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- [00:00]
A
Is it fair to say that you decided to study revenge instead of commit a mass murder?
- [00:06]
B
Hmm. It's a great way of putting that question. I would say no. I made that decision long before I decided to study revenge, however my life might look like that happened. So it's a fair question.
- [00:22]
A
Can you tell us that story?
- [00:23]
B
Yeah. Yeah, sure. So I had been bullied when I was a kid, Moved to the country, actually, from a suburban area at age 12, descended into this rural space where there were a lot of farm kids living around me. And I wanted to be part of that group, and so I reached out to them, but I was definitely an outsider. Although I lived on a farm, it was my great grandfather's farm. It wasn't a big working farm like those guys lived on. They lived on big dairy farms with hundreds of head of Holstein cattle. We had a small herd of Black Angus cattle, and that's beef cattle and some pigs and chickens and things like that. So they didn't want to have any part of. Of me kind of coming into their world, and I wasn't willing to accept that. I really wanted to be part of their community. When I was young, I actually wanted to be a farmer. I thought it was such a great lifestyle, and I really loved what farmers did. So when I wouldn't be deterred, they moved from shunning to bullying. And that started with, you know, words and humiliation and harassment, getting on and off the school bus and going through hallways. And then as we got older, up into middle teen years and even. Even, you know, 15, 16, 17 years old, it started becoming physical to the point that one night when my family were home late at night, we were awakened to the sound of a gunshot. And when we ran to the window to check and see what was going on, I saw a pickup truck operated by one of the guys that had been harassing me, taking off down the road. So we looked around the house, didn't see any damage, thankfully, and went back to sleep. The next morning, one of my jobs was to take care of those animals I just described, including a sweet, beautiful little hunting dog, a beagle named Paula. And when I went to her pen to feed and water her that morning, I found her lying dead with a bullet hole in her head and a pool of blood. So it's pretty rough.
- [02:48]
A
I imagine that's the sort of thing that can inspire some pretty strong feelings of vengeance.
- [02:53]
B
Yeah, it did, but at first, those weren't manifesting, so, you know, there was shock, pain, mourning, anger, all those types of things. And certainly a Desire to want to get back at these guys. At this point, my family were very upset. We contacted the police. They came, took a report, but said there was really nothing they could do at that stage. They would be available if things escalated from there, but they weren't going to act at that point in time. So another couple or three weeks passed and I found myself alone at night in my house. My folks were out somewhere, as was my brother. And I heard a vehicle come to a stop in front of our house and I got up to look outside. We lived on a one lane country road, so it was pretty rare to have a car just like, you know, come down the road. You could always hear it, but they would just keep on moving. This time it was clear that it stopped. And when I looked outside, I saw that same pickup truck. And it started. Well, I should say it this way. So there was a pickup truck and a flash and an explosion. And then the pickup truck tore off down the road, leaving behind our mailed. Our mangled mailbox. So they had blown our post box right off its stand. And then that's when what was left of my self control kind of detonated as well. And I'd been shooting guns since I was about eight years old, having visited that farm throughout my youth. And we had lots of guns in the house. My dad had a loaded revolver that he kept for, you know, like personal safety and a nightstand by his bed and. And I ran and I grabbed that gun and tore off through the house, jumped in my mother's car and I went off through the dead of the night chasing after these guys, just, you know, shouting in rage and screaming, you know, as I was going down the road. And I eventually caught them, cornered them actually by a barn. So the, you know, the scene is their pickup truck kind of pressed up against a barn wall and my car behind them with my bright beams on. So I'm seeing three or four heads in the back of that pickup truck. And you know, they slowly get out and they turn around and they're squinting through my high beams trying to figure out who had just chased them down their one lane farm road. What was clear to me at that moment was that they were unarmed in the sense that they didn't have any, any weapons in their hands, maybe in the truck, but they weren't carrying anything and they couldn't have known that I was armed. I had a gun, a loaded gun. And so I had the element of surprise. And this was my opportunity to get the revenge that I'd been wanting for years for all of this abuse and now this massive escalation in violence. And so I grabbed the gun off the passenger seat, opened the driver's door, started to get out of the car. And as I was doing that, I had this just momentary flash of insight that if I went any further, in all likelihood I'd be committing a violent act that I would never be able to undo and that I'd have to accept a new identity for myself from the person who drove down that road into that farm in the first place. I'd never be that guy again. I'd be somebody else entirely, potentially a murderer. And that wasn't a label that I was willing to accept regardless of how much revenge I wanted. And I wanted it badly. And I think that quick insight was just enough to stop me dead in my tracks. And although I wanted revenge, I just concluded that I wasn't willing to pay that high of a price to get it. And so I put the gun back down on the passenger seat, pulled my leg back inside the car, shut the door, and drove home. But I'd come within seconds of a life changing event that far too many people in our world and throughout history have gone straight through and committed those acts of violence that we all learn about in the news.
- [07:17]
A
Would have been an incredibly different future for you as well.
- [07:20]
B
Yeah, of course. I mean, if I survived it, I might still be in jail right now. I might not have survived it at all. Maybe I would have avoided it, but had to carry this guilt with me for the rest of my life. Lots of negative consequences would have happened.
- [07:40]
A
Very few positive ones, despite the fact that it's so compelling in the moment. Right. It's so tempting. So you said it drives so much of human behavior, this idea of retribution, of fairness, of justice. So I guess to kind of set the scene, why does revenge exist? How is it adaptive? Why is it a thing that we even have?
- [08:03]
B
Yeah. So what we know from evolutionary psychologists, the leading theory is that humans probably evolved to experience intense pleasure from hurting the people who hurt us, which is what we feel. And we can go into the brain biology of what that looks like in a moment. But in terms of the actual, you know, why do we have it? It looks like we developed this as early as the Pleistocene epoch, Ice age kind of time frame. And it looks at that time as though when humans needed to, you know, we're gathering into social communities, we needed a way of causing other human species who were coming out of the caves as well, and we were going to live within societies to comply with social norms and also to make sure that we would be able to survive and procreate. So we can't have another person coming and stealing your wife or your mate or your food. You need all those things to survive and procreate. And so we have this desire to retaliate that seems to have been developed as an adaptive strategy to promote human development, but now has become in so many ways maladaptive throughout history. Because often the grievances that spawn it are not survival level grievances like somebody stealing your mate or somebody stealing the food that you need to survive the winter. Now it's about somebody insulting your, your, your ego or your identity. Largely trivial, non survival matters that are being registered inside the brain. As you know, I need to react by harming this person in order to, to get over it.
- [10:02]
A
Is that because in the past resources were so much more scarce that you needed to have a stricter set of boundaries. Like the line between survival and death was a lot more tenuous. Which means that somebody transgressing that you needed to enforce that more firmly. Whereas now you can typically allow someone who insults you or makes you look silly or you know, castigates yourself. It's not, it's not the end of the world in the same way as it might have been previously. Or do you think that revenge has always had kind of an outsized magnification in terms of how it tries to get retribution on something that's happened to us?
- [10:45]
B
I think that's a great theory or supposition. Obviously we can't go back in time and interview or study what those first humans were doing and whether it was as intense then as it is now, or for the reasons that you're saying. I think that it makes sense though as a theory that those moments that were outsized then might be the same now. There may be no change, but we are viewing these largely psychological grievances. Humiliation, shame, betrayal, insult. We're viewing all of those things as kind of extinction level moments, or at least our brain biology is, Even if we are not, you know, consciously aware of that. But our brain biology is acting as.
- [11:34]
A
If it is mortal consequences in a sort of contemporary, pretty comfortable world. What are the biggest triggers for the desire of revenge? Let's say that I was going to do something to another person in order to try and initiate as much of a vengeance grievance as possible. What are the biggest core drivers of that?
- [11:56]
B
Yeah, really it's a pretty broad spectrum. It's any real or imagined, so it can just be perceived. But Any real or imagined perception of mistreatment or injustice or victimization of any sort. And as I said before, insults, humiliation, betrayal and shame, those are enormous drivers of revenge desires. Often even more so than, you know, a physical assault or harm. You know, we sort of, we can get over maybe an injury to ourselves much more quickly than we can get over what I should say is a physical injury to our bodies, more than we can get over these psychological harms that afflict us in our lives on an almost daily basis and can start this revenge craving cycle. And the way that it works inside the brain is these psychological harms activate the brain's pain network, the anterior insulin. And so the brain is registering these form of psychological harm as real pain inside the body. And the brain doesn't like pain and has been adapted over time to an instantly start to be able start to seek pleasure. And the pleasure that it seeks is this revenge, gratification. And it does this by activating the pleasure and reward circuitry. It turns out of addiction. This is the nucleus accumbens and the dorsal striatum, the very areas of your brain that are exploited by things like drugs, alcohol, gambling and other behavioral disorders. It activates in the same way it's determined on brain scans, so that it generates this instantaneous dopamine flooding of the circuitry, which is this brief high that you get. And then that high sort of disappears, leaving you wanting more of the same thing. That's that experience of craving that, you know, people with other addictions experience. But this is also the same circuitry that it doesn't only work for addiction, it works for other cravings, sex, chocolate, cake, whatever your, you know, the things are in your life that really bring you kind of instant gratifying pleasure. But if that circuitry is allowed to run the craving circuitry without any intervention from your prefrontal cortex, which is your executive function, self control and decision making circuitry, despite knowing negative consequences. That's when we move beyond craving into doing things that harm ourselves despite knowing those consequences. And that's really the general definition of addiction is, you know, the inability to resist an urge despite knowing the negative consequences. And revenge is always filled with that. There are endless negative consequences for revenge seeking. And people that seek it are doing it almost invariably despite knowing those consequences will follow. But they can't resist the urge to do it because the gratification strength is just so intense. And in addiction, we see in brain scans that that prefrontal cortex is inhibited or hijacked.
- [15:07]
A
What do you think it says about the way that humans are constructed, that we can get over physical pain and the desire for retribution more quickly than we can get over psychological pain, humiliation, insult.
- [15:21]
B
I think what it says is that for present modern times is that we need to be keenly aware that that's what's happening. And we need to be very cautious with two things. How we treat each other in terms of provocation. As you asked me, what are the types of things that can stimulate powerful revenge desires? We need to know that harming another person's identity, shaming them, humiliating them, just purely verbal things can produce powerful desires in that person to retaliate either back against you or a proxy. And we need to know that revenge seeking is not only directed at the specific person or group or entity who harmed you. It can be gratified by inflicting pain upon someone else who serves as the proxy for that individual or group. So we need to know a couple of things. One is just how powerful these shaming events in life are, these acts of injustice and mistreatment. And on the other side, we're all endlessly victimized by these experiences in life. We all have moments of humiliation, injustice, shame, mistreatment, or perceived victimization. As I said, it can be real or imagined. And we need to know within ourselves that these moments can trigger powerful craving experiences that, if not controlled, can lead to tragedy and do lead to tragedy and have led to tragedy throughout human history. And I cover a lot of that in my book. So really, two critical lessons that we haven't learned as humans up to this point, because we haven't been aware that that was happening. And it's a mistake to attribute these bad acts, these acts of violence as evil. Evil is kind of a cop out. It doesn't exist. You can't find it. You can't see it either anywhere in the physical world. You can't see it in the mental world. What we have thought of as evil is this. It's this overwhelming consumptive compulsion to harm other people to make ourselves feel better. It's just this one addiction where the only way to gratify your you're craving is to hurt other people, Usually with drugs and alcohol. You're ingesting it into your own body. Here you have to inflict pain or shoot bullets into the body of another person to gratify this high.
- [17:56]
A
It's interesting. Obviously you're laying it on thick about the fact that it doesn't need to be real, it can also be perceived. And I suppose that that's also shown in the way that we enact revenge. Because a revenge fantasy can make us feel good too. So even real or perceived injustice and real or perceived revenge.
- [18:21]
B
Yeah, yeah, it's. And, and I think that points to. It's all happening inside your head. And that's a, that's where the good news begins in this story. Because two things, I guess. One is, let's be clear about what revenge really means. Revenge is punishing people for wrongs of the past. It is not self defense. It's not trying to protect yourself from an imminent threat of harm to yourself or someone in your group right now. That is, you know, that's the fight, flight or flee instinct. And that's controlled by a different area of the brain that's controlled primarily by the amygdala. With revenge, we're not talking about a present threat. So we're talking about just thinking about, imagining, ruminating on and repeating in our lives our own victimization stories which continually throughout days, weeks, months, years, can bring up these revenge fantasies and this revenge rumination that can take over your life. But the key thing is it's in your head. The memory of the injustice that you've experienced is itself a thought formation. The desire for revenge, the craving, is itself just a thought formation. Neither of those are happening in the real world. You can't experience, nor can anyone around you experience those with any of the bodily senses that we have. So since it's a thought formation and we all have or should have control over what's happening inside our heads, we should be able to take control of this process to protect ourselves and to protect the people around us. Which is, that's the good news story is how do we control revenge seeking and how do we recover from revenge addiction for the maybe 20% of people in society for whom, you know, I would say, you know, studies show 95% of all people experience revenge desires. But in the same studies, when asked how many people act on those revenge desires, it drops to closer to 20%, which is an interesting coincidence because that's about the number of people who try drugs or alcohol and actually become addicted to them. Which means that 80% of people are not becoming addicted to drugs and alcohol. And 80% of the people, it seems, are not becoming addicted to revenge desires. So we need to focus maybe on the 20% that do. And then within that 20%, revenge seeking, like drugs and alcohol addiction and other things is on a spectrum. There's the less dangerous types of revenge seeking that might be pretty quiet. Maybe it's verbal, maybe It's a little bit of sabotage or social shunning or social exclusion. Painful things, no doubt. And sabotaging somebody's, you know, ability to have a romantic relationship, for instance, as a way of getting back at them might be something that you do. But it's far less dangerous and hurtful perhaps than an act of violence all the way up through serious property damage or serious violent acts. Similarly, drugs are the same way. They start with maybe it's tobacco and alcohol and they work up the scale towards the heavier narcotics that can really attack you.
- [21:40]
A
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- [22:46]
B
Those studies have not been done yet, but there are theories that support that very idea. The idea of a vulnerable brain, which is often I think focuses more on if you're that prefrontal cortex, the executive function of decision making circuitry. If that's being inhibited and is contributing to an addiction to drugs and alcohol, it's likely that it would also be inhibited and contributing to other types of addictive behavior like gambling or revenge seeking. But we don't have. I can't point to a study that says that is actually happening.
- [23:24]
A
It would make sense though, right? It's similar sorts of networks I'm guessing that are operating. It'll be the same kinds of neurochemicals that are being deposited. I have a friend who lives in Miami and he comes from. If you were to look at sort of the genetic stock for someone that is likely to be an addict, he's got all of the hallmarks of it. So I think both mum and dad were substance dependent. At least one brother maybe passed away due to it. Another brother is still kind of fighting through it. And I asked him about how it feels and he was like, dude, I can get addicted to anything. I can get addicted to anything. Porn, video games, sugar. And he's got, you know, this like quite structured life with a lot of scaffolding and he has a lot of very hard and fast rules that he needs to adhere to. And if he starts to stray, here's the interesting thing, they come in clusters as well, or they come. It's like dominoes. So if he strays outside of one, there's a bag of cocaine, but then there's porn, but then there's that, but that, like. So, yeah, I. Whenever I think about my upset, you could be taller or you could be faster or you could be. And I'm like, dude, there is a real spectrum of challenges that people face. And, you know, a lot of them are kind of internal. And so much of his mental effort is taken up with him just weaving like one of those slalom skiers through, through life. So I guess, you know, it's easy to make the case against revenge. It is going to hurt you and another person. It is largely existing inside of your head. There is no sort of show me the injustice, like, where does it net out into the world? But on the flip side, everybody has this intuition. It almost feels like an ethical obligation in some way. Right. It's one of the most common things that everybody will have felt. This sense of, hey, I was mistreated and this person deserves to pay for it. So I guess an obvious question is, what's the difference between revenge seeking and self defense or boundary setting? And if we don't have revenge, how do we ensure that people are taught a lesson? How do we stand up for ourselves?
- [25:56]
B
Yeah, it's a great question. So you have to know this about revenge first, which is that revenge is the root motivation. This has been shown in public health data, law enforcement data and behavioral studies around the world that revenge is the root motivation behind almost all forms of violence. That goes from bullying on playgrounds up through intimate partner violence, police types of violence and abuse of force, violent extremism, gang and street violence, and that kind of gang warfare that we experience all the Way up into torture, genocide and warfare. So that entire range, if you look at it and you want to go, why did in the news, the next time you see a murder or shooting being covered in the news and the question becomes what was the motive? And the police invariably go, we don't know yet. The answer is, I can give you the answer. The answer will be they will be found, is it'll be revenge seeking. What they're really saying is we don't know the grievance yet that stimulated the desire for revenge. That's what they're saying. But they never say that. They, you know, we go, we don't know what the motive is. The motive is revenge seeking. The grievances that people can have are almost infinite. There is as numerical as there are the number of people on the planet times the number of thoughts, real and imagined that you can have inside your head at any one time. Very hard to solve for infinity. Right. To reduce that kind of process and go, I'm going to go out and reduce people's grievances. Very, very difficult. But now that we know that they all flow into one brain addiction pathway, that gives us a whole new way to get a grip on that type of process and use a true public health approach that's already exists actually in terms of addiction prevention and treatment, to now use it as a violence prevention and treatment set of strategies. So that's really kind of very good and powerful news coming. Bring me back to your question though, cause I wanna make sure I answered it fully.
- [28:09]
A
Yeah, so it's. You have this sense revenge is justified self defense boundary setting. How do we ensure that people a total lesson if, if they go cross some sort of a line and then something even more sort of like metaphysical than this, it's like ethical obligation to ourselves. Sure, there's a lot, there's a lot of weight on the other side of the fence.
- [28:36]
B
Yeah, let's talk about that for a second. So I mentioned earlier that revenge is always past looking. Right. It's looking to punish a wrong of the past. And self defense is looking at the present and immediate future. There is a threat before me and I'm defending myself from that. So I'm careful in the book and I want to be careful here in distinguishing between revenge seeking, which can become pathologically addictive, versus protecting yourself, for instance, removing yourself from a toxic relationship. Does it mean that I should stay in a toxic relationship because leaving or doing something to get out of that might be seen or feel vengeful? No, it does not. You're leaving the toxic relationship to protect yourself. It's an act of self defense. If on the other hand, once you're out of that toxic relationship, you're still ruminating about how you can get back at the person and all of the things they did to you during that relationship, and you want to go and try and harm them in ways that will feel gratifying for yourself, then you're moving towards a more pathological state. If you can't control those desires and leave them where they need to be, which is inside your head. So there's a very big difference between self defense and revenge. Self defense you're going to do and you need it to survive, otherwise you would become a victim. And nothing that I'm suggesting here is suggesting that anyone should be a victim and condone or tolerate being abused, mistreated, victimized in any form at all. The other thing that I think should think about is in terms of, as you say, what I would say is teaching, right? There's a difference between teaching and revenge seeking. Give you an example. For instance, we need to teach our. We have a child. Let's say you have a child and the child wants to run across the street as soon as you open the front door of the house without looking both ways, and you're worried that the kid will get hit by a passing vehicle. So you say, hey, rule is you never do that. You just stand at the door, but the kid continues to do it anyway, despite your rule. So what might you need to do then in order to impress just how important this is to the child? You might add some pain experience for the child, like taking away their cell phone or their video game, or not letting them have their favorite dessert. You might raise your voice and become extremely stern about it and go, don't ever let me see this happen again. You might do things to harm them, but you're not doing things at that point in any way to gratify your own desire to retaliate against your child. You're doing it as a life saving lesson. But when in the middle of that, and I've been, I am a parent, I have two kids and there have been moments when I had to discipline them and it was a teaching moment. But then I noticed as I was teaching and you know, administering what seemed like a very wise and important punishment and lesson, I carried it on a little bit further because it kind of felt good to do this. It kind of felt good to go, look, you've kind of ruined my moment here. Son or daughter And I'm, and I've told you this a million times and now you're, you know, creating upheaval in the family and we don't need it. And I need you to stop doing it. And you really upset me and I'm gonna really upset you now and I'm gonna make sure that you're upset. And you know, I would. It's tough to admit this, but there were times I can remember it going, I went further than I needed to, to teach the lesson. And it was, and I can, and I absolutely can remember instances in which I was doing that because I was kind of feeling good, good by doing it. And that is exactly what this process is. It was that feeling good thing. So, you know, we need to distinguish between harming for gratification and teaching important life lessons that need to be taught. And sometimes that's the only way to teach them. Given the parameters of life that we have to deal with, like running in front of a car, there's no margin for error there. It's better to yell and scream at the kid than let the kid get killed by a truck.
- [32:49]
A
Wow. Yeah. It's a strange different dynamic. I wonder, did you notice, was there an age when your kids became worthy of retribution and not just education?
- [33:04]
B
You know, they never became worthy of retribution. You know what I mean? But I will say, but I think I know the gist of your question, which is, was there an age at which it started? What I would say maybe a different way of putting it. I might think of it as an age at which they could maybe more withstand that type of onslaught perhaps.
- [33:27]
A
But also, I imagine, you know, a two year old, you have to be a really, really. You have to be a person who is superbly not built to be a parent in order to find retribution at your 2 year old because they're crying, because they can't sleep or something like that. Nobody looks at a newborn like that. But if you've got a 15 year old and you go, hey, you should have known better, this is good. And you have a degree of indignation, I think, in needed recompense. Right. It's just, I guess maybe it ties in with seeing your kid as an independent agent of having agency over their lives. It's a like a theory of mind question. This is probably for developmental psychologists, not just for me and you. Okay. So I guess as well, one of the words that people will think of a lot is justice, not just revenge. So this isn't revenge, this is justice. And in the word justice is this sense of deservedness, like, they, they brought this on themselves. This is a them issue. They should have sorted that like, and, and it's righteous. My turnaround on this is almost like an obligation in a way. How do you come to think about the difference between justice and revenge?
- [34:46]
B
Yeah, that's a really subtle and tricky thing that I think humans, and particularly in our society and our age, have gotten caught up in this game in which justice now means two very opposite things. And we're capable of using it to sanctify the most horrific acts that humans are capable of. So let's think about the two meanings of justice. Justice means in one sense, it means, you know, fundamental fairness, equity, seeing the other person as equal to ourselves and deserving of everything that we ourselves would want and expect out of life and out of relationships with other people. So, and we could think of luminaries throughout history who have personified that type of justice. Maybe like Jesus and the Buddha, maybe, you know, Martin Luther King, these types of individuals. That is, you know, it's kind of social justice, right? Equitable justice, brotherhood, justice. But then we use the same word, justice, to mean things like punishment, execution, getting back at getting even with. And that form of justice is. And we really make no distinction between the two. And there shouldn't be two meanings to the word justice. But by using it that way, when it also means this high level, what I would call essentially this beautiful acknowledgment of the oneness of humanity and the need for equity amongst all people by using a war, the just war concept, for instance, that wars can be just. Do we really mean, though, that a war can be fair and equitable? And is that even a possibility in that sense? It seems to me like it isn't. We're using the word justice in those cases, in warfare cases to destroy, you know, potentially millions of people and thousands, hundreds of thousands. One prime example that's pretty recent in American history that I talk about in the book, for instance, is 9 11. You know, Osama bin Laden convinced a group of Islamic countrymen that America had committed multiple crimes in the Middle east and it would be just for us. And we should go and get justice by going and killing Americans in the World Trade Towers by flying planes into them, right? And then in response to that, since America had been victimized, our leader, President Bush, came on to televisions around the country after 911 and said, we will bring, this is the direct quote, we will be bringing the terrorists to justice. We will be teaching the terrorists the meaning of quote American justice, end quote. As if that's a different form of justice from other forms of justice. And what is clear, I think to all of Americans at that time was that George Bush wasn't saying going to bring the terrorists to fundamental equity, brotherhood and fairness. He meant something very different, which is we're going to kill a lot of people and they deserve it. And that's just. So instead of just saying what was true, which is we are going to get revenge, he didn't admit that to the American public and the American public didn't have to deal with this tension between the two forms of justice. And to have to accept we're going to spill a lot of our own blood and a lot of other people's blood because we want revenge. We want revenge for what just happened to us and we want it badly. And so we use justice to cover up and excuse what a 20 plus year war with hundreds of thousands dead, trillions of dollars spent, negative consequences everywhere. And people will say, when I kind of explain it this way, well what about Osama Bin Laden? Shouldn't he have been killed? And I say Osama Bin Laden continued throughout those years to always say I'll do everything I can to take down America. He wasn't going to give up. He showed that he could do it. And so taking out Osama Bin Laden an act of self defense, he presented a real and present constant danger to America. But all of the other killings that went on around it, and I won't say 100% of them, but very many of them, almost all of them were not self defense related, they were revenge, gratification, killings. America went on a 20 year revenge bender after 9. 11 is what occurred before we continue.
- [39:38]
A
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- [42:07]
B
Right?
- [42:08]
A
Like that. It's not that. It's. And I guess you can look at contemporary examples now, whether it's stuff that's happening in the Middle east, stuff that's happening with Russia and Ukraine, both sides are using. Actually, I would probably go as far as to say, I mean, sometimes those leaders actually do just straight up talk about revenge, which in some ways you can kind of respect. I suppose you say, hey, you're putting your money where your mouth is. But it changes the entire dynamic of what's going on. And I suppose the problem of doing that, as soon as you say revenge, you justify an increased level of sort of kinetic response back because you no longer have the moral High ground. You're not saying we're doing this to. Because of fairness. We're doing this because we were provoked, because it was unfair, because this is something that is sort of righteous. It feels wanton. Right. And unnecessary. And in that, you are no longer able to say, that other thing that happened to us after we said we were gonna get revenge wasn't permitted. And you go, well, no, of course it was permitted. You said. You didn't say it was for justice. You said it was for revenge. And they're gonna come and they're gonna try and do the same thing to you. So, yeah, the moral high ground seems to be carrying an awful lot of weight in this.
- [43:26]
B
It does. And that's kind of precisely the point. That's why we use justice more often than not. We call it a criminal justice system, not a criminal revenge system, for instance. And we do that because we don't want to say what we're really doing to criminals in most cases is we're avenging their wrongs. We're acting as a victimized society, and we're acting in the shoes of the, you know, the personal, individual victims to hurt them because they have gone and hurt other people. And we call that justice seeking in order to maintain and sanctify this higher ground and justify our most horrific types of punishment that we engage in. And as I say, it's on both sides. So, you know, Osama bin Laden doing the same thing. So we don't want to look like Osama bin Laden, so we want to look higher. You know, we're on a higher moral ground. We're just getting justice. He is just an evildoer. Right. So we completely take away all of his potential rationales that would be considered acceptable, if there are any, for flying, building planes into buildings. There aren't any. But we take away anything and dehumanize him down to the point of just being an evildoer. And don't acknowledge and don't even understand that he was acting out of his own sense and his countryman's sense of victimization for what America allegedly did first. And that's kind of the point here. It's people who commit. Who hurt other people or commit wrongs or acts of violence, almost, in all cases, see themselves as a victim first. You've got to have this sense of victimization to cause your brain to convert that into an act of. Of. Of violence and become a perpetrator. Perpetrators were always victims first. And I, I lead. You know, my book, I sort of. I dedicate My book to the. To the perpetrators who were once the victims, because they all. All perpetrators see themselves as having been victimized first. That's why they became a perpetrator, I suppose.
- [45:45]
A
Yeah. The number of indignant people or hurt people in the world is infinitely higher than the number of truly evil people. The number of people who want to do this thing simply because they want to do it. You look at mass shootings, Elliot Rogers, right, You look at him, and this was, in his eyes, righteous retribution for kids that had scorned him, humiliated him, ostracized him, alienated him, for the girls that were never going to sleep with him, that were only caring about the jocks. That wasn't couched in. I am evil, and I need to get. It's. Those people are evil and I am.
- [46:26]
B
Good, and there are no evil people. Part of what this science of revenge is revealing is that this concept of evil is a very archaic, primitive concept used for centuries when we didn't understand why people did horrific things. But now we've kind of, I think, got it down close to about 2. For the majority of the cases, it's revenge seeking, it's victimization and a desire to retaliate. But there is this other percentage of people that look kind of quote unquote evil who we might think of as sociopaths or psychopaths who have different brain structures and inside their brains lack the empathy that most of the rest of us do. But they amount to less than 4% of the human population. And revenge addicts, if we're right, it hasn't been fully studied yet, are maybe about 20% of the population. And so we can, you know, we used to, you know, put on the. Either the 4% or the 20% this label of evil. It's not a very useful label because it kind of doesn't really mean anything. It's just a category of people who engage in behaviors that seem horrific. And we have no explanation for why they do it. But it seems as though they're always acting out of some compulsion. Something has taken over their normal thinking. Well, we now know with the science of revenge that what that something is is this essentially addictive process in which they are consumed by a compulsive addiction to hurt people out of their own victimization to make themselves feel better. And we see that in small acts of revenge seeking. Workplace violence, home and school violence. It's always, you know, the bully is usually a person who believed he was a victim and is now taking out his or her victimization on someone. Else to make himself or herself feel better. And that goes all the way up through intimate partner violence, murder, suicides. I mean, how do you get a man who has proposed to a woman, fell in love with her, proposed, convinced her to marry him, is in love with her, they have multiple children, and then we find one day on the news, 10 or 20 years later, he's in the news for having murdered all of them and killed himself. Like, we need a better answer than that's just senseless violence and he must have been evil. Like, that's just. It's such a depowering, fatalistic, hopeless strategy. But when we see, when we look back, that he felt victimized in his relationship and wasn't controlling his own sense of victimization and wasn't able to control his grievances or his revenge desires and decided to retaliate against his entire family and his own self, out of these grievances and victimization, we can start to go, oh, we could have maybe done something to intervene to help him. Maybe we could have gotten to him a little earlier and done something useful. And that's what my book is about, is trying to see that in that much more hopeful point. And I think we could talk for a moment about the solutions to it. And one of the best, it turns out, is that just as we're hardwired to seek revenge, like I said, 90% of all people, it's been observed in all societies around the world in studies, revenge desires have been observed as early as the toddler years. So kids in their toddler years and then up through old age are experiencing revenge desires. So this is a very hardwired human experience that we need to be aware of. We need to teach kids and adults about how to manage their grievances and revenge cravings so that they don't engage in acts of violence. But we also have this other. Almost the same brain imaging studies that were looking at revenge also started to look at what happens when you forgive. And this is what happens when you simply imagine forgiving a grievance. You don't even have to talk to the person who wronged you or offered them any form of pardon. But if you just imagine a decision to forgive, what occurs is it deactivates that anterior insula pain network. So suddenly, by deciding to forgive, you no longer feel the pain of the grievance, which is motivating all of this from the beginning. You also deactivate the revenge craving and reward circuitry. So you're no longer getting this revenge craving rumination experience that's occupying almost all of your thoughts, keeping you awake at night, having you plot and scheme how you're going to get back at the person who wronged you. And the last thing is it does, is it activates your prefrontal cortex, your decision making circuitry. So you're getting these incredible brain biological benefits from forgiveness that have nothing to do with religion at all. I mean, if you're spiritual, you can get the spiritual benefits too. But we know at the brain biological level you're getting enormous healing benefits by even imagining a decision to forgive. And we also know from other studies that deciding to forgive lowers blood pressure, lowers anxiety, reduces depression, reduces heart disease, helps you sleep better. There are all these physiological benefits from forgiveness. It's kind of a wonder drug, a human superpower that we just don't use and understand well enough. In part because we've attributed to only the realm of religion, which is not true. And in part because we confuse revenge with self defense. And we think, oh, forgiveness with self defense. And we think that, oh, if I forgive somebody, I'm just deciding to become a victim and remain a victim. That's not true. You can still defend yourself and you can still leave a toxic relationship. It's just merely saying you're not going to hurt other people for the wrongs of the past because it only makes your life worse. And the people around you.
- [52:32]
A
What is it that we want in revenge? What is it that people say that they want? Or what is being triggered? Is it to be heard? To find the other person accountable? There's some sort of recognition. What is it? What's the outcome goal that people are after?
- [52:49]
B
So neurologically, the outcome goal is to feel better, right? They don't want the pain of the grievance and they want that pain to stop. Like it just sometimes these experiences of humiliation and shame, they just go on and on and on. And not just minutes or hours, but days, weeks, months and years, years and years sometimes. And a lot of us with traumatic experiences can remember a traumatic experience from our childhood. And maybe we're 60, 70, 80 years old and we're still sort of handicapped by this pain. It's never been resolved. Trauma psychologists will say that in order to finally heal these psychological traumas, people do need an experience of being heard and they do need an experience of holding someone to account, which is another word like justice that gets confused with revenge seeking. You know, think about what an accountant does in the world. An accountant accounts for where money went. The accountant doesn't judge where it went or whether it was a good idea or a bad. They just keep track of who did what with the money. Well, that's what the accountability is that we really need, is finding or at least stating, you hurt me. This hurt me in this way. You did it, and I'm not okay with it. That's accountability. It doesn't need to include and shouldn't include, and now I'm going to hurt you. That's moving from accountability, accountability to revenge seeking. And so what I've created in order to make forgiveness a much more powerful and easier and interesting experience, because a lot of people still think that forgiveness is a sign of weakness, and it's not. They don't realize it's a superpower, is to allow anyone who's ever been wronged. I've created this virtual roleplay experience. It's available in an app, it's free, called the Miracle Court App. It's available@miraclecourt.com and what you're able to do with this is put on trial anyone who's ever wronged you in your life. But you play all of the roles. You play the victim, you play the defendant testifying in your own defense. You play the judge and jury deciding guilt or innocence and handing down a sentence. And then you play the warden administering any punishment you want. All of this is happening inside your head, where, as I said much earlier in the conversation, all of this is taking place anyway. So we're putting the courtroom in your head where it needs to be and where there's already a courtroom. Because often we're always putting on trial the people who wrong us throughout our days and lives, all the time. And we're putting them on trial, and we're deciding whether they're guilty or not. We're deciding whether to punish them or not in the real world or in our imagination. But what we found in studying this at Yale is that it seems to have a lot of benefits. So it seems to give people that necessary trauma recovery experience of being heard. Because you're testifying, you get to testify, open your mouth and state what happened to you, even if it's to yourself. It's extremely real and powerful. When you do this as though you were in a courtroom and you're imagining sitting on a witness stand, then you become the defendant. And when you testify as to their side of the story, sometimes that creates a new sense of either insight into what happened and maybe some of your own culpability, or your own responsibility for what occurred, or some new insight into why they might have done what they did that you hadn't thought of before. Or it just gives you an opportunity to imagine them maybe lying on the stand and saying it was somebody else's fault and I didn't do it when they did. Doesn't matter. It gives you this space to explore that. And then as the judge and jury, you get to hold an account. Just like I said, holding an account means I'm going to find you guilty, then moving on to the jury, and I'm going to hand down a sentence. But then this second to the last step, being the warden administering the punishment. You know, you can't get away with just having a sentence. You have to carry it out on the person who wronged you. And that might sound good to a lot of people, but when you become the instrument of someone else's pain, you have to experience, unfortunately, the pain that you're inflicting. It's like a hammer hitting a nail. You know, we think, oh, poor nail is getting struck by a hammer. It's not that easy. The hammer always experiences the impact of that blow. It can't escape it. And we can't become the instrument of another person's pain without ourselves experiencing some of that pain. So we go through that process, though, and we end up with this final question. In the last step, you become the judge of your own life, and you're asked in that role to go, so did getting the justice that you wanted, the justice in the form of revenge through this trial, is that what you wanted? Did it really give you the healing that you expected? And invariably, people say, no, it didn't. There is no healing from revenge seeking. I just kind of feel worse or numb, and I feel angry that I had to re. Traumatize myself to go through a trial, which is always traumatizing. And I'm a lawyer, and I've done it many times, and I can tell you it is. And then we ask them, well, then, if that didn't really heal you the way you wanted, why don't you imagine what it would feel like to forgive for a moment? And usually at that point, people will go, hmm, if I imagine that I don't have to get revenge anymore, you mean I can just let this go and move on with my life? I would feel like this sudden weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I would feel relief and I would feel joy. And that's what. That's. That what I just explained inside your head. That's the pain fading away in the anterior insula. That's the revenge cravings and desires fading away in the addiction circuitry. And that's your prefrontal cortex coming back to life again. And you can move on and heal from the wrongs of the past that way.
- [58:45]
A
You said you'd worked in law for a long time. How much of our legal system is predicated on revenge, do you think?
- [58:53]
B
Oh, an enormous part, you know, the lawyers who are litigators, that is, you know, courtroom. Because there are a lot of lawyers that never see a courtroom. But those of us, and I was a litigator, those of us who, who work in courtrooms are much of the time engaged in what I call the professional revenge business. But we, you know, we're the only people in society that have this amazing license to, you know, prescribe, manufacture, and distribute revenge. But we do it under the name, under a different brand name. The brand name we sell it under Justice. Right? We always sell it under the brand name Justice. Not very different from physicians who out on the street, heroin is an illegal narcotic. But if we put it inside of a pharmaceutical pill and we call it oxycontin, it's no longer called heroin anymore. And this is, this is how we got into such trouble here in the States, for sure, with opioid addiction, because doctors were prescribing opioids and over prescribing them for all kinds of things and harming their own patients. Sometimes knowingly, maybe sometimes not. Lawyers. Same way sometimes we're knowingly harming our own clients. Oftentimes we don't. We're not aware that we're even part of this system. It's not taught in law school. We're never told. You're all going to be avengers. You're all just going to be revenge seekers making an enormous amount of money. Because people are hooked on revenge seeking and they want revenge gratification. And you get to sell it to them. Here's your special license. Go out and become rich. That isn't what's told. And it's too bad, because if we understood that a little bit better, we'd probably be better practitioners for our clients.
- [60:32]
A
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- [63:18]
B
That's right.
- [63:19]
A
You didn't text me back yesterday. So I'm not going to call you tomorrow. Right.
- [63:23]
B
You do social exclusion at that point. That's right. As act of Retaliation. Yeah.
- [63:28]
A
Do you think this shows up in the power struggles that people see in intimate relationships? I have to imagine this is probably by volume one of the most.
- [63:36]
B
Yes, the most. Yes.
- [63:38]
A
Oh, okay.
- [63:39]
B
Oh. I think that's easily the case. I mean, any human relationship is going to have those moments, and those people who are acutely aware of those grievances are acutely sensitive to perceptions of humiliation, mistreatment, injustice. And I would include myself among them. I'm definitely a recovering revenge addict type of personality where I sense these injustices and they hurt me badly, and I instantly want to somehow retaliate in some way, not violently, but in just these small ways that you described. And I think many, many, many, many, many people. We see this throughout all media forms, the entire social media network, all of the social media platforms, right? We're talking about billions and billions of people. We know from the documents that were disclosed by the whistleblower in the Facebook case that Facebook was aware and is aware that it can increase user engagement. And that means more advertising and more money for Facebook. By feeding people grievance formed material material that would cause people to feel a sense of injustice. It causes you to engage and become hooked on that. And it also, the same platform not only creates a way for all of us to instantly spread our grievances to each other, but to form groups of people who share the same one grievance and for those groups to then expand and then gives all of them an opportunity on the same platform to use that platform as a retaliatory measure against the individuals or people that they perceive caused the grievance. And so you get, you know, either from insulting, mean tweet cycles that stay in that, you know, that, that stay.
- [65:34]
A
In the digital world, they never cross over, right? They never, they never reach. Not always, but almost all of the time. They don't reach any kinetic reality, but sometimes they do.
- [65:46]
B
I'll give you an example. So, you know, the, the, the. The January 6th insurrectionist at the US Capitol for months preceding, Donald Trump and other and other of his followers spread what was a lie that the election had been stolen. Huge grievance event. I mean, the stealing of an election, it would be an enormously big deal, a very unjust act. And they continued to spread that on social media. And a significant group of people on social media believed that that was true and felt victimized by the Democrats, right? So that type of grievance transmission started occurring. I mean, hundreds, hundreds of millions of tweets were going out, and the Facebook papers show that User engagement exploded in that subject area. And then the people that a significant group of people, but a small number, but significant, used the platform and in order to organize the insurrection that occurred, the meetings on the Mall on the day of, and then to plan and plot how they could take over the Capitol and how they could ultimately disrupt the, you know, the, the inauguration of the new president. So it moved from the digital into the very physical plane to horrific effect. And so that's just one example, but I'm using that for conservative listeners are going to instantly go, oh, you're just a liberal complaining about conservatives. It's not true. This is a true human problem. It crosses all political boundaries. Liberals have done and do do on a daily basis the exact same thing as conservatives. We all do it. It doesn't matter what your political orientation is. This is brain biology for all of us, not just some of us.
- [67:50]
A
Yeah, I think you're right. It does cross over. Online bullying can result in real world retribution. It's maybe what, hundred thousand to 1,10 billion to 1 of the shit slinging that occurs online. And yet that feels like it's justified indignation, I suppose. Another thing I would love, but before.
- [68:16]
B
You go on to that, I mean, and we're, we shouldn't overlook the victimization that's occurring just from those words. The people that hear back, the people that are canceled, the people that are maligned and attacked and accused of things they haven't done or shamed for things that they have done, that causes enormous pain and victimization. That's real world pain and victimization. So it's not just the, it's not just the violence. The words hurt and they matter. And at the beginning I was saying how important is for us to know just how dangerous that is to cause somebody to feel these acts of shame because it may either ruin their lives or cause them ultimately to do something truly tragic either self harm. Like sometimes you see kids committing suicide because they're being bullied online all the way up to committing acts of violence.
- [69:08]
A
Well, look at it this way. It wasn't for me to suggest that psychological pain that is induced online has no negative value or valence or whatever. You know, we're only on this planet for about 4000 weeks and if you spend half of one of those ruminating about some mean thing that somebody said online, that's a pretty high price to pay regardless of whether or not you're still alive, aren't in prison and haven't shot someone or been shot yourself or got into a Fight or done whatever, more so that the modern world has catalyzed our ability to be able to do this. And it is kind of like a vengeance trading platform. The thing that was interesting, we used the word justice before the justice system, righteous justice, et cetera. But social justice has been a term that has been used an awful lot. Have you thought about what that term means when couched within the broader conversation about how revenge works? Because, you know, to fly the flag for the other side. During 2020, there was an awful lot of social justice that went on that stank of retribution and revenge.
- [70:26]
B
Yeah, it's a great point. So there's true social justice, which is. I am advocating for a fairer system. Right. Let's say it's civil rights. Right. It's trying to end racism. I'm trying to end racism. I'm not trying to punish people for being racist. Punishment for wrongs of the past is revenge seeking. Stopping a system that continues to perpetuate racism and simply changing the system without punishing anybody who created the old system or operated the old system or supported the old system would be much closer and akin to social justice. And people like Martin Luther King for instance, or Gandhi, Jesus, whoever, you know, they were teaching and advocating for changing a system to a system in which we would all be more naturally drawn to see ourselves in the other person, so that we are naturally treating the other person as ourselves. That's different from vengeance fueled justice seeking that seeks to punish people for what they've done or humiliate and victimize them for the things of the past. So social justice very much intact here. And it's very distinct from what I would call standard revenge forms of justice.
- [71:55]
A
Yeah, I, going back to the relationship thing, I've got it in my head. I have to assume that there are some people just my friend, genetic predisposition, early life experience. He's fighting an uphill battle to avoid addiction. There has to be some people that are more innately retributive and vengeful than others. Have you looked at group differences? Whether it be different cultures, sex differences? Are women more vengeful than men? Has this been sliced and diced at all?
- [72:33]
B
A little bit. Not nearly enough. And I don't know how fruitful it will ultimately be. What I can say about the difference between the sex is, is that there is a study or was a study that showed that. Well, first thing is both males and females experience the desire for revenge when they've been victimized. So that's pretty much the same across the sexes. Where the difference was observed is in engaging in vengeful behavior. So when men engage in retribution, punishing someone for violating a social norm or harming them, it appears as though the centers of their brain that are responsible for empathy, Right, says this theory of the mind and the ability to feel another person's pain, which we all have. But for men, during punishment, that area of the brain remains dull, it's not active. And for women, on the other hand, it remains active. And that may, at least to me, it provides some evidence that explains how men can continue to punish and kind of at a vicious level, and carry it out all the way through, either to its end point of gratification for them or whatever they were seeking until they get control of themselves versus women, who, in punishing a perpetrator, will stop the attack, so to speak, sooner because they're feeling the pain that they're inflicting or that that former perpetrator is now feeling. And so that's an interesting experience between the sexes. I've never seen any difference in any other behavior. So genetically between types of people or races, I don't think there's anything like that. But we do see different forms of societies and that are more vengeful and less controlled than others. If you think about societies like in the Caucasus, that are, even to this day, still have blood feuds, you know, it's taught, and certainly in Stalin's times, Stalin was raised there in tbilis, and in his society, the idea of punishment was taught almost from birth. And if somebody wronged you, your entire family would go and seek vengeance against the family of the other person. So you've got, in some societies, cultures that are built around revenge seeking. And I think we can see that in modern American cities and in the country in which there are communities. I've seen some studies that show in the south and the people who came to populate the south when America was, you know, when the Europeans were settling, America were more vengeful and had a more vengeful approach to problem solving than the people in the North. And that's kind of a cultural type of problem, not so much genetic, but it can be taught. Likewise, you can become more vengeful if in your own family life, it's taught, right? So if in your family your parents solve problems by seeking instantaneous retribution against anybody who wrongs them, and that's how you're raised, then you're going to be more likely to be that way. Although if you're a victim of it, you might switch, right? If You're a victim of that process. You might go, I'll never be that way. So you can't really predict in any of these scenarios. You can get people who come out of those societies, they're extremely peaceful and other people who might be extremely vengeful. But we know that there are social and psychological factors and maybe some genetic, but somewhat smaller, I would say, to socioeconomic circumstances.
- [76:37]
A
That's interesting. What I'd love for someone to do would be a kind of human behavioral ecology study looking at what are the environmental predictors. Is it where status is more hidden, it's more covert, where you've got a flatter society? Is it where you've got one that's got more inequality? Is it where resources are more limited or resources are more abundant? You know. Cause it could be. If I was to just guess, I'm gonna guess it's where resources are more limited because the impact of some transgression is going to be higher on your potential future. So it's going to feel like more of a threat. I would also guess that in a flatter, maybe not in a flatter hierarchy, but in one that has less inequality, you might see less of it. Even though people are going to be less feeling less sort of hard done by, they're going to see the opportunity to climb the ladder more easily because the next row, the narcissism of small differences type thing that, you know, if a guy in a jet, a billionaire in a jet mistreats you, what are you really going to be able to do to him? As opposed to if you're next door neighbor that's got a slightly nicer car than you, mistreats you. I imagine that that's the sort of thing that really. But I'm, I'm deep in bro science territory here. One things we haven't spoken about is I guess a, a bit of advice for self diagnosis. What are the warning signs that somebody should look out for? I guess in themselves or in other people for compulsory revenge seeking? What, what should you notice your own experience? What would that look like? And what does it look like in other people?
- [78:23]
B
Yeah, so if you're thinking about, well first of all, if you're a revenge collector, right, so you're collecting. I'm sorry, let me restate that. If you are a grievance collector, which is to say you're easily aggrieved, right. Then you're more vulnerable right from the start. So you're perceiving grievances kind of everywhere that other people don't Perceive that's a little indication of, hmm, I really, I am always seeing myself as a victim. Now, you might actually be a victim or you might be somebody who imagines those a lot of the time or perpetrates them or conjures them up or creates circumstances in which you can feel victimized. If that's happening and you can kind of analyze that and figure that out for yourself, then you might go, so maybe I'm doing that because it feels good to counterattack, to get revenge. I'm creating circumstances in which I can get this dopamine hit and I can get these highs. That definitely is happening for some people. The main thing though is what are you doing about your victimization? Are you feeling victimized and experiencing the desire for revenge? But is that staying inside your head? And if it's staying inside your head, is it occupying lots of your time or maybe some of your time or not very much of your time? I have a free quiz on my website, jameskimmeljr.com that asks you a series of 10 questions that can help you parse out where you might fit along the revenge addiction risk scale. And some of those are built on these ideas of, you know, how do you respond when you're a victim and how far are you willing to go? And most critically, are you able to control it? Are you able when you know that there would be a negative consequence to retaliating against somebody, even if it's nonviolent, are you able to stop and go, no, I'm moving on, I'm gonna let this go. Or is it something that just festers until you finally scratch that itch and gratify that craving, then you might be moving much closer towards a compulsive state of mind, or even something that would be more akin to revenge addiction. And if that's the case and you're not able to manage it with self help strategies like my Miracle Court or other forgiveness strategies, mindfulness, you might need and benefit from just having a little bit of support or even more than a little bit from, you know, a therapist, a counselor, a psychologist, psychiatrist, some type of mental health professional who can work with you in administering other things other than forgiveness that might be helpful for addiction. That can include cognitive behavioral therapy, motivational interviewing, maybe even anti craving medications. Particularly, you know, one day, potentially, these GLP1 drugs like Manjoro might one day be used to reduce cravings for revenge, because it seems like they do reduce cravings for alcohol and narcotics while they're reducing your desire for food, they might also Work that's not been studied, but they might even work here. So there are lots of reasons for hope and lots of ways to get resources. There's even a couple of organizations around the country that do forgiveness coaching and training to teach people how to forgive. One's called the center for Peace and Forgiveness and the other is the Path of Forgiveness. And they're out there and able to help people who struggle with even where to begin with how to forgive, something really serious. I would say I've used this miracle court, non justice system, courtroom of the mind approach, even with people who've been seriously victimized, victims of serious sexual violence, members of their families murdered, and it seems to have really helped a lot for them. So it might help for you, but there's no guarantee, of course.
- [82:20]
A
What is the most. What's the highest impact strategy that is easily accessible for people to do if they're thinking, look at the start of this conversation, I thought that revenge was for movies from the 90s and superhero comics and stuff. And I've realized that, yeah, I do have this sort of unrequited sense of indignation and needed retribution. And I think I should dispense with that. Maybe it's been with me for a long time. What's the most powerful strategy? What's the intervention that you think can be used the most seamlessly?
- [83:02]
B
Forgiveness, easily. I mean, that wins across the board because you're already hardwired for it. It's already available inside your head. We all have it, we all can. Access can be as easy as imagining. If forgiveness is repulsive to you, it's fine, but you can still imagine what it might feel like if you decided to do it. Just try that. Just imagine what it would feel like if you decided to do that. You'll probably suddenly go, oh, that does feel better. Maybe I should look into that further. Another thing I do, I tell people to do, is I have a mantra thing that you can do, which is to just once in a while, if you're struggling with a series of grievances or perceived victimization, is to just say, I forgive this world for all things done and for all things left undone, and I am forgiven for all things done and all things left undone. Just saying that type of mantra is a very kind of freeing experience for you, where you're just saying, I'm forgiving the world.
- [84:04]
A
I.
- [84:04]
B
You don't need to forgive the exact person who wronged you, who you might have a real lot of emotional difficulty letting off the hook, but you can let the Entire world off the hook, maybe a lot easier. And so some people benefit from that.
- [84:17]
A
That's interesting. I guess the one final thing that I feel like we haven't spoken about is sort of the, the culture of vengeance overall. America, you've already identified, it was lauded, applauded, at least at one point. At that time, it's September 12th. Is anybody saying, no, don't go and do this? Everybody's on board. If he'd said revenge, everybody would have been on board. There's very few people sort of waving the Buddhist flag at that moment. Maybe not even the Buddhists, but I get the sense that we don't have a very strong culture of applauding forgiveness, especially given that you highlighted low empathy. People sometimes maybe skewed a little bit more male are the ones who could do with an intervention to stop some slightly more high impact kinetic incidents occurring. There is very. You need to be part of a religious community or have an incredibly mindful, tapped in, you know, sort of elevated group of friends. You look at what is the UFC press conference, it's the two guys shit talking each other so much that you buy into the righteous revenge that each is going to get on the other. Right? Like, what is it? What is it when any shit talk in sports, in music, that rap album's shit. I'm gonna do a diss track on you. You know, it's all. It's all in one form or another, I guess, in the world of righteous revenge justice. Oh, well, I've played mine off the hill that I decided to put myself on. I pedestalized myself not by being righteous, but funny. So I'm above this status game. I wasn't playing that because mine, my dis track was funnier than your diss track. So I just, I get the sense that we don't have a. A particularly good archetype outside of turn the other cheek and stuff that's, you know, hardly sexy or contemporary. It feels like the world wants people to get revenge in a way. We have movies that law like every Rambo movie. Fuck me. John Wick. Look at the John Wick movie. Like, you know, he's. Is he still on about his dog now it's 10 years later, like 3,000 people are dead. We have that and forgiveness is just less sexy. So, yeah, talk to me about what you think as what is such a fundamental human. I love these conversations and I think they're very interesting and I think that you can make strong individual changes. But given that most people do not have the inclination or the Knowledge to be able to step in to do this. It feels like you're always going to be kind of going against the grain to try and make this into a broader movement, because most people are going to just go with their instinct, and their instinct is revenge. So how do you think about sort of revenge and the future of revenge in a contemporary society where people aren't limited by resources and they don't need to. They've got laws and they've got the judicial system and they don't need to impact it in this way. What does that look like? What does modern revenge and forgiveness culture look like to you?
- [87:59]
B
Yeah, so we, we know, right, that essentially 100% of people will get drunk if they drink, you know, more than a little bit of alcohol. And 100% of the people, because of our brain biology, will get high and experience euphoria if we were to inject or take opioids in any form. So we have that. It's present and it's present in all people. We all are wired to become intoxicated from these very common substances. So we've had to struggle for, you know, throughout human history with all of these substances. And we've in cycles, I think, gotten better and or worse at controlling the desire to take these substances despite their negative consequences. We moved from punishing the people who used to engage in, you know, took alcohol and. Or drugs, and we would throw them in jail just for being users, to seeing the medical evidence that this is actually a brain biological disease. There's a brain disease model of addiction. And we can show this on brain scans and we can develop out of that that insight that this is really a brain biological problem, it's not a moral problem. And we can begin to help all of society by doing things on the prevention side like educating people about the dangers of smoking and drinking alcohol and taking tobacco. And we've just seen news reports in the last two weeks about how alcohol use is plummeting in the United States as a result. For instance, they think of the surgeon general coming out and showing how dangerous alcohol is to your body. And so people are actually at population level, changing their behavior based on solid, grounded information. So we get this effect from public health campaigns, and we got it from smoking as well. Smoking has plummeted. By educating people to the dangers of smoking and showing them just how toxic it is and how it can truly ruin your life. We have never even begun trying to do that for violence. My point is that we now have evidence that violence travels the same path and process and by using those same education tools, by starting kids at an early age and not only showing them how to manage and the dangers of cravings for, you know, tobacco, alcohol and drugs and sex, for instance, so that they're. They can manage their own sexual desires better and reduce levels of teenage pregnancy, for instance. We could add to those classes also. Perhaps the most dangerous craving you'll ever face is the craving that comes out of your own victimization and the pain that you experience throughout life. And you're going to experience pain throughout your life all the time. And you're going to have these desires to hurt other people a lot. And there are ways to manage those desires. So we need to start educating kids at the same early age in the same platforms and then develop on the medical side, mental health. And other physicians and doctors and healthcare providers need to get in the game and quit saying after every, for instance, after every mass shooting. People with mental illness aren't at a greater risk for committing mass shootings than other people. I mean, they're talking about a certain kind of mental illness. And it's true, they're right. People with schizophrenia or, you know, bipolar disorder or borderline personality disorders aren't more likely to be violent, but there is a kind of person who is likely to be more violent, and that's a person who has revenge. You know, compulsive revenge use disorder or revenge addiction disorders like I'm talking about. And we can empower our public health professionals to get in the game and start helping people who we can identify earlier who are struggling with their experiences of grievance and these desires for revenge much earlier. And I give examples of that in the book. So there is a real way to affect this at a population level. And if you're still thinking, oh, this is just Pollyanna ish stuff, forgiveness is Pollyanna and is not a real thing. I'll give you World War II as the most horrific example where 60 plus million people were slaughtered and primarily between the Germans and the Japanese, who were we believed to be the perpetrators, and the Allies who were coming against them in the Soviet Union. And after World War II, when everyone were fully aggrieved and fully victimized, dead everywhere, entire civilizations effectively destroyed. What we did, the Americans and the Allies alive with them, except for Stalin, decided to forgive the Germans and the Japanese and rebuild their societies rather than continue to punish them for what they did. And somehow 80 years later, we're still at peace with them. So we have real population examples of where forgiveness at population scale actually works. And is the only thing that secures the peace. You can achieve a military victory that can stop immediate hostilities, but it can't secure the peace for decades. Only the people who are warring on both sides can do that. And that only happens by choosing to forgive each other for what they've done.
- [93:41]
A
So interesting. It's going to be a big change. I wonder whether when we think about addictions, I was trying to think about, I guess maybe even when I think about porn addiction that still feels external. I was trying to think about any addiction I think of which is like endogenous self generated addiction. The video game exists outside of you. The cocaine exists outside of you. The gambling exists outside of you. Even, even if it was like a fighting addiction or something, the fighting that you are doing is with somebody maybe self harm. Whether people get addicted to self harm and maybe kind of they do. I. But when we think even those people.
- [94:27]
B
Seem to feel victimized, right? I mean they often perceive them, they often har themselves as a result of perhaps what they either either they feel themselves as victims of something or they have committed acts that they themselves are ashamed of.
- [94:42]
A
They're trying to get control. I'm going to punish myself. I'm going to take control. They can't hurt me because I'm going to hurt me first. Which is kind of the murder suicide thing that you said from earlier on. My point here, just thinking about. I like the idea of this. I've just joined do you know Rick Hanson? You familiar with Rick?
- [95:01]
B
Sounds familiar. I can't.
- [95:02]
A
You're a scientist. You wrote Hardwiring Happiness. I'm on here, I'm on the board for the. Given that I'm on the board, I really should know the name of it. Fucking the, the center, the human center for Compassion I think it's called or the Global center for Compassion. And I only joined recently. I like the idea of this sort of a world. I think this would be. I think this would be a good change. I'm just fascinated by what the roadblocks are that we're going to come up against. You know, I don't know whether people are going to vote with their, with their dollars and I don't know whether the forgiveness equivalent of Rambo or John Wick would be a satisfying, watchable experience. I'm. It'll be very, very interesting.
- [95:49]
B
You know, maybe that's okay, Chris, because you know, the alcohol industry and the drug industry and the entertainment, the revenge plot and entertainment industry and all these other industries still exist. They still exist and they still try and they still are able to bring people onto their products. But we have a lot more agency when we know what they're doing, why we like it, why we keep seeking it, and what we can do to get control if it starts to harm ourselves or the people we care about. And that right there is a big change alone. I don't think we have to get to the point of 100% 0 right now. We just need to get to the point of, let's say, much closer to at least 100% education. Because I love what you just said. There's really no other addiction in which the, the substance or the behavior is kind of completely self contained. I mean, with revenge addiction, the sense of victimization is often outside of you. But that's just the trigger for the desire. It's the cue for the brain to start craving it. Everything else is truly inside your head. And I think that's why it's the world's most dangerous addiction and deadly. Not only does it produce death as part of its goal, I mean, to get this gratification. Sometimes you're killing people. We have killed people just to get this high. But it's also extra dangerous because it's right inside. The drug is inside your head. It's closer than the tip of your nose. And that's why it's been so hard actually to see for all these centuries. We're only now, through brain science, being able to get a picture of this drug taking over our minds. And it's really critical that we actually look, stare at it and do something about it.
- [97:47]
A
So good. So good. I'm, I'm on board. I'm on board with it. James Kimmel Jr. Ladies and gentlemen. James, where should people go? They're going to want to check out everything that you've done.
- [97:55]
B
Yeah. Jameskimmel junior.com is my website. It has links to most of the places that you need to see. Also that Miracle Court app is at Miracle Court. Like I said, that's free. It's a web app, so it's not even on app stores. You just go there. It doesn't, you know, it runs on your phone through a browser, so you don't even have to download anything. And it doesn't have in app purchases. So it's, it's entirely friendly that way. Those are the two areas that my bio at Yale is there as well. But please check out the book. Actually read the book. A lot of times people go, wow, I just listened to this amazing podcast. Why would I read the book? I'm like we could only cover a small percentage of what this is about. So the book is the Science of Revenge. Please check it out.
- [98:38]
A
Heck yeah. James, I appreciate you. Thank you.
- [98:40]
B
Thanks, Chris. I appreciate you for having me.
- [98:44]
A
If you're wanting to read more, you probably want some good books to read that are going to be easy and enjoyable and not bore you and make you feel despondent at the fact that you can only get through half a page without bowing out. And that is why I made the Modern Wisdom Reading List, a list of 100 of the best books, the most interesting, impactful and entertaining that I've ever found, fiction and nonfiction and real life stories. And there's a description about why I like it and there's links to go and buy it. And it's completely free. You can get it right now by going to ChrisWillX.com books that's ChrisWillX.com books.