“An Eye for an Eye Will Leave us all Blind”
History is the witness that human beings have always been in thirst of blood. Today the miracles of science and technology, medicine and astrophysics have led us to a better civilization than before, yet human thirst has not been quenched. They have pursued wars and retaliation and they have forgotten that pursuing revenge, retaliation and war would eliminate human beings from the surface of earth in no time – Again thanks to marvels of science and technology!!
The continuation of the retaliations will lead to a society intellectually paralyzed and mentally camouflaged and a nation of the nervous lions and a civilization of disorder and chaos due to no contributions to the global knowledge. Peace has the capacity to give birth to all creativities and inventions. A peaceful society produces intellectuals and healthy minds. Stable and reliable sociopolitical and socioeconomic circumstances are the outcomes of the peace and justice. Plato, Aristotle, Socrates, Confucius and many other great thinkers and philosophers lived in the era of the golden age of human civilizations where the human history was turning to the law enforcement, justice and peace. Don’t we like such society? Are we barbaric enough to say no to it? Has our superior instinct and emotional preeminence taught us to be violent and indifferent towards human blood? Have our capacity to love each other diminished and all our capacities that could determine us to be human beings disappeared?
The political thinkers believe that justice bears peace and peace in turn pays genius miracles to the society. But is it a wise decision to opt for retaliation? Do we require violating law and order in order to spread peace? Must the revenge be pursued indiscriminately? If so we did, then we get deadly weapons openly available in the commodity markets, just because market forces are liberal, with the unintended negligence of the optimal allocation, efficient distribution and equitable production for the society as a whole. Then there is no need for the schools, business or laboratories, which are the signs of development and modernization because ashes, blood and ammunitions would rule ultimately.
The studies and observations carried out by Darwin on animal species led the intellectuals to the reasons of the extinction and in-danger-of extinction of the carnivores. Thus, the mother of the earth, the nature has a law, which states that, “the savages eat each other till the extinction of their specie.” And it falls true for all species, even to humans though they do not directly eat each other’s flash. Thus, an eye for an eye will surely leave us all blind.
Some thinkers may question that how justice can be restored, peace be kept and creativity given birth without the law enforcement mechanism that contains enforcement of the different punishments against the different crimes. And they suggest that it is based on the concept of life for life and eye for an eye. They consider the punishment by the courts and prisons as revenge; however, they forget to realize that the system, in fact, discourages a person from further retaliations. It satisfies the victims that the culprits have been punished and makes the culprits realize that they have done something wrong.
Does a proper and modern law and order system ask for hanging up the corrupt leaders and mafia men, target killing the target killers, and loot the thieves and the smugglers? It doesn’t because it is not based on the concept of revenge and retaliation; rather it strives to carry out a transformation of criminals into better human beings who learn through their experience in the prison that they were wrong to pursue crime and break law and can have an opportunity to live in a different way in their social lives.
Jenny Han had quoted, “An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth; a burn for a burn; a life for a life; that's how all this got started and that's how it's going to end.” Though, retaliation is widely practiced in today’s life, it has to end some day and when it ends, unfortunately, it has to end with the end of human civilization and human beings from the face of earth, because it would and can never stop.
It is said wisely that the best way to retaliate is to forgive. Forgiving someone is the best revenge and it also depicts someone’s superiority over the other, as it requires bigger heart and better understanding to forgive others. The ones who retaliate have dark hearts and limited thinking. They are not able to see out of the limitations of their anger and narrow-mindedness, while the ones who forgive have the potential to see human beings as superior creature. They, in fact, believe in the natural goodness of human nature. They believe that human beings can be changed and their behavior can be improved; therefore, they forgive and expect the ones who are forgiven to change themselves. They, as a matter of fact, truly respect human beings.