The concept of vengeance is very important to clarify for the public and for this class because it is so over used in today’s society. The people that use this stereotype are not up to par or up to the caliber needed to use it properly. Vengeance is not
something that is always bad, it can also be something that is good. Vengeance is something that not everyone can contain within their minds, it is something that can only be sought or seen by something or someone else. It isn’t always the evil deed done by one human to another, it is the act of seeing karma within our lives and seeing the way it should happen not the way the so called perpetrator has it coming.
One property of this concept is an act of something or someone that deserves another. This is commonly mistaken with karma or Newton’s law, every action has an equal and opposite reaction. When in all actuality the act of vengeance does not have to be something physical or mental, it can be spiritual or among high expectations than any one person can hold in one’s head or can put to words. When I speak of vengeance as an act I am trying to cement into words what people conceive of this concept, when in all actuality no one really knows the cause of it, or the acts of people or the emotional attacks on others or why they actually exist. So defining this concept into a property can be very difficult in that it actually has not one small or broad term on its existence but by the end of this I hope to show my perspective on this.
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One of the other properties I have found of this act being something that does not always have to be physical or mental but spiritual instead is, one example of this is the act of desecrating someone’s religion as a metaphysical sense and not as a mental embarrassment to the way they live. I was disgraced in this way with the religion I chose around my father, him being a devoted Catholic and I being a Theravada Buddhist. Our views on things changed the way we could live around each other and eventually help lead to the abandonment of me from his family. This has some correlation to this concept of vengeance because of the connection it had with me and my father, that being he soon felt the anger that I possessed through the words and actions I took against him. Another example of this is the war in Iraq right now. The reason some of the Iraqi’s don’t like us being there is they find it a disgrace to their religion and find us spiritually displeasing in their country although this is not a majority of the population we are fighting it is enough to sway the country into not liking our involvement there. This also plays into the realm of vengeance because of the displeasing action of us being in Iraq taking over their country and running if for them, they have taken up arms and literally waged war on us and created a physical attraction of vengeance towards our American soldiers.
One of the other concepts majorly mistaken for vengeance is one or more of the definitions of this concept and that is revenge. Revenge has a lot to do with vengeance but the major difference in my mind is that vengeance is not being something tangible, revenge to me is something that is tangible that someone can hold or see that has effected someone that is something that could be felt if you are not spiritually in tune with what goes on around you. But if you are within the society of what is around you then you become more aware of people and how they act and how people seem to interact with others when all they are doing is scoping out the new target in their scheme to be attacked by either them or another among them.
Another stated before in this essay is karma. Karma is a big deal in my life because of the fact that I am Buddhist and that I can’t hold onto things that don’t matter to me. Things that don’t have any effect on the way I act or the way I am, I don’t hold onto them or keep them in mind as often. Karma to me is the act of something within a spiritual, physical, or mental state that will either have good or bad repercussions. As stated vengeance has some qualities as karma but the big difference to me is that karma is uncontrollable. You can manipulate it with the things that you do within normal life or your subconscious life. So to put this into another sense karma is an uncontrollable vengeance that only exists between souls.
Another property of this concept is the act of the person that can use his/her vengeance toward another and chooses to use it or not to. Using the ability makes you a vengeful person but not someone who uses it because they can. The person who uses it because they can is someone who should not be allowed to speak or have vocal cords to begin with. Personally the people who abuse the word or the action of vengeance are the people who don’t need it or don’t deserve the chance to see it. Also these ignorant people may not be able to see this action to begin with, as they can only see what is fed to them on a silver platter. As many Americans are today, they see only what is fed to them by the news of NBC or ABC or Fox News when they sit at dinner listening to the television in the background or on the news of your local news channel. This type of person is the one that thinks the war in Iraq has nothing to do with us or that we have no right there. Or the people, like in my family, who think that the people in Iraq are doing such a great job but the reporters there need to leave and let the G.I.’s go to work and go “clean house.” Another example of this similarity is the people who made the Germans, any other conquered city-state, any of the countries that were hurt by any major infraction within their society that others needed reparations or payback for the hurt damages of the infraction that the place or person have caused. But in all actuality all the people have done is created something where the conquered people create more conflict in the long run towards the warriors of the winning tribe or country.
So to recap the word vengeance has become another one of these useless words when in a world before our time it used to have some significance in our society. Some of the other words I speak of are the useless demeaning words that teenagers, MTV, and/or musical artists have chosen to use in their music like hoe, nigger, or our personal favorite now, gay. These words have lost all that they were, I am not saying that these words were good at all to use in the first place I am trying to state that we as Americans have been desensitized to these type of words and choose to use them as their street form and not as a word as it was supposed to be used. So just like vengeance these words have been used to often to describe someone who isn’t the person the word describes in the definition or that of someone who deserves the word or title. I hope I have created some justice in your minds as well as shined some clarity on this topic as many others try and cloud your judgment. There are many more aspects on this topic, these were just a couple of the perspectives I have learned over time and more that I have seen in the recent times up until today.