Justice versus Social Justice
Terms using the word “social” are everywhere we turn today. Most of us are currently practicing “social distancing.” Many of us also use some type of “social media.” And a large number of us are actively seeking “social justice,” either before or active the George Floyd atrocity.
A group of mental health professionals are now proposing that we stop using the term “social distancing” and begin using the term “physical distancing.” After all, we’re still being “social,” perhaps on the phone or video chat. We’re just trying to stay at least six feet away from other people — that’s physical distancing.
I’m not sure where each of these “social” terms originated, and I know that there are many more activities that include the word “social.” America has often been referred to as a “social experiment” (whether you consider it a successful experiment or a failed one). And then there’s my favorite term — “social awkwardness.”
What makes someone socially awkward? If we think about that long enough, that person is doing someone that is not seen as “normal” in the society (or sub-society) in which he lives. Our society has decided how we are to act when in the society, and a socially awkward person doesn’t conform to those expectations.
So, what about “social justice”? In a very similar way, each society determines what justice looks like. What may have been “just” two hundred years ago might be considered “barbaric” today. And in one society today it is considered “just” to cut off someone’s hand for stealing, while members of another society grapple with the reasons behind stealing and seek justice by providing for unmet needs.
As a German-American, I am aware that the land of my ancestors made decisions that today we think are beyond socially awkward — they were horribly unjust. Through two world wars at the beginning of the 20th century, at least some portion of German society was responsible to the deaths of millions of people — some of the most brutal deaths we can now imagine. Not just concentration camps, by using mustard gas and aerial bombings from blimps (Zeppelins), Germans sought to subdue the rest of Europe.
But, technically, when an influential portion of German society decided to relentlessly murder millions of people, it could have been called “social justice” (had they had the term back then). This would be especially true as Germans felt so socially oppressed after the first world war that they came together to unify the Arian race, and make other races subservient to them or do away with those that they determined were undesirable.
The example of German atrocities, should help us to understand that “social justice” contains a variable that future generations will be just as appalled by as we are when we look back at Germany one hundred years ago or American slave owners two hundred years ago.
So how do we determine justice without the variables that can send us the wrong direction? It takes the same kind of meaningful conversation that we are currently promoting to prevent racism. And it takes recognizing prevailing opinions and feelings that may not be firmly founded on a clear set of values.
In 1859, John Stuart Mill wrote an essay entitled “On Liberty.” There he stated,
“Society can and does execute its own mandates; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression.”
He goes on to say that this “social tyranny” (another of those “social” terms) can leave “fewer means of escape, penetrating much more deeply into the details of life, and enslaving the soul itself.” You might say that we become socially awkward, or even social outcasts, if we do not embrace these social mandates.
We must actively seek justice to be applied across our country, but we also must ensure that the justice we seek is firmly founded on absolutes rather than opinion and feeling. And if there’s anything we can be certain about today it’s that opinions and feelings are a dime a dozen. And they will probably change in time.
Only with sensible, calm conversation can we eventually see justice equally applied to all mankind, at least within our own country. The kind of conversation that not only listens but can even repeat what the other person has said even when we do not fully embrace some point of difference. What we definitely do not need is a one-way “conversation” where one person is talking over the other, or shall we say yelling at, without the other side being heard.
When we take the time to have these two-way conversations, we will be able to move closer to the justice that we all want.
For more about the deficient idea of “social justice” please watch this twelve minute video: