Thanks for sharing, I really appreciate that and I understand your position. Your values align closely with mine, but my #1 top value is that no one should have power over anyone else, because most humans are predisposed towards using any power they have to benefit themselves - so if you have someone even with 1% more power than others, they will use that 1% of power to their own benefit, and to grow their own power. Over time, that 1% will grow and grow until we have a situation like we have now, where the ruling class have overwhelming power over the majority.

I totally get the drive for revenge, I’m very sympathetic – I used to feel the same. What I have come to realize though, is that negative reinforcement isn’t very effective at all. We have a whole prison industrial complex which is unbelievably cruel and punishing towards those in its grip, the ultimate tool of revenge against those who have wrong society, and it is completely ineffective in reducing or preventing any crime. Cruelty against those who have wronged us just hardens hearts against our larger goal, the liberation of all living things, because it gets both “sides” stuck in an escalation trap of using escalating levels of violence against the other.

The only way we can fix our broken society is by convincing everyone that using coercive power/violence against others leads to bad outcomes. We need to be willing to use violence (and the threat of violence) because if we do not then our enemies will indeed make us victims, but it must always be the option of last resort.