye _______”
Which one did you first think of? There are two well-known versions of this platitude.
There’s the original one, the biblical one (actually first found in the Code of Hammurabi). And a tooth for a tooth. And there’s the bumper-sticker one. Will make the world go blind.
That’s actually the one that first comes to my mind. Not sure why. I guess it has the alliterative advantage of assonant rhyming, eye & blind.
Anyway, both are making very big statements. Make the World Go Blind is as elegant a rebuttal as can be made. In terms of endorsement, it’s the far more popular one: you never see Tooth for a Tooth bumper-stickers.
But there’s a problem. It’s not true. Not even a little bit. Let’s explore why.
First, observe that it has never happened. The world has never gone blind.
Next, observe that conflict, retaliation and escalation has occurred countlessly over the years, and continues to occur, in every family, every community, every society, and every nation. And yet the world has never gone blind.
Indeed, it could not go blind. Not from Tooth for a Tooth. Let’s explore why.
First let’s explore the assumed escalation. Cuz, that’s why Tooth for a Tooth is a purported problem, right? Escalation is how the world will go blind, if such a thing were true. Someone pokes out someone’s eye, and so it is decreed by cold judgmental institutions without compassion, that their eye must be poked out in return. Right? OK, and then what next? Who’s eye gets poked out, next? By whom and why?
Escalation happens, of course. We’ve seen plenty of that. We’ve seen people retaliate against people not involved, or only peripherally involved. That can instigate more retaliation, sure. I have no idea how bad the worst escalation chain that ever happened was, but again, the world is not blind. It can not happen.
Even leaving aside the eye/tooth metaphors aside, any form of violence, of retaliation & escalation, has not led to every ankle broken, or every family bombed, or every dollar stolen, or anything of the sort.
But even if eye-poking or whatever can’t escalate until the whole world is afflicted, the platitude could still be true in a limited and general sense, and it could still be sage advice to avoid escalation because it rather brings more damage and solves no conflict. So abiding by Make the Whole World Blind still could be the best way to live, right?
I’d say it’s important to avoid unnecessary escalation, and you ought to be a bigger person than to just retaliate every transgression out of pettiness. But it’s also important to sue for justice, and not only peace, for without justice there is no peace.
To abide by not making the world go blind, arguably, is to forsake the pursuit of justice in the face of real injustice. So not making the world go blind -- possibly originally coined by Mahatma Gandhi -- is precarious advice at best.
But there’s more. Make the Whole World Blind criticizes something that it doesn’t understand.
Tooth for a Tooth is not a justification for escalation. It is rather a principle that prevents escalation.
It is a principle of proportional retribution. The idea is, it’s not an eye for your whole head. It’s not a tooth for your whole family.
It’s only an eye for an eye, only a tooth for a tooth. If retaliation were allowed to escalate beyond what is proportional to the transgression, that is a perversion of justice and undermines the pursuit of legitimate justice, which can cause further decay.
How just would it be, for someone to scam $100 from you and you demand $1,000 back? There is such a thing as punitive damages, or incidental or consequential damages for putting someone through the trouble of some sort of unjust situation. Justice isn’t always done with only compensatory damages.
But the idea is to keep retribution proportional to the damages inflicted. And there’s no tacit endorsement of vigilante justice, or taking justice into your own hands. A proportional, Tooth for a Tooth kind of punishment can be administered by a judge in a thorough system of justice.
So Tooth for a Tooth is an efficacious system for the pursuit of justice.
And Make the Whole World Blind is a false platitude predicated on the fundamental misunderstanding of justice.
But for Christians, we have a major problem here.
And it comes in red letters in the Gospel of Matthew.
You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth." But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.
So what do we do with that???
Part 2 coming soon
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