An Eye For an Eye

The article "Is 'an Eye for an Eye' Ethical?" by Ariel Kaminer, published in the New York Times Upfront on November 5th, 2012, Kaminer explains a story about a man in New York named Anthony B. who chained his bike to a pole. Then, a delivery food person chains his bike to Anthony's bike. When Anthony comes back, he can't take his bike so he chains both of them to the pole. Later, after Anthony ate lunch, the delivery food person is angry.

What Anthony did to the delivery food person was like a small punishment for doing wrong things to the people around him. In the article, Kaminer wrote "The guy was asking for it. He knowingly inconvenienced a stranger, so he couldn't have been all that shocked when someone returned the favor." Ariel Kaminer wants you to think about the question in the title: Is an eye for an eye ethical? Although it might seem like the right thing to do, is it?

I completely agree with Kaminer. In his article, he wrote "Your solution seems so elegant: Use the very tools of this man's discourtesy to teach him a lesson about respect. But as satisfying as eye-for-an-eye justice can be, it's unlikely to cause him to reflect on how he wronged you. It will probably just make him hate you and therefore care that much less about inconveniencing you or anyone else he might proceed to lock up." Now that he has pointed out to me that not everyone agrees with the saying "an eye for an eye", I might have second thoughts about what I do.