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Notes -
Our instincts evolved in a different environment, one where revenge and harming defectors were conducive to genetic fitness, hence the instinct for revenge and/or harming defectors never went away. Children show this instinct. The variables of today aren’t the variables of our prehistoric environment. If you didn’t retaliate when a tribe member harmed the group, the group as a whole perishes, and those genes are lost. If you don’t retaliate when an enemy attacks your tribe, either the enemy takes your mates or your own tribal group disposes you. Hence the genes.
So the feeling of dissatisfaction from an inability to retaliate will stick around unless you’ve somehow developed a sense of superseding brotherly love in an abundant positive sum environment where the harm is trivial and low stacks (because heaven), or something like that. Importantly, this feeling can be hellish because it’s your deepest biology signaling that your very genetic fitness is at stake — not much different than if your very life were at stake, because genetically it is.
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