Why Hitting Back Doesn't Heal: Revenge and Its Social Costs

Hello, and thanks for joining us today on, as a matter of interact, practical sociology for everyone. Or, we believe that understanding social interactions and social structures help us navigate life and critically address problems. I'm Dr. Wesley Kahun, a sociologist and professor. Today's podcast title is, "Why hitting back doesn't heal, revenge, and its social costs. The plan for today is I'll first look at why this punishment exists and who gets to do it. Second, we'll look at why revenge usually makes things worse. And finally, we'll look at why dehumanizing fuels the justification of violence. So I'm recording this podcast in this episode about a week after Charlie Kirk was assassinated. I want to be very clear that first I am against violence. I am sad that someone lost their life, and specifically that they lost their life for having different beliefs than someone else. There are many things that Charlie said that I disagreed with. However, if I ever met him and sat down to talk, I'm sure there are things that we could have agreed upon too. I also want to be clear why I'm using Charlie Kirk's situation in his murder and death. I'm not trying to debate politics. I'm fine with whatever political innings you have. I'm not here to convince you otherwise. I'm using this to illustrate the human tendency towards revenge and polarization. Since Kirk's death and even long before it, I felt very discouraged about responsive many on both sides. So that is what fueled the topic for this podcast. I think a sociological understanding and evaluation can help with understanding, building solidarity, and hopefully moving forward and healthier way. The idea of revenge and violence isn't just linked to the murder of Charlie Kirk. It's a very human emotion that is both sociological and psychological, in addition to Charlie. I think of my teens. They fight and they seek revenge with their siblings so much. Most of the times we aren't even dealing with the issue in front of us that there are you and that. Instead, we're dealing with the previous hurts and disappointments in history that they have each other. So revenge is natural, but it's also socially embedded. So all this leads to why does hurting back feel so natural, but so often failed to solve anything. Today, I want to look at revenge and violence through sociological ends. I want to look at the sociologist Emil Dirtheim and his views on collective consciousness and crime. So collective consciousness, if you're not familiar with that word, it is basically just a set of shared beliefs, ideas, attitudes, and knowledge that operate as a unifying force within a society or group. The problem is that we have fragmented consciences. So even though opposing groups may share specific collective conscious, they downplay the shared consciousness that they have. So liberals have put their own up, fragmented conscious conservatives have put their own up. And so it denies what happens when we have a fragmented conscious that denies a collective conscious that we all have as Americans. What feels like a moral violation of one may feel like common sense or even a virtue to the other side. This mismatch feels both punishment impulses and other ink. So each group feels justified in punishing the other. The collective is now not collective. It's fragmented. Fragmented, like I said, it's partisan. So think of example of a protest. One group may feel like they're exercising their freedom. To the other, it seems like criminal behavior or disorder. They both want to punish the opposite actors for not agreeing with them or having different beliefs. So Emil Dirtheim, his sociologist, he defined crime. That is a crime is something that offends the collective consciousness. It appears detrimental to society and it incites a punishment reaction. So first thing about that is a crime is something that offends the collective consciousness. So what is collective consciousness again? What is it offending? It means it offends the set of beliefs, the attitudes, and the knowledge that unite society. It's something that offends us. The second part of that definition, he says it appears detrimental to society. The fact that it appears detrimental is key. Now it could be detrimental, but the fact is what Dirtheim is saying is it appears detrimental. This is why laws change all the time. You know, if you think of interracial marriage, it used to be illegal. The reason it used to be illegal is it offended the collective consciousness and racist attitudes during the day. It also appeared detrimental to society because their faulty thinking of the time was that some races were more involved in others. So they thought that there was intermarrying and people having children that were of mixed race that they would society would be, you know, it wouldn't be the best of the best. We know now that's not the case and that's not true. So we've changed that law and it's fine. The last part of a crime is it incites a punishment reaction. So it incites a punishment reaction because it offends deeply held moral beliefs and values by society. The punishment in the incitement is passionate. It's an emotional response that serves a function. The function that it serves is it reinforces society or the group's unity and connection by finding a common enemy. One of the best way to unite people is you find a common enemy for them. Punishment including revenge often serves the function of reinforcing social boundaries. It's not just about preventing future harm. The feeling of wanting to retaliate is not just individual, but it's socially embedded. The core idea behind this is then punishment or revenge is more about reinforcing social norms. Punishment or revenge is usually not about deterring future crime or actions. So far we've looked at the ideas of a Mildred kind to determine why punishment exists. That's why it exists and how crime exists in society and its role in society. Now I'd like to shift to another famous sociologist Max Weber. Weber shows who gets to be punished or who gets to do the punishing. He does this through his idea of monopoly of legitimate use of violence. The idea defines a state as a sole legitimate entity that can use or authorize physical force. It's not that the state is the only one who does it. Instead, it's the state is the only acceptable form of people who can do it or group they can do it. Another example of a way to think of this is through parenting, right? If one kid hits or sibling is a parent, I'm the one who gets to punish them. I don't tell the other kid, just hit them back and then they just go back and forth. The affected sibling who got hit isn't to take matters in their own hands. They will get in trouble. The same principle applies to government and citizens. Revenge is taking along to your own hands is generally frowned upon by society. However, there is an exception to this. The exception is when citizens believe that the state won't be fair or effective. The government in this situation loses its legitimation. It's not seen as legitimate and citizens start taking justice into their own hands. Then it is even more socially acceptable, maybe not by all groups, even when the state has a monopoly of violence. Individuals still seek revenge, but society shows us this rarely achieves social order that they think it will or they imagine that will. We've looked at why people hit back. We looked at why people feel justified when they hit back. Let's transition into the ineffectiveness of revenge and violence. The only thing I love about sociology is that we can scientifically measure our ideas and beliefs to see if they're effective, because a lot of times people don't do this. We have beliefs and values and ways of existing in the world, but we never look back to see if they're true. Sociology allows us to do that. Violence and revenge are highly ineffective. If we even just look at the US's example, the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world, about out of every 100,000 people, the US has 664 incarcerated. The US in terms of number wise locks up people at 5 to 10 times higher than any other wealthy democracy. National Research Council, I'm going to be throwing some numbers at you, but National Research Council found that longer prison sentences have little to no effect on deterring crime, on preventing people from committing crime. That putting someone in prison for 30 years and say 20 years doesn't stop crime better. The most situation is it actually makes it worse, because what's happening is you're taking the person out of society for a bit longer, and when they're out of society and institutionalized, they're losing job skills and they're losing social skills and relational connections. Pew research is another organization found that US recidivism rates are among the highest. 68% of released prisoners were re-arrested in three years, 83% of were re-arrested in nine years. Last number, although it's your aunt's study, found that inmates who participate in educational programs were 43% less likely return in prison than those who did not. Every time rehabilitation outperforms punishment, deterring rarely works that focuses on punishment. Harsher punishment don't significantly reduce crime. So why do we think it does? In addition to crime, offending the collective consciousness, appearing detrimental to society and inciting and punishment reaction, we assume that crime is a rational choice for the most part. We're all about the individual and personal choice and we think that's how criminals make decisions and how they do crime. We assume that they weigh the pros and cons. That's not what happens or why people commit crimes. Most crimes occur opportunistic or they're in the moment. Criminals put out spreadsheets of pros and cons list if they should or shouldn't do it. So even though violence and revenge is ineffective, we do it because it makes us feel good. It reinforces our values and our beliefs. In addition to this ineffectiveness, it is ineffective. Retaliation tends to escalate. One punch leads to another punch. War fuels the cycle of violence. Retaliation just continues to spiral. You know, very famous, feud in America to think about, the illustrates this is the example of the Hatfield and McCoy's, their America's most famous feud. It started over local dispute that was partly over politics and partly over a pick. One side was pro-Confederate, the other side was pro-union. McCoy was killed by Confederate guerrilla group who may have been associated with Hatfields. Regarding the big situation, the Hatfield was accused of stealing a hog. It went to jury trial, which included several Hatfields and they ruled in favor of Hatfields. McCoy saw this as a deeply unjust situation and it fell into their resentment. Finally, what happened is it escalated to decades of bloodshed 25 to 30 years over political disagreements in a pick, right? Each killing that happened demanded a revenge killing. The cycle kept going and people kept dying. Instead of solving the conflict, retaliation guaranteed it would never end. And that's a danger with revenge. It doesn't bring closure. It just sets the stage for the next act of violence. It ended. The Hatfield and McCoy feud ended when the US Supreme Court weighed in and sent militia and people who were arrested finally stopped 25 to 30 years later. Sociology and history document the cycle. Each act or revenge creates a new grievance. Sociology often defines the cycle of violence as self-reinforcing and reciprocal. So one group's retaliation becomes a justification for the other side's next move. Randall Collins, another sociologist, talks about a forward panic that once violence starts, emotional energy drives the escalation that people get swept into a rhythm and it feeds itself. As discussed in the collective consciousness, because each side denies legitimacy of the others consciousness, the cycle of revenge continues to spiral. Rehabilitation and reconciliation are often more successful than punishment and restoring social order. I am against violence, like I said, morally and sociologically, because it doesn't actually solve the problem. However, I understand the emotional response. If someone in my family was hurt, I would lean more towards personally violence and vengeance than I would a better solution. But at some point society, we need to stop and slow down. There are better alternatives, things like reconciliation, focus on rebuilding relationships after conflict. It's about replacing the enemy label with a degree of shared humanity, acknowledgement. The idea is that truth-telling and public acknowledgement of harms can reduce the demand for revenge, because people see justice through recognition, not punishment, finding common ground and humanizing your perceived enemy. This is called contact hypothesis. Under the right conditions, according to this idea, contact between groups reduces prejudice and hostility. This works because people see the humanity of the "other" who they deemed as the "other." People also recognize shared interest instead of dehumanizing labels. Through the process of contact hypothesis, groups are able to build their social solidarity. They're able to rebuild their collective consciousness. But the opposite occurs when we dehumanize the other side. When we call them animals or we call them "they," we lay the groundwork for violence. If humanizing is the antidote, dehumanizing is the accelerant, and that's what we'll talk about in this last section. Contact and contact hypothesis and humanization are able to build collective consciousness, but dehumanizing erodes a collective consciousness, and it fuels the cycle over revenge, which is why dehumanizing fuels the justification of violence. So we "other" in dehumanizing, I just did air quotes on it. You can't see that, but we label them as something other than us. That's what "other" means. One way this is "cur" is through labels. It brings a sociology called symbolic interactionism and forms us that the words we use, the labels we use, create their own social reality. So when you call people "they" or "them," and I've heard that, like with this assassination on both sides, they want this, you know, "them." What that does is it strips away their humanity. They, whoever they are, become something other than us. Once we are right in our own mind, and most people think they're right in their own mind, we they are enemies. Another consideration is the idea of "face" and social interactions. When people feel disrespected or humiliated, they lose face. They often lash out to restore dignity. That's what people do when they're disrespected or humiliated. They're trying to show that, you know, that they have respect or demand respect. Most people in society want the same thing. The face needs of people in terms of what people need and social interactions. They need respect. They want to be treated with dignity. This is all people. They want recognition to be acknowledged as a valid person, not invisible or dismissed. They want security to feel safe from violence and exploitation. People want opportunity, a fair shot at work, education, improving one's life. People want belonging to be part of a family, a community or group that matters to them. People want stability, a predictable social world where rules are applied fairly. People want voice, the chance to be heard and have some influence on decisions that affect them. It doesn't matter if we look at politics if you're conservative or liberal. I promise those things are important to each of those groups and each of those people. I hear conservative people say they want to be left alone and live in peace, but also hear liberal people say they want to be left alone and they want to live in peace. The problem is that neither side is leaving the other alone. When we other someone, it strips away the possibility of mutual respect. This in turn escalates conflict. Think of couples or siblings when they argue. Frequently, things are said like, "You always do X, Y, Z. Are you never do X, Y, Z?" By doing this number one is not true, no one always or never does anything, but by doing this they're labeling the other as an object not a person. The same concept applies to war and politics. Dehumanizing makes violence easier to justify. Whether in sibling fights or international wars, both sides often other than each other. This creates a self-fulfilling cycle. Recently I watched a documentary about Vietnam. A soldier shared a cadence that they were taught during training runs. It is offensive, I'm going to repeat it word for word to give you an idea, but this cadence that they were taught to sing before they even went over there to Vietnam is, "I'm going to go to Vietnam, Vietnam, I'm going to kill some Vietnam. With a knife or with a gun, either way it will be fun." That's the cadence. That chant is an example of how dehumanizing rhetoric was used in military training to prepare soldiers for combat. And the way they prepared them is they portrayed their enemies as less than human. The cadence served desensitize the troops to the violence that they were inexperienced in Vietnam. This also perpetuates the us and them mentality. While most may not be out there doing cadences, the same dehumanizing approaches are used today. It's easier to hate someone who is dehumanized and is not like you and who's other than you and who is they. It's easier to find them as an enemy. Finally, I'd like to provide a quick recap and just offer a personal reflection. First for the recap, revenge feels natural. I get it. It's not just personally natural, but it's socially natural. We looked at Durkheim and see how it's socially rooted, but sociological evidence also shows that it rarely solves problems. Lastly, I'll do something I normally don't do on here, so I'll leave you with a personal reflection. I'm partly guided by the facts mentioned with sociology and sociology highly influences me. However, another part that guides my decision-making and how I treat people is my morality, and my morality is guided by my faith. Personally, I'm a Christian. I'm not trying to preach to you. It's okay if you have a different belief system or values in me. That's not what this is about. I share that with you because the things that guide me are what Jesus teaches regarding people. And Jesus actually said some things I wish he wouldn't have said. He said things like love your neighbors as yourself. Love your enemies. If someone slaps you on the right cheek, give them your left. If someone asks for your coat, give them your shirt too. Those are hard things to live by. I fell at that all the time. We all make mistakes, and I frequently fall short. But my goal no matter what you believe or who you are, is to love you. Maybe that's the reason why I have diversity of friends. I don't know. I have friends on both sides. It doesn't matter to me. Super liberal, super conservative, whatever. I will do my best to honor and respect you no matter what you think of me or how much you think differently. Last leave with the personal reflection. Just my favorite Bible verse is Michael's Micah 68. It starts off and it says what does God require of you? And the answer is very simple. Love mercy, act justly and walk humbly. As a society, no matter what our beliefs, no matter what your beliefs, you believe in God, you don't believe in God, you're Christian, you're not a Christian. But as a society, if we could attempt to do those things, we won't do them perfectly. But if we could attempt and strive to love mercy, to act justly and to walk humbly, this would be a much better world. The problem is that those things will never happen as long as we're seeking and focused on violence, vengeance, and making our fellow humans our enemies. Well thank you for listening, I'll be back as you go about this week. I hope you're able to critically assess how social interactions and social institutions impact your life, that you use this understanding to make the world a better place. This is Dr. Wesley Cahoon saying I'll see you soon.