Choosing not to get even

Should I be angry at someone who has unfair and cruel judgment towards me?  The anger is natural, a response of my animalistic PSNS kicking in, ready to fight my perceived enemy because my needs are threatened.  My need is for acceptance as I am, but my judgment of them betrays the fact that I don't wish to apply the same standards towards them that I want for myself.

They have a right to their feelings, their opinions, their stories, and their freedom of speech.  My anger, which is about my needs not getting met, does not justify my judgment of them.  Do they also not deserve the right to be accepted as their are in their judgmentalness?  And if I do not accept them as they are, what justification do I have to believe they are wrong for not accepting me as I am?

We tend to respond to our own pain and anger with judgment, negative intent, or rejection of the person we are angry at.  This response is natural but not necessarily valid.  It is true that when we feel threatened or our needs are not met, we tend to feel angry, and we tend to respond to our own anger with a desire to fight or flee - a very natural response from our animal nature.  However, that association can be broken - we do not have to yield to the desire to fight or flee in order to have our anger.  When we recognize our anger as simply a feeling, no judgment or action need to go with it.

Just because you caused me pain does not mean you are a bad person; yet, this is an assumption we often make.  This assumption comes from this logic:  If it were not for your words or actions, I would not be in pain; therefore, you are at fault for causing me pain.  And if you caused me pain, you must be a bad person.  And if you are bad, you are not like me (because I see myself as good), and therefore worthy of my judgment and rejection, and I am justified in causing you pain in return.

There are many logical problems with this line of reason; but first, realize that this line of reasoning does not come from our rational minds; rather, it is built into our DNA from when we were animals.  Animals attack or run from other animals they perceive as "bad" - i.e., somehow harmful to them.  The genetic encoding for this logic comes from tens of millions of years of experience and natural selection.  Thus we come to this logic from a completely natural source.  We are not "bad" for having this logic, only ignorant and unaware.

The beauty of the human mind is that we can detect and act contrary to our genetic programming.  We can choose to act based on our beliefs, morality, and lessons we have learned.  We can have complex understandings that cause us to draw new conclusions on how we want to behave.

Deciphering our genetic coding, understanding it, and changing it to better suit our needs as complex human beings is the glory of being human, and gives us well-deserved pride for reaching a higher moral standard than what we were born with.  Our genetic encoding served us well as animals; but now we are grown past that point and need to choose how we want to live in this world - because we are able to choose.