There is something deeper, existing underneath the impulse to retaliate. There is a deeper instinct of justice that is at once ancient, yet more evolved. I believe that restoration, the restorative instinct, is part of our DNA. Restoration, perhaps, is our species’ original justice sensibility. It has to be or we wouldn’t have survived as a species.
This deeper instinct comes not only from a place of compassion, but from pragmatism. Perhaps this is what Mahatmas Gandhi meant when he uttered his famous quote “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”...