This is incorrect. Wolf packs, apes, cats and many other social animals have methods to address social conflict and wrongdoing. What they saw was a resource to be conquered, and then retroactively justified it with with societal infrastructure. An argument could be made that they are better off with these things, but the way it was done was of course wrong.
> In Western culture, we are socialized to believe that the desire to inflict counterviolence upon or retaliate against someone who has hurt us or a loved one is innate and that justice has always been done and will always be done in this way. In fact, far from universal or natural, this adversarial vision of justice is a relatively recent cultural and historical construction, arising around AD 1200 with the dawning of the nation-state and racial capitalism.
Again, wrong. Matthew 5:39: Jesus tells his followers, "If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also". There was recognition, likely far longer than Jesus, that escalating retaliatory violence is not good. And in common times in Western culture, we do not inflict upon criminals what they themselves did to others. If a man stabs another man to death, he is not sentenced to death by stabbing.
> Though restorative justice is new to Western jurisprudence, it is not at all new in the broader sweep of human history. For most of human history, reconciliation and restitution to victims and their kin took precedence over vengeance. This is because restoring social peace and avoiding blood feuds were paramount social concerns. Restitution and reconciliation, not punishment, were overarching aspirations.
Again, no. Restorative justice takes place all of the time. It's precisely how we have been "avoiding blood feuds" in the West. "Restitution and reconciliation" is not always an option. You and I mostly follow reason, but we do not live in a world of universal humans, and not everyone is born equal. Some people have inherited exceptional anger, spite, vengeance, etc. Some people have an ideology so ingrained into their very being, that they would strap explosives to themselves and kills hundreds of people. The world is not sunshine and rainbows, there is some real evil out there.
> Punishment, the equivalent of officially sanctioned vengeance, is a mere variant of the original harm, replicating and reproducing it, resulting in the destruction of community safety nets and social breakdown.
Wrong. Punishment in a just system is not decided by the victim, and therefore vengeance is not considered. What does result in the destructions of society, though, is when some people believe there is not going to be a consequence to their actions. Then, to destroy a society, just a small group of bad actors have the ability to do whatever they want. In African indigenous societies, the village chief and the warriors/hunters would have punished a bad actor - you are insane to think otherwise.
> It locks us into the past and tethers us to disabling definitions of ourselves and an overidentification with the pain, mistaking it for who we truly are.
Would the person writing this tell this to a person that has been raped? As part of their restorative justice, the victim is forced to reconcile with their attacker. The attacker walks freely without punishment, whilst the victim is told to stop living in the past and to stop identifying with the pain.
Let's see how well that holds up.
> Imprisoned by the pain and the past, the harmed party experiences victimization a second time, but this time, it is self-inflicted. It is scientifically documented that hatred and anger eat away at our well-being, on physical and emotional levels.
"scientifically documented" - proceeds to not cite the science
Hatred and anger are normally present when there is a feeling that justice is not done correctly and quickly.