Skip to main content

The Science of Revenge - James Kimmel ***

In his introduction, James Kimmel tells an attention-grabbing story that surely could only have originated in America. After years of bullying, when he was 17 the local kids thought it would be funny to come over in their pickup one night and shoot his dog. A couple of weeks later, they blew up his mailbox. In Kimmel's words 'I grabbed a loaded revolver from my father's nightstand, jumped in my mother's car and tore off [after them] into the night.' He corners the evil kids, grabs the gun and is about to get out of the car to kill them when the realisation of what he's about to do and its implications hit him.

He might have suppressed his immediate urge for revenge, but he claims it then grew in a general driving force of his life, the reason he became a lawyer. 'Within a decade, my revenge addiction had nearly destroyed me and my family.' It wasn't just his work but 'I threatened retribution against just about anyone for the slightest offense - including my wife and kids.' This is genuinely shocking stuff. Unfortunately, I'm not sure the bulk of the book manages to carry on the impact.

Kimmel first takes us through the science of revenge. When American medical doctors write books they have a habit of putting MD after their name, thinking this makes them a scientific source - I was a bit thrown that Kimmel has JD instead, never having seen the abbreviation, but assuming it was some obscure medical qualification as he is a lecturer in psychiatry, but actually it means he's a doctor of law. The science is vaguely interesting in the 'this chemical affects this bit of your brain' and psychology experiments sense, but much of the research seems firmly in the replication crisis era and very little seems to be the result of large scale, quality trials - I would least expect the limitations of the research to be emphasised.

There are plenty of powerful stories to back all this up - so much of it seems to be based on on American culture, I did wonder if it's not so much the science of revenge as the science of the problems with US culture that should be examined more. (There are examples from elsewhere, but these tend to be less everyday occurrences and more evil regimes.) However, we go on finally to how to kick the revenge habit, leading to Kimmel's invention, the 'nonjustice system for revenge addiction', which is about realising the harm you are doing to yourself by seeking revenge rather than offering forgiveness and mentally putting those you would otherwise seek revenge on though an imaginary trial.

Interestingly, before letting us begin putting this into practice we are told to consult our doctor to confirm it is safe and appropriate for us, and asked to note Kimmel's limited licence disclaimer. That's encouraging. Kimmel does give some academic justification for the system, but it still feels that he is attacking the symptoms, rather than a cause that makes gun control impossible and shootings commonplace.

Overall, an odd book as a mix between social science overview, legal viewpoint and self-help. It wasn't for me, but it should have a genuine appeal for those whose lives are damaged by this culture.

Hardback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership:
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mathematics with Love – Mary Stopes-Roe *****

Admittedly it’s early days (this review is written in January), but this, for me, is the surprise hit of the year so far! I approached this book with trepidation, but found it absolutely delightful. It is described on the cover as the “courtship correspondence of Barnes Wallis, inventor of the bouncing bomb”, and contains a series of letters between Wallis and his cousin and eventual wife Molly Bloxham, along with some useful annotation by their daughter, Mary. The courtship itself is not without difficulties, as Wallis was 18 years older than the 17-year-old Molly at the start of the correspondence, and her father, not surprisingly, wasn’t too pleased about the interest of such an elderly suitor, but that isn’t the only reason the letters are interesting – it’s also because of maths, and Wallis’s position in the UK as the engineering hero of the Second World War. (Incidentally, it seemed very strange to see letters addressed to “Barnes” – I had always assumed Barnes Wallis was a ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics - Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert **

It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that I could not get on with this book. The structure is all over the place, while the content veers from childish remarks to unexplained jargon. Frank Versraete is a highly regarded physicist and knows what he’s talking about - but unfortunately, physics professors are not always the best people to explain physics to a general audience and, possibly contributed to by this being a translation, I thought this book simply doesn’t work. A small issue is that there are few historical inaccuracies, but that’s often the case when scientists write history of science, and that’s not the main part of the book so I would have overlooked it. As an example, we are told that Newton's apple story originated with Voltaire. Yet Newton himself mentioned the apple story to William Stukeley in 1726. He may have made it up - but he certainly originated it, not Voltaire. We are also told that ‘Galileo discovered the counterintuitive law behind a swinging o...
Post a Comment
Read more

On Time - Jim Al-Khalili *****

By a small margin Jim Al-Khalili's The World According to Physics is my favourite of his books, both because the 'three pillars' concept at its heart works so well - but also because it's short. On Time is somewhat heavier, but thankfully not a wrist-buster. It might seem at first sight odd that a book on a subset of physics is considerably longer than one covering the whole thing, but time is one of those subjects that inevitably involves considerable complexities and needs depth. As Al-Khalili establishes, it's hard to think of any other scientific concept where our perception of it - what he refers to as manifest time or psychological time - is so different from the view from physics. Some physicists go so far as to suggest that time doesn't exist at all. In the book, Al-Khalili sets out (to my mind quite successfully) both to explain why they think this is the case, but also why it's not the best interpretation of time. I'd certainly note that I...
Post a Comment
Read more