Meditation: On Injustice

Why does injustice hurt so much? And why do we hold on to it so tightly and stubbornly?

What is it about an injustice that fuels fevered pub-table conversations amongst friends and colleagues, embittered and emboldened as they tear apart the mythical beasts that manage their properties or patrol their local car parks or pay their wages?

Perhaps it's the echoes of similar behaviours in ourselves. Those behaviours we’d rather we didn’t perpetuate. The ones whose consequences sneak up on us in private moments and replay on loop until we push them back into the far corner of an over-stuffed cupboard. After all, the taste of our own medicine can be incredibly foul.

Social injustice is a phrase with which we are all familiar but an experience to which some are only witness. In those moments, as involuntary voyeurs, we have the uncomfortable choice to make: do we make a stand and become, as is commonly known today, an ally … or turn a blind eye? Doing what’s right is always good but it’s not always nice and it’s rarely easy. With times getting harder and the sad truth that injustice breeds injustice, speaking out could cost you your livelihood. As the cost of living rises does too the cost of morality?

Moral injustice is another type. Although it is becoming increasingly hard to tell apart from the previous. Mostly owing to the constant misappropriation of phrases for ever more sensational social media movements.

Ironically, that kind of misappropriation creates injustice in the form of severe accusations being thrown with reckless abandon at a person who, for instance, changes their mind about entering a relationship. Love-bombing, gaslighting and narcissism are now the vernacular of young adults that barely know to omit the hashtag before assigning the label to their chosen villain as a way of channelling their hurt. This vengeful use of such heavy language is not only unjust for the person being accused but robs those who have genuinely fallen victim to such behaviour of their own hopes for justice.

There are minor injustices we create for ourselves, dictated by our own paradigms and levels of understanding, esteem or entitlement. Why should I have to pay £4 for a flat-white that looks exactly like the cappuccino for which someone just paid £2.30?!

There are greater, more conceptual injustices too. Good does not always defeat evil. Truth will not always out.

Whilst injustice hurts; justice itself is rarely the salve. For what justice could we honestly hope, or even recognise, to adequately follow the crime? If, in infinite parallel universes, the same event took place, which conclusion would you choose that could truly appease? Justice and punishment are not the same. Our sense of justice may not be the same as the apparent wrong-doer's. Those behaving unjustly are surely justified by their own means and desires.

It could be that injustice is jealousy wearing a different hat. The envy of someone else’s having and the sting of our own not-having.

Maybe complaining is just the shortcut we take to securing a closer bond with friends or colleagues. A bittersweet satisfaction comes from the validation of your peers who recognise an injustice you've suffered. “That’s awful, you poor thing”.

Perhaps the thing about an injustice that hurts most is the abuse of our perception of reality. That we can believe so wholeheartedly in a truth and see that truth diminished, minimised, ridiculed, realigned or eroded by some other person serving some other purpose.

I heard recently that our perception of reality accounts for less than 1% of actual reality; our senses are so limited and we are such biased creatures.

“Perception is more important than reality. If someone perceives something to be true, it is more important than if it is in fact true. This doesn't mean you should be duplicitous or deceitful, but don't go out of your way to correct a false assumption if it plays to your advantage” - Ivanka Trump

What we’re really talking about is fairness. Justice and fairness are not the same but, as previously mentioned, some phrases are becoming more and more difficult to distinguish.

An unfairness doesn’t sound as damaging as an injustice though. How can we hope to whip our pub-table comrades into a frenzy of empathetic rage with words as flaccid as unfair?

Maybe that’s the point. Our reaction isn’t equal to the action. We’re unable to distinguish the severity of the event because, either way, we’re on the receiving end. Or at least perceiving the receiving.

When did you last encounter an injustice? What was your response? I’m genuinely interested, so please feel free to hit the reply button.

My default mode in these moments seems to be flabbergastation (yes, I enjoyed using that word as much as you imagined). I did a lot of ‘work’, many years ago, reducing anger but, sometimes, I mourn that loss. Sometimes, it feels like anger would be the only appropriate response to the behaviours of the unjust. Anger would be the motivating, driving force to make right the wrongdoing.

But would I sleep better at night knowing my middle finger was at full mast before I walked out of that office in a blaze of glory? Probably not. I’d probably lie awake beating myself up for behaving so unfairly and doing an injustice to all those that rely on me.

“Fairness is for happy people, for people who have been lucky enough to have lived a life defined more by certainties than by ambiguities.

Right and wrong, however, are for—well, not unhappy people, maybe, but scarred people; scared people.” - Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life