Injustice Is

Ancillary Exegesis: an example of injustice.

or

If it happened it could not have been otherwise.

          When considering the circumstances surrounding an unfortunate event the opening statement, “You could have prevented this.” with its companion admonishment, “You are at fault and will be punished,” drives me nuts.  If you want to begin with, “In the future, can we prevent this from happening again?”, I have no quibble.

          It is fitting to begin your questioning with, “Did you let this happen?” or “Is this the outcome you expected?” or “Do you feel responsible for what happened?”  These questions are an attempt to determine if the person being questioned believes that they had options and made choices and whether or not what happened is what they expected or intended.  By asking these questions you are trying to determine if they believe they were in control and feel justice was done.

          Once something happens it is necessarily in the past and happened for whatever reasons, and was not and could not and would not have been prevented or done differently by the people involved, because it wasn’t.  The past can only have one outcome.  Maybe you think it should have had a different outcome but it didn’t.  End of story.

If you don’t like the outcome you may believe the participants were evil and wanted an unfortunate event to happen or if you do not believe they are evil or do not want to state publicly that you think they are evil, you may assert that they are incompetent and because of their incompetence they did not see the unfortunate event coming or did not see options that could have prevented it or you can say that because they are incompetent they were incapable of carrying out the necessary steps to stop said unfortunate event.  But you should not have the first thing that comes out of your mouth be that they could have done other than they did and judge them without a trial or at least an investigation.

          The offensive statements I mentioned in the beginning of this piece are an effort to judge, convict and punish the participants by assuming that they had choices known to them that would have prevented the unfortunate event from happening and that they had the ability to carry them out and they still let the unfortunate event happen.  The aforementioned judgmental statements assert the participants had nefarious intentions without giving them the benefit of doubt or opportunity to provide their side of the story.  The judgmental statements indicate a prejudice of, “I don’t trust you and I think you are either incompetent or evil.  You could have and should have prevented this.  And I will get justice for the injured parties by punishing you.”  I consider this abuse of power an injustice.  If you think these judgmental statements are true, fine.  But keep it to yourself until you are proven correct.  Then you can say “I knew it all the time, the evil bastards!”

Justice Is

       Whether or not you acknowledge that something is just depends upon your expectations and your perceived fulfillment of what you think should be.  If you have no concept of what should be then you cannot determine whether or not something is just.  Justice can only be determined after the fact, by someone or a group of people who have an intimate knowledge of what is being judged.  You can attempt to arrange conditions where justice may prevail but until your expectations have had an opportunity to be fulfilled the extent to which you were able to vouchsafe justice cannot be determined.

Justice is the belief that an act or set of actions have happened as they should have or a physical thing is as it should be.  If you believe that an object fulfills its function then as far as you are concerned, it is a just object and it does justice to the group it belongs to.  If you believe that what has happened is what should have happened then, as far as you are concerned, the action is just and justice has been done.

Unless you believe in an afterlife with differentiated outcomes, dependent upon history, that are adjudicated after death by an absolute power that was here before time, will exist throughout time and will continue after time stops, unchanged and unchanging, knowing all that was, is and will be, then there can be no absolute justice, no final justice, no justice for you that prevails after you die.

As we live our lives there is no justice but that which we define.  You may be lucky enough to live in a family or group that you consider just.  But you cannot live in a just world; justice is personal and pliable, temporal and local.  The best you can hope for is to be a just person in your own eyes and to surround yourself with people who generally agree with you on what justice is.