Last December I wrote about a Korean movie I watched on Amazon Prime called The Great Battle. It was very well done. Aside from having a very interesting plot it had all these interesting twists and turns that were revealed throughout the movie.
I started watching a couple of fighting K drama movies on Netflix and I keep getting more and more show up on my recommendation list. Then there was a whole list that appeared under the heading Asian Revenge movies and I was like wow... that's kind of not healthy. Revenge I mean. It consumes us and destroys us. So I've been watching a new series called My Name. It's very well done and just like the other ones has an interesting plot with surprising twists and turns revealed along the way. You can change the audio to English in the preferences.
I don't want to spoil the ending but I do want to talk about two different scenarios because it applies to our gang conflict here at home and provide an alternate ending. We all know what narcs are and do. As I've said, when I was growing up a narc was the lowest form of life known to man. They'd pretend to be your friend, smoke your drugs and bust you for doing what they themselves were just doing. As I've said I never did drugs growing up but in High school I had friends who did and that code was a general consensus among the people I associated with.
Having said that I do support law enforcement and understand the need for under cover agents. That's just not my thing. That's not the way I do business. When I was with the Guardian Angels and we made the transition in the US to do crack downs on crack we never went under cover. We were loud and proud. We were like this is our neighborhood now. Drug dealers get the f*ck out. We never pretended to be someone's friend then betrayed them. We fought them face to face.
Now I'd like to present an alternate scenario which I find equally complicated. What if a gang member went undercover and became a cop to give the gang police Intel? That would also involve lying and betrayal. Pretending to be someones friend only to betray them.
The instant conflict is the idea of lying with the intent of betraying. I remember Alex Caine once wrote a book called Befriend and Betray and I was kind of perplexed with the idea. That's not really something I would aspire to. This whole idea of befriending and betraying is something I'm not comfortable with. In addition, this whole idea of revenge is pretty toxic.
Revenge is a little bit too emotional and not enough logic. Some people are very emotional, some people are very analytical. They are two different thought processes that are intertwined. All logic with no emotion is cold and heartless while all emotion with no logic is bat sh*t crazy.
When I was in Ireland I had a friend from Norway. He had served in the military and kind of looked and spoke like Drago from Rocky 4. He was like me. He was logical he wan't emotional. Yet he was hard working and trustworthy. He had a strong sense of duty.
In the series My Name there was one guy who tries to talk some sense in her about her revenge obsession. She was like my life will have no meaning unless I kill him and he was like that's crazy, it makes no sense. When you think about it it doesn't make any sense. It's not logical. It's irrational. Killing him would mean you go to jail or get killed. If you kill him you're going to literally throw your life away so in reality her life would have no meaning if she killed him not if she didn't.
People trash talk people who are analytical or logical but if you don't think things through you're just being irrational and you're going to make bad decisions. The scriptures say vengeance is mine saith the Lord but nobody cares. What that really means is that vengeance will eat you alive. One of the ways we can process pain and be less irrational when it comes to obsessing over vengeance is by gaining an understanding of karma and natural justice.
Karma simply means what goes around, comes around. If you do bad things, bad things will happen to you,. If not in this life, in the life hereafter. Natural justice means as ye sow, so shall ye reap. Sometimes people literally get away with murder. Killing them won't bring the person they killed back. If they get away with murder in this life, they won't get away with it in the life hereafter. When this life is over, everyone will know the truth. Justice will not sleep forever. It's like the words of the Grim Reaper, You can pay me now or you can pay me later but you will pay me.
I submit that we can overcome irrational obsessions with revenge by thinking it through and looking at the big picture. You have your whole life in front of you so why throw that all away for some loser who will eventually get what he deserves. The best revenge is to walk away and lead a good life. A life that you will lose if you get caught up in revenge.
The ending of the My Name series was pretty intense and pretty toxic. The main character Yoon Ji-woo was the daughter of a gangster who was killed outside her door. That crushed her and she devoted her life to avenge her father's murder. She joins the crime group and starts training to be a killer. Doesn't sound like there's going to be a happily ever after prognosis here.
There are definitely some interesting twists and turns along the way but I'd like to emphasize the conclusion was not happy or enlightened. A lot of bad things happened that could have been avoided. Revenge didn't fix or replace any of that. Her father's last request was that his daughter be happy and live a good life. Sadly she didn't and she wasn't.
She would have been far better off leaving the revenge behind and focusing on something else. Anything else. This is why it's important to think things through and not make irrational or emotional decisions. As soon as she found out the truth about he father she should have stepped back and withdraw from the game because in that game there are no winners.
