Payback Payback Why We Retaliate, RedirectAggression, and Take Revenge DAVID P. BARASH, Ph.D.and JUDITH EVE LIPTON, M.D. Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press, Inc.,198 M adison Avenue, New York, NY, 10016United States of America Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’sobj ective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Pressin the UK and in cer tain other countries © Oxford University Press, Inc. 2011 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, Inc., or as expressly permitt ed by law, by licence, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reproduction r ights organization. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the a bove should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, Inc., at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Barash, David P. Payback : why we retaliate, redirect aggression, andtake revenge / David P. Bara sh, Judith Eve Lipton. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-539514-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Pain. 2. Revenge. 3. Aggressive ness. I. Lipton, Judith Eve. II. Title. BF515.B36 2011 155.9 2—dc222010040162 978-0-19-539514-3 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Typeset in Chaparral ProPrinted on acid-free paperPrinted in the United States o f America Note to Readers This publication is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information i n regard to the subject matter covered. It is based upon sources believed to be accurate and reliable and is intended to be current as of the time it was writte n. It is sold with the understanding that the publisher is not engaged in render ing legal, accounting, or other professional services. If legal advice or other expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person s hould be sought. Also, to confirm that the information has not been affected or changed by recent developments, traditional legal research techniques should be used, including checking primary sources where appropriate. (Based on the Declaration of Principles jointly adopted by a Committee of the Am erican Bar Association and a Committee of Publishers and Associations.) You may order this or any other Oxford University Press publication byvisiting t he Oxford University Press website at www.oup.com To our children. We celebrate Eva, her husband, Jeremy, and their son, Isaac; Il ona and Yoav; and Nanelle and Lizzy. We also dedicate this to our friends and co lleagues who have struggled with these issues along with us, and who are committ ed to personal as well as global healing. We thank our patients and students, wh o have taught us while allowing us the privilege of teaching them. Finally, we n ote those remarkable individuals who are living examples of peace and equanimity , whose very presence is like a glass of cold water on a hot day. Such people br ing peace and in their gracefulness, they help others relax, and explore alterna tives to retaliation, revenge and redirected aggression. PREFACE: 1984 TO NOW The winter of 1984 was a perfect storm in the Barash/Lipton household. George Or well himself would have been impressed with the misery. Politically, two “Big Brot hers”—Ronald Reagan and Leonid Brezhnev—were at each other’s throats, flaunting enough n uclear weapons to poison life on earth if war broke out. Whether the end was to be by fire (global incineration) or by ice (nuclear winter), it looked like ever ything we knew and loved, including the entire process of biological evolution, was threatened by two competing empires with more interest in dominance than in preserving life on our shared planet. The authors, Barash and Lipton—the former an evolutionary biologist specializing in animal behavior, and the latter a biolog ically oriented psychiatrist—were totally immersed in the peace movement, trying t o stop nuclear war. This meant that the house was littered with picture books ab out Hiroshima and posters saying things like “Life itself will end if there is a n uclear war.” In addition to our own professional writings, we had already written a book called Stop Nuclear War, a Handbook (Grove Press, 1982), which included a detailed description of the medical effects of thermonuclear war, along with th e history and politics of the Cold War. Another book— The Cave Man and the Bomb: H uman Nature, Evolution, and Nuclear War —was underway, eventually published in 198 5 by McGraw-Hill. One of us, David, although a biologist by training and inclination, was a tenure d professor of psychology at the University of Washington, in Seattle, and the o ther, Judith, was a highly respected physician. For all our professional success and recognition, however, our house had become a toxic environment, especially for our children by previous marriages. Trying our best to save the world, we ab sorbed a lot of pain in the process and were unintentionally passing some of it to our children. We recall with some shuddering pain a sardonic ditty by “Weird Al” Yankovic,” whose song Happy Birthday coincided with our 13-year-old’s birthday, help fully advising that thanks to nuclear weapons, we would all be “crispy critters” aft er the next war. Our pain had become theirs; happy birthday indeed. In addition to fighting to prevent World War III, we also fought about trivia: t he correct tempo for Für Elise, whether to have white sugar in the house, whether to require the kids to clean their own rooms and do laundry. We fought about bed times, playtimes, and sports. We fought so much about food that Judy eventually resigned from cooking altogether. And we fought about our stepchildren. Eva left first, in 1980, deciding to live with her biological mother. And on Aug ust 1, 1983, Jenny—age 13—died when her bicycle was hit by a pickup truck. Our stepf amily had been vaporized, as surely as if it had been hit by a bomb. We were lef t with “our own” child, Ilona, then age five, a quiet little girl who knew how to ma ke herself invisible. Our relationship was strained, almost to breaking. It was unclear which of us was the worst offender when it came to making our home such a difficult place for children. Obviously, we were both responsible. In January 1984, on a bleak and especially miserable day in the Pacific Northwes t, in the cold, empty house where children used to play and now there was only o ne, Judith struggled with anger, fear, and depression. Then something changed, a nd very quickly. She happened to read an essay by the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat H anh, which later became his wonderful book Being Peace (Parallax Press, 1987). I n it, Hanh describes how suffering begets suffering, entreating his readers to l ook deeply into the origins of things, especially bad things. He explains that a ll actions are born from others—a non-theological perspective on karma —and how it i s that many betrayals, assaults, critiques, and defections are brought about by previous experiences of loss and pain. In the end, Hanh enjoins us all to stop t he cycle of suffering … simply by recognizing the problem and, despite recognizing that some degree of suffering is inevitable, making it our private mission to m inimize the world’s burden of pain. How to do this? By taking personal charge of o ur actions—specifically, deciding that “the pain stops here,” and therefore no longer passing it along like a hot potato. It is asking a lot, but it also offers a lot . Judith thinks that until that day she did not have a clear “moral compass,” although she had always tried to be a reasonably good person. She was good or bad, depen ding on circumstances and emotions, fighting to prevent nuclear war (good) but a lso fighting with stepchildren (bad). Good and bad were automatic, not calculate d. It was good to save a kitten and bad to run over a dog in the road. Good to g ive money to charities, bad to give money to panhandlers. Good to be a physician , bad to be sloppy about collecting payments. It was good to play the piano, bad to play Für Elise too fast. It was good to read fiction, bad to watch TV. And for David’s family, who had run a small flower shop in the subway of New York City, i t was good (albeit regrettable) to pay of the thugs for protection, good to sell old flowers in artful bouquets, bad to buy retail, and even worse to vote Repub lican. Most people, we submit, have a similar inner algebraic system for calculating mo ral dilemmas, although the metric and substance of that system is not conscious. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” is an excellent and nearly univ ersal rule, but in practice, terribly difficult. The Ten Commandments and Islami c Shar ia law have algorithms for making moral decisions, but these, too, are no t easily internalized and are often stretched. In this sense, we were not alone in our moral quandaries during that snowy winter of 1984. It was good to fight a nd work for peace, to study animals and evolution, and to minister to the psychi atric needs of suffering patients, but bad to deal incessantly with nuclear war, to the point that dinner table conversation with 10-year-olds was mostly about politics and the possible end of the world.