Whether justice exists

I started writing about why I believe that Tibet will gain freedom from China and Palestine from Israel, within the next two decades. While I am confident that this is inevitable, I realize that setting a timeline on it, and that too such an aggressive one, is more wishful thinking than an educated estimate. I deleted the two paragraphs I wrote, as it led me to a more interesting subject: whether justice exists, and if it does, whether there is a pattern to it. To make it a little clear, when I ask “Does justice exist,” I mean, “Does a natural force of righteousness that frees people from oppression, exist?”

Mankind seems trapped in a cycle of periods of oppression, rebellion, and freedom. History has a way of surprising us. Despite all the modern principles of democracy, we see despots emerge, and long after we relinquish our hopes on freedom of suppressed people, we see unlikely and successful uprisings (like the Arab Spring movement).

Here is the tricky part about trying to answer a question like “Does justice exist?” – you get varying answers depending on the samples of time and populations you choose. If you choose the Middle East for a period from 2010 to present, the answer would be a resounding “Yes” as we have seen people gain freedom from monarchs. If I take the same region and choose a timeframe of around 40 years from 1970 to 2010, the answer would be a depressing “No”. Taking the Arabs again, and a timeframe of 100 years, we have seen people be freed from the Ottoman Empire and gain independence from colonial European powers, and the answer would be a “Yes” again. So one pattern we see emerging is that if we take obscenely long timeframes, the answer would be “Yes”. Are we more free than we were a thousand years ago? In general, absolutely. But there are exceptions. Take Jews in the Middle East, for example. For two thousand years, they were oppressed by various kingdoms, and even treated as second-rate citizens by nation-states. Two thousand years. It’s hard to say that justice is inevitable if it takes this long.

The reason I bring this up is: if we can prove that justice is as much a law of nature as are Newton’s laws of motion, we can re-write many of our policies to help facilitate it, and maybe bring it about more quickly. Intervene aggressively in nations that suppress their people. Just as we are not sceptical of gravity, we won’t be sceptical about whether our mission to bring justice would succeed, and we can be more assertive in our actions. On the other hand, if history is just a random walk, and if the arc of history doesn’t necessarily bend towards justice, then we should continue to remain cautious and not intervene until our own interests are directly hurt. Let’s illustrate the difference in the two approaches – in an unjust-world approach, we would either not support the Arab Spring actively or support it only if it looks like it’s going to succeed (which is what most nations are doing now to protect their diplomatic interests), while in the just-world approach, we would actively encourage people to rebel and do our level best to bring down oppression.

Some suggest a placebo approach – pretend that justice exists, undertake your actions accordingly, and you will actually bring about justice. I don’t believe that it can work. Pretend you are taking a medicine and you know that it’s meant to be a placebo – that it’s only your psychological views towards the tablet (the belief that it will work) that will heal you and not the tablet itself. In such a case, it is impossible to oust scepticism, and your psychology will not heal you. In short, a placebo works only when you don’t know that it is a placebo.

Only when we prove that there exists an immutable law of the universe concerning justice can we whole-heartedly coordinate our actions to bring justice. For this, we need brilliant minds doing amazing research, and structuring a fantastic argument. Set up a reputed, government funded body that oozes credibility. Basically, do all the things that make people believe that the findings are authentic and irrefutable.

And let’s be clear about what we want the outcome to be: we don’t actually care whether justice exists or not, we just want to be whole-heartedly convinced that it does.