Revenge?

Is vengeance a natural human reaction? A wrongdoing rewarded with payback? A need to assert ourselves as dominant and/or righteous? What is it?

I believe that vengence is the human way to assert oneself as a higher authority. We always have some justification, no matter how convincing it may be, all to dissillusion ourselves to how selfish and immature we are being.

Is vengeance a natural human reaction? A wrongdoing rewarded with payback? A need to assert ourselves as dominant and/or righteous? What is it?

I believe that vengence is the human way to assert oneself as a higher authority. We always have some justification, no matter how convincing it may be, all to dissillusion ourselves to how selfish and immature we are being.

Retribution is a natural reaction to compensate/recover a loss. We are use to a certain state/amount and when that is taken way or altered, we tend to try to repair it or justify it in any form whether it is an eye for an eye or whatever it may be.

How could revenge be masochistic?

Why is the egoist delusional, especially when taking revenge?

I would say that false humility, pity, bitterness and self-abnegating asceticism are delusional.

Because having a vengeful attitude should be embarrassing to the agent; because vengeful behavior causes harm to the agent's psychology by reinforcing the tendency to employ violence, whether physical or psychological, as a means to an end.

I never mentioned egoists - only that revenge is egotistical, a product of the ego. I would elaborate by saying an inflamed and passionate ego.

False humility, and bitterness are delusional. Pity can sometime be delusional - for example, if I pitied Hitler because Nazi Germany was crushed. Pity, though, can sometimes imply that the empathy being shown is dishonest: this sort of false-empathy, just like false humility, is also delusional. However, honest empathy is a healthy human reaction to certain circumstances. For example, if your friend loses a dear parent empathy is hardly delusional.

I don't think a vengeful attitude should be ambarassing to the agent, nor that it causes harm to the psyche.

I would say that stifling or repressing instincts causes harm to the psyche and that embarassment as guilt (as opposed to embarassment in reponse to failure: e.g. fall down in the ice-rink) is a useless and degenerative emotion.

I've been drinking the Nietzsche koolaid, so I'd say guilt is a product of christianity/judaism, in that it is an internalization of feelings of inferiority

; i.e. the natural exersize of power by the powerful is renamed sin and the weak are made virtuous by avoiding sinning (which they cannot do anyway, because they are weak). Guilt would then be the punishment for sinning of course.

You said that revenge is egotistical and that revenge is delusional, so I assumed that you were saying that egoism (and therefore egoists) is delusional. If not, never mind. But I agree that revenge is egotistical. The difference between your whole philosophy and mine is that I view the term 'egotistical' as complementary.

Immoral does not always equal mean.

You do not think that wishing harm on another human being is psychologically harmful?

Depends on the instinct, hm? Humans do have an instinct to kill other humans in certain situations: we have territorial instincts. But arn't harmful instincts, instincts which will cause harm to others, harmful? It seems to me that if causing undue harm to others is unnaccetpable, that instincts which promote causing undue harm to others are harmful instincts: perhaps not ones to be repressed, but rather instincts to be explored and and altered by self-exploration as said instincts cause harm to one's self and others.

Are you suggesting that guilt is a useless and degenerative emotion? Guilt: that same emotion that crops up when we have mistreated another human being; guilt, that vital aspect of conscience?

Except that guilt is a universal human experience - thus, not a product of Christianity/Judiasm.

Guilt is no punishment, but the natural human reaction to doing what we feel we should not do.
Further, exercising power is not inherently sinful: Jesus exercised physical power in overturning the money-changing tables in the Temple.

...I'm not sure how you justify egoism; psychological egoism, moral egoism or what have you.

Right, because meanness implies an intent: one might unintentionally act immorally, or intentionally act immorally without being aware that said action is immoral. However, intentional, conscious acts of immorality necessarily translates to meanness.

No. It may be, but it need not. I will cringe at sadism, though I won't call it immoral, but I have no qualms about revenge.

A man who kills another man causes harm to that man. That is not the issue at hand. I belive we are debating whether or not that action causes harm to the killer, especially in circumstances of revenge.

In reference to the second underlined phrase, I say that is not a premise that I accept. That 'causing harm to others is in principle unacceptable' is true only from the perspective of the harmed.

Yes. Conscience is an illness. Again, do not equate lack of consience with evil intentions; rather, lack of conscience is freedom, freedom to do whatever you may. A person with no conscience whatsoever, observed objectively, might do more 'good' and appear to act more 'morally' than a very conscientious person.

It seems to me that if an individual is supposed to subordinate his will and his natural instincts to some external authority, the burden of proof lies with the proponents of the external authority: namely, to prove that it exists, to provide absolute justification for an absolute moral law. I can't seem to find it...maybe its in the drawer...

No, not only that. A person who completely rejects all morality, who feels no compulsion to abide by moral law, who does not fear eternal damnation, who does not believe in 'inherent human rights' or any other kind of rights, including for himself, could act in a way that, from the perspective of a moralistic observer, was moral. The point is that moral, abiding by or recognizing a moral law, does not neccessarily equate to the behavior we call 'good;' and immoral, not recognizing moral law, does not neccessarily equate to the behavior we call 'bad.'