oedipus complex

Introduction to the ‘Revenge’ issue

“An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind”
Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments With Truth (1929)

“Somewhere… somehow… someone’s gonna pay!”
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Commando (1985)

ON JULY 12, Hizbollah ambushed an Israeli army unit on the Israeli-Lebanese border. Three I.D.F. soldiers were killed and two captured. In retaliation, the Israelis launched a devastating month-long assault on southern Lebanon that killed hundreds and left much of the country’s infrastructure in ruins. As the region knuckled down for yet another bloody round of reprisal and counter-reprisal, the New York Times asked Harvard Professor Daniel Gilbert to explain the psychology that fuels such protracted strife. (He Who Cast The First Stone Probably Didn’t, July 24.) Read the rest of this entry »