“But thus do I counsel you, my friends: distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful!”
― Frederich Nietzsche

“It is a wonder, O Juss, that thou shouldst hold out to such mucky dogs a hand without a whip in it.”
― E.R. Eddison, The Worm Ouroboros

Job 19:28 “Why then do you say now: Let us persecute him, and let us find occasion of word against him?  29 Flee then from the face of the sword, for the sword is the revenger of iniquities: and know ye that there is judgment.” – Douay Rheims Bible

The harsher you view your own crimes, the worse you expect from those you have hurt the most. Call it karma, or justice, most of us believe that what we do will come back to us. If we spend our days maligning our neighbor to any and all who would hear, we are sure that our neighbor would do the same to us. We also assume that the neighbor would be angry upon hearing our complaints. We know that we would be angry in their position. How far the possible spiral will go depends not upon our neighbor but instead on what we would do in their place.

Our fears about certain segments, or even members, of society reflect our view of our own actions towards those people. Those fears don’t equate to the behavior of the targeted people. I watched my extended family spend decades waiting for the retribution they believed was owed to them for their past actions. They knew that they, their parents, and their grandparents had behaved reprehensibly for a half-century at least. They couldn’t imagine a world where their victims would move on and not seek vengeance. My uncle was an average Midwestern white man. He lived every day in fear of the payback that those he had wronged, by word and deed, would exact. He had created a monster in his head and clothed it in his guilt. That fear turned to hate because he couldn’t fight his own demons so he made other people into demons. If he couldn’t find his own ability to forgive himself, he couldn’t see how anyone else could forgive him.

Making wrongs right is each generations work. If it requires us to make amends to do so, then make amends. It doesn’t matter how many others may forgive us, until we do the work ourselves we will see the world through our own dire actions. Sometimes our actions have no possible avenue to justice. Negative behavior often spans generations. We can’t truly make amends directly to those that were harmed by our ancestors. That doesn’t preclude us from working to unravel the tangles our ancestors created in another’s family line. When we set things right we can let go of fear because we aren’t owed a whoopin’ anymore.

Once we change our behavior, we begin to view our neighbor’s behavior through a different lens. If we aren’t gossiping, why would we think our neighbor is? If we don’t fear justice’s gaze, we don’t spend our time looking for who is going to be the hand of justice. When we view our neighbors as we view ourselves, the judgements we cast upon ourselves become how we judge our neighbor. If we don’t know how to love ourselves, it is impossible to love our neighbor. If we expect the best, we will treat others better and that’s a good way to get the best in return.