:: 3/07/2003 ::

On Justice

Since justice was the topic of a recent posting, I thought I’d weigh in with some thoughts I’ve been having, as they are somewhat related, and as the lines of reasoning have led away from where I’d believed they would go. Or at least, from where I’d been taught they would go (and no, I’m not talking about propoganda fed me, not in any ordinary sense, I’m talking about a spiritual blind spot in the culture of Western civilization).
First, I should make clear that I do think justice is a very useful concept when dealing in large scales. It’s about the best thing we’ve got in terms of trying to parcel and package fair treatment, and tho it falls short often it is also still in a state of constant refinement and improvement, ever since its political invention with Hammurabi’s Eye for an Eye. However, I think when justice is applied at the individual level, while there is nothing explicitly wrong with it as a concept there is a great danger involved. Let’s explore all this.
To begin with, the term can be abused. One need look no further than my own president. He throws the word around with reckless abandon, using it to justify (hehe) whatever his current aim is. Bringing the terrorists to justice; everyone says Yay! Bringing Saddam Hussein to justice; some people instinctively go Yay! Justice! (and in a way he’s right, there would be justice in punishing Hussein – this brings up the words inherent flexibility which can lead to confusion, to be discussed later). Other people recognize the unjust use of force against many innocents involved in such a move, but they are confused – this is a bad man – JUSTICE after all – maybe we should – I know plenty of intelligent people in the states who are at least undecided, probably because their own heart tells them one thing while everything else tells them another. And the everything else is very clever and appeals to values inside the doubter – the very values that cause the doubt. Justice is one of those linchpin values that can get twisted quite a bit.
Justice has been used to justify the indefinite holding of "suspects" and other extensions of government power currently going on in the states in the largest assault on individual freedom since McCarthyism (are we to have an Ashcroftian era?) and justice has been used to defend such ugly things as revenge, aggression, invasion – conveniently, anything our leaders have wanted yet, living in democracies, needed to make at least some attempt to bring the citizenry along.
Of course, you can rightly say this is true of any concept given into the hands of one willing to lie. There’s nothing about justice which singles it out for such abuse, save its legimate value and power – making it a useful tool for manipulation, as all "good" things are (quotes not for irony, but to highlight the fact that nothing is inherently good or bad, it is simply application). But that says nothing against the concept of justice itself. So let’s get into some more personal aspects of the term.
One of the big problems in justice – and again this applies to many concepts, but significantly less than the above argument – is its relativism. In the speech you posted, Jesse, there was one definition of justice as that which can be agreed upon by a poll of moral individuals. Problem is, the definition of justice will itself contribute to the definition of moral, leading to solipsism. That aside, you’re gonna have an impossible time setting up a standard – especially on the world stage. What is considered perfectly reasonable in some countries would be anything but in another. For instance, in many places women are still viewed, legally, as the property of fathers and husbands, who thus are perfectly justified in punishing them any way they want – up to and including rape and death. We look horrified at that notion. Yet many people look horrified at the allowance of abortion within our lands, which they see as no less a murder than any other – perhaps worse, for we are killing the most perfectly innocent beings available. At least murders of wives usually have a justification beyond the convenience of the murderer. Or even closer to home, the cultures of Europe and America are sufficiently distinct that capital punishment is deemed just in one world, and abhorrent in another. Indeed, one needn’t leave the culture to find such divisions in the guidelines of justice, since the divisions exist within the cultures as well. We must recognize that being on the side of perceived justice gives one a definite sense of moral superiority that makes meaningful dialogue a difficult thing to achieve between people of differing views. Tho I don’t, many people in America really believe strongly in the death penalty, my father among them – how does justice then fit into our relationship? Well, justice doesn’t really enter into our relationship due to a certain level of maturity (and it is telling that maturity can lead one away from equations involving justice) but if it did, then our relationship would be strained by our differing standards of justice.
Another problem with justice is that, in certain cases, it is nearly impossible to be just to all involved. At that point justice becomes justification for the protection of one person’s (or group’s) rights over another’s. You could say no fair bringing up abortion – such a hot topic (yet specifically because it falls in the cracks justice leaves) – but there are many other examples. How about redistribution of wealth? One can easily make a case that families have gotten rich off the sweat and slavery of others, and retribution is due. One can just as easily make a case that the current owners of the goods had little or sometimes nothing to do with the transgressions of the past, and shouldn’t be made to suffer the sins of the father. (How does justice apply to lineage, a discussion from the previous post? If you don’t like the example of the rich folk because I think most people in this blog would take the side of the trod upon, how about the kid who has a parent’s debt handed down at death? Is the kid responsible? What if the kid is rich off his own sweat, and the companies involved would go under if debts were written off at death, thousands of unemployed? Either the progeny keeps the money and alternately keeps the debt, or keeps neither, if you want a constant application of justice. Someone’s going to suffer injustice at one end or the other, aren’t they…)
In short, I’m saying that justice is much too flexible a concept to be anything but relativistic, a reflection of the majority of opinion within the culture it comes from – but also, there will always be a minority who will hold a different concept of that justice. Indeed, most people in the inquiry are likely in the minority on many issues.
Further, I would say that justice once handed to a large political machinery, this is justice at its most dangerous for reasons listed above (yet paradoxically justice is also at its most spiritually dangerous in the hands of an individual). The systems created by and for the concept of justice have a fighting chance of working towards a good and clear and constant application, but anything which does not involve justice a priori will almost always be looking for justification, not justice. Yet that distinction is rarely made, and it is a key one.
But ok, all these things are talking about the large political ramifications of justice, but I think – as stated in the beginning – that tho there are many flaws, justice is an incredibly useful concept which has been put to good application much more often than bad over the years, and many of the problems and conflicts I listed above are an accident of the historical timing we live in – as justice matures, convergence between differing opinions will continue to come closer. It may never get to point where everyone agrees on a definition, but it will come close enough that everyone is comfortable living under the one instituted. We approach that age already. Everything I’ve said so far really indicts justice in no way, but simply gives us areas on which to work on improving it, and places to be wary of its hijacking. But now I move to the individual – this is going to be a very different look, and I don’t know how you all will like it, but I’m just gonna present it.
Basically, at the individual level, the concept of justice (along with other concepts, but I think they are just different aspects of a larger worldview) creates the concept of entitlement. It creates the concept of Should. It creates a mechanism for rejection of a world that is filled with injustice and unfairness (as ours is). If you have a kid whose parents are murdered, that’s gonna be unjust no matter what remedies are taken afterwards. If the kid has a very solid belief in this Should World, that’s gonna be shattered. Disillusionment will follow – if the kid is the right age, that sort of a situation (or, more likely, a constant string of unjust acts of smaller scale) can create a societal reject or a criminal. Unjust things will always occur – they are far more scarring to a person who firmly believes in the rightness of justice, and feels entitled to it as a right. We wed ourselves to a word instead of a reality. This highly flexible term reduces our flexibility to deal with the true world we live in.
The concept of justice strengthens the ego. The Should World provides a means for constant comparison between reality and itself. It encourages many "me my" desire thoughts, which are extremely unhealthy for the soul (it was during a string of such thoughts that I had my insight about justice, if that’s what this is). With the concept of entitlement and of measurement, people get led astray. It is such things that cause comparison between ourselves and others instead of simple comparison between oneself as one is, and oneself as a perfect being (the only comparison that is of any worth – and then only if not used in a destructive fashion). Justice also compartmentalizes the world in order to make these comparisons – and one must make the comparisons if a judgment is to be reached. (Judgment! The one thing every religion and worthy philosophy warns us against! And the bedrock of justice!) I think most of us would agree that the more harmonized and a part of everything else one is, the more actualized and closer to the truth of things one is. Thru compartmentalizing and drawing clear distinctions between Me and That Outside Me (or between two things outside oneself as well) justice helps to shatter the unity of the world (there can be no concept of justice without duality, just as there can be no justice without injustice – and it seems silly to talk of our shoulder being unjust to our hand, doesn’t it? the fact that we could entertain the notion that our brain is being unfair to our hand when we punch a brick wall is an illustration of how divisive the concept of justice can be).
I think the only way justice can be applied well is if it applies to everything but oneself – that’s gonna help objectivity enormously, and help defeat the ego tendencies that are otherwise encouraged. Indeed, used this way and thought out extensively, I think justice would eventually lead to the realization of unity in all things – at such a time one could integrate oneself into the system, but it’s very dangerous to do so beforehand. Actually – like with most things – the closer one looks at the concept of justice, the more paradoxes arise. My favorite – relativism is impossible to overcome unless we find an absolute – and the only absolute we can have is an inner one – but the concept of justice given by a single soul is also the most relative one possible.
Now many of the things I’ve just gone into about justice can, more or less, be applied to an infinite array of concepts. We could substitute merit or ability in its place, for instance, and have nearly the same talk. Some people would say that shows a flaw in the argument – and in terms of the debating world it certainly does. But in terms of truth I think it’s because all these concepts of ours are rooted in similar notions and similar things – when taken deeply enough they all converge – and it is at this convergence that I hope I’m talkin. When lookin at the spiritual ramifications of our intellectual concepts, I think we will usually find they are divisive devices that lead us further from unity.
In its place, I think we could look for beauty. To me, that’s a much more useful guideline than justice could ever be, at least on the individual level. Indeed, beauty subsumes the need for justice, as I don’t think an unjust thing could easily be beautiful. It takes away the concept of should, and replaces it with a striving for betterment. At least, that’s this Buddhist’s view. And while such a belief doesn’t have much (yet) to say about public policy, I think it’s quite useful when examining a personal hermaneutic.

:: ranger 07:26 [link] ::

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