I sometimes think about the way U.S. culture elevates the concept of vengeance in movies: They killed or kidnapped his wife and family, and now here’s two hours

I sometimes think about the way U.S. culture elevates the concept of vengeance in movies: They killed or kidnapped his wife and family, and now here’s two hours of kicking them to death. No character development or exploration of loss; just a flashback of a generically pretty family on the beach, and then kicking. Quite a few of these movies end with the protagonist, after having kicked his way through countless henchmen, deciding that the bad guy “isn’t worth it”, which is to say that after it’s clear that the protagonist has won the fight and could kill the villain if he wanted, masters his emotions and walks away. Sometimes followed up by the villain destroying himself via suicide by police, falling off a cliff, or some other means of dying that isn’t the protagonist’s fault. These movies strike me as the crystallization of one of our predominant societal ills: the idea that it’s morally good to feel anger, and morally bankrupt to not feel anger. The righteous path is to be angry; where to direct the anger is of secondary concern, and we need not even understand what we’re mad about, and the thing we’re mad about need not even be real. I’m finding a deeper respect as I age for people who are able to respond to the world with zen-like empathy.