Hi Dbt2
I didn't realize there was an innate human desire for revenge; I thought this was the result of an acculturation process down the millenia and reinforced through monotheism (e.g. "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth").
Murder and revenge do seem to go hand in hand.
When we read (or watch) Ben-Hur, we see the burning desire to take vengeance on Messala.
The post-apartheid South Africans didn't seek vengeance on their former white masters, but rather they sought the truth and then forgiveness to reconcile. Hence the limited amount of reprisal murders.
George Washington pursued a runaway slave for decades, even as POTUS, like the demented Captain Ahab; meanwhile, A. Lincoln didn't seem cursed with this vengeance trait, ready to forgive the Confederates. Only two traitors were hung at the end of the Civil War. And A. Lincoln was so happy not to have fired a shot when he was a militia leader called up to fight the "Injuns" in the 1830s.
William Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus is all about vengeance and murder. In MacBeth, King Duncan's son takes vengeance on the killer of his father.
Chimpanzees are vicious and murderous; their simian first cousins, the bonobos across the Congo River, are peaceful, non-violent, and have sex all the time. Like many married couples.
