Bound for Failure

“Getting your nose bloodied once or twice is not a bad thing.” A friend told me this long ago when I had lost a fight with a neighborhood bully. I had been given a snow bath and sent home freezing and soaking wet. I didn’t think that losing in such a humiliating way was good, and I told him so. But, there is another saying that figures into this story. It’s that success is a poor preparation for failure. The following spring, a group of his victims got revenge on the bully. He didn’t expect it, was unprepared for it, and was humiliated by it. He never expected that he could become a victim.

The story has morals for perpetrators and the perpetrated alike. Former victims can overbalance the scales. In this case, I am thinking of the bully and his girlfriend, who were found at a local swimming spot, stripped, and left to find their nude way home. The girl was innocent. And the previous victims went too far in including her in the revenge. Thankfully, I was grounded that weekend by my father for not doing something idiotic, like taking out the garbage. But they were my friends, and I was included in the counter-revenge taken by the bully’s friends.

The little incident I have described shows an underlying problem in cycles of violence. Justice is not only meted out to the guilty but those around the guilty, related to them, or just standing nearby. Just think about the last time you heard of a drive-by shooting in which a bystander became a victim.

It shouldn’t take great genius to note that this cycle blights the human condition. Or that an alert and conscientious person would strive to avoid it. But I’ve decided that much of it is an actual tactic used by tin-horned rabble-rousers, would be dictators and psychopaths, to perpetuate hate and violence. Keep people firing, fighting, and maiming if it achieves your goals.

Instead of forging success, we continue to fail when the lessons are clear: cycles of revenge are a zero-sum game.