Finding Justice: Understanding it
How many of you are justice warriors on social media? How often do you slam a quick like down on someone who posts something about saving puppies in the Middle East? I go far, but how many of you make posts about stopping racism or abuse? But have you ever wondered what justice actually means? How can you actually make a step to changing people’s thinking about this topic?
Actions are born out of what we think. If we can not change how we think as a society fundamentally, injustices will continue to run rampant. Hence I ask these questions.
What does living in a just manner actually entail? Is it getting what you deserve? Are the things we perceive as injustice actually something fundamentally wrong with our perceptions of them?
Or, even worth, are we missing what injustice is?
Today, I will first tackle what justice means and where it has its foundation. I’ll move onto tackling what injustice is before challenging Justice with the concept of mercy. Lastly, I’ll draw us into a discussion on what does all this mean to your life.
Let’s get defining Justice
People have tried to give a variety of definitions, and in my previous article, I gave one that I quite like through the mouth of Soran (Figuratively). “I believe Justice is when we treat other people as they deserve. To be more specific, when we treat other people as creations of God according to His ideals.”
Here we already begin to deal with the idea of where justice is based, but lets put it off. Also, another question that arises from this is what people deserve? A simple answer is a Right is something people should receive.
In the words of an eloquent man. “I just want my rights.”
The right is the measure of the justice provided. In other words, justice exists when everyone’s rights are respected equally.
Aristotle, a once-famous but very dead philosopher, put it this way. “Justice is an important eternal quality that the individual should strive to uphold.”
The Foundation of Right
Now, we slide into exploring the basis of justice. First of all, it is eternal, as Aristotle points out.
CS Lewis echoes this statement in his work “On Ethics”. He points out that we base all ethical systems on treating parts or the whole of humanity in a way that we can continue to exist. Thus, every moral system pushes us to survive as a human or as a species.
When we take this and combine it with Kant’s categorical imperative, which states we must always act in the way that we want everyone else to act. We should never lie in any situation because we would not like others to lie continually.
Here, we find justice as always serving in a way that preserves humanity as a whole but also as acting consistently in an exemplary manner.
There we must realize that morals on which justice is based must be eternal, preserve humanity, and demand consistent behaviour. We will continue based on the moral system these philosophers have presented.
Justice applied to life
The problem is this is all very abstract for people who don’t spend their lives thinking about these things because they are busy (unlike me with way too much free time). So what?
It’s all good and well but how does this impact day to day living? What about the times we were treated unfairly… Or maybe when we treated others unfairly, perhaps without knowing it.
The challenges we face are because society is unjust. Our ancestors have met these challenges, and we will look at their responses. The two we will look at are Frederick Douglass, concerning slavery and racism, and Henry Thoreau about war and government.
Frederick Douglass was born a slave which is something almost unimaginable to us. His story is interesting because he parallels education with sensitivity to injustice.
At the beginning of his story, his master married a new wife. She began to teach him how to read, which opened up his mind to a whole new world.
Unfortunately, her husband realized this and said these words. They would impact Douglass so much he burned them into the pages of his mind and his story, Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass, for the memory of mankind.
“If you teach that nigger how to read, there would be no keeping him. It would forever unfit him to be a slave… It would make him discontented and unhappy.”
These words sparked a fire within Douglass that led him to finish his education all on his own and eventually escape from slavery. His whole story is worth a read if you are interested in learning more about injustice from the eyes of a slave.
However, we can learn a primary lesson. Slavery and authentic learning cannot exist together. They will fight each other until one wins out. One remedy for injustice is craving wisdom.
On War, Government, and Ideals
Henry Thoreau is an essential figure in American history, but we will focus on one aspect of his life. To understand him, we must know he was a transcendentalist. This means he believes there is an ultimate ideal.
Thoreau firmly believed that the war America was fighting against Mexico was unjust. As such, he refused to pay the taxes levied for the war, which resulted in him spending a night in prison.
In the chapter of this in his book, Civil Disobedience, he says these keywords.
“Let every man make known what kind of government would command his respect, and that will be one step towards obtaining it…. Must the citizen ever for a moment or in the least degree resign his conscience to the legislator?”
These are profoundly challenging thoughts. Henry Thoreau makes known; we must strive to make out our morals apart from the government as it is likely to be unjust in at least some way. We cannot leave justice only to the government, for then it will be perverted without a doubt.
Truth must be preserved; Truth does not randomly spurt out of the ground like water for we are in a dessert of evil.
Injustice in our modern world
How can we see injustice in our modern-day? We do not have to look very far to find it. I could spend time dealing the crimes far removed from our society, like the work factories in Asia. Or we could move in closer to home, racism and violence.
However, my cause comes right into the home. Pornography is a common thing in our world today. Okay, you might ask how am I going to relate it to justice and injustice, well here we go.
A while back, I came across an organization called Fight the New Drug. This organization strives to let people know about the damaging effects of pornography. The dark side of this industry is that it thrives on abuse and sex trafficking. According to the research, 49% of women trafficked have videos filmed of them. Pornhub, the biggest distributor of porn, has been in multiple lawsuits where it refused to take down material that was of actual rape.
As I wrote this article, the world is being ripped apart by the tragic deaths of black men in the states. They were killed before the altar of injustice. It made me realize how important this message is.
If we do not change the way we think, if we do not pay the debt we have collected by the injustices that we have inflicted on other people, these tragedies will happen over and over again.
Putting these two together is simple. Violence is the primary method used in both of these issues, racism and pornography. Any violence should never be tolerated against our fellow man.
We must not, we cannot, and we will not ignore these injustices! This, like the other injustices, you know that you must stand against them as is your moral duty. The concept of what is right profoundly impacts how we live our lives.
What do we deserve?
Finally, if we are going to apply justice in our lives, does it always mean that people should get what they deserve in a Karma style system? Take a moment and walk back to your childhood.
Did your parents always give you the punishment that you had earned by your bad behaviour? When you screamed at the supermarket for a candy bar or asked for something you did not deserve like a smartphone, what did your parents do? What will you do for your children?
Let us do a thought experiment with a world with a totally just God. What would happen if God gave exactly back what we did? When we cheated on tests, does someone always cheat us out of the money equivalent to that grade?
Another situation is you forget to help an old lady across the street, and unknown to you, she is hit by a car and dies. Will you be hit by a car and die? Or will the person be hit by the car and die? What about all the other people who had the opportunity to help her? Whew, Justice just got super complicated.
Again it comes back to what justice is based on. Also, where is the mercy in this system? To quote the famous Shakespeare from the Merchant of Venice,
“ Though justice be thy plea, consider this:
That is the course of justice none of us
Should see salvation. We do pray for mercy,
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy. “
Do we want total justice on everyone, including ourselves?
Take it to the streets
Finally, I ask what is living justly in this modern society. How does this impact the way we work, socialize, do school and so on. Are we treating others as we expect to be treated? The things we have said on social media recently, are we backing them up with the way we live?
Change never starts from the top down. Change always begin in the individual. I challenge each of the readers of this post to be the change. Be the one who steps out and says. “I will treat others as I expect to be treated.”
