Deep minds have considered the subject of revenge. Heinrich Heine said that “We should forgive our enemies, but not before they are hanged.” John Dryden said “Beware the fury of a patient man.” This probably is the inspiration for Walter White.[1]
Is there such a thing as pre-venge? Googling, I found that there is a 2016 movie with this title.[2] Apparently, but I don’t care, it is also the title of a “Transformers” episode.[3]
Continuing to Google, I found the following definition: “The act of taking, or an action taken against someone or something, ostensibly in retaliation for another act that has not yet been committed; pre-emptive action characterized as revenge.”[4]
The dictionary definition isn’t entirely accurate. In particular, it confuses “pre-venge” with “pre-emption,” as in actually preventing something from happening by striking the first blow. It doesn’t really get at the idea that if a person thinks another person is going to do something to them AND they can’t prevent that thing from happening, then they’re entitled to get in their own shot when they can. So, not pre-emption, which would involve forestalling the expected attack.
In either case, pre-emption or pre-venge, how can one be absolutely certain that something is going to happen? Contingency being what it is. Can you be justified in acting on a presumption that something will happen? Presumption plays hob with cause-and-effect.
The law deals with some aspects of this in its doctrine on self-defense. “In the U.S., the general rule is that ‘[a] person is privileged to use such force as reasonably appears necessary to defend him or herself against an apparent threat of unlawful and immediate violence from another [person]….When the use of deadly force is involved in a self-defense claim, the person must also reasonably believe that their use of deadly force is immediately necessary to prevent the other’s infliction of great bodily harm or death.”[5]
So, the “danger” must be “immediate” and “unlawful.” The trouble here is that this law deals only with physical violence. Lots of things for which one might seek revenge are not “unlawful” or “violent.” They are just wrong or immoral or an abuse of power relationships.
Further, “According to The Language Report, the word has been in use since the late 1990s.”[6] Why since the late 1990s? And who coined the term? Answering that last question would be like trying to find out who—other than baseball catchers with the facemask actually on, wore their baseball cap backward. Purportedly it was a Mexican-American kid in Los Angeles,[7] but I’ve seen archival film of WWII German tank crews wearing their similar-looking caps backward in 1943.[8] So, might just be a young-guy reflexive thing. Might even have started in New York in the 1890s with bowler hats, but nobody could tell that they were on backward.
There’s an old—Italian?—saying that “revenge is a dish best tasted cold.” In this sense, “pre-venge” would be like hitting the drive-through window at McDonald’s on the way home from work.
[1] Walt’s Deal With The Schwartzs | Breaking Bad – YouTube
[3] Prevenge – Transformers Wiki (tfwiki.net)
[4] prevenge – Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
[5] Self-defense (United States) – Wikipedia
[6] Ibid.
[7] William Gibson, Pattern Recognition.
[8] Going off on yet another tangent, the movie “Battle of the Bulge” (dir. Ken Annakin, 1965, who also directed “The Planter’s Wife,” 1952) does NOT show youthful German tankers wearing their caps backward.
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