Revenge is backward-looking by definition. It asks “how do we balance what happened?” rather than “how do we prevent it from happening again?” or “what caused this in the first place?”
This makes it inherently conservative of the existing order. The logic of “eye for an eye” assumes the state before was correct and just needs to be restored. Nothing about the cause gets examined. Nothing changes. The ledger is “balanced” and we continue as before, until the next offense.
Circle vs. spiral.