I hope this can be the beginning or a process to close the gap between what we say about justice and what we do...
I do not deceive myself by thinking that I have answers to the question to which this website is dedicated, but I do have a model and a process: the human body and how it is managed by the brain and nervous system.
And, of course, I have many more questions that I trust will guide and help those of us who wish to participate in creating a just society suited to the facts as they are today rather than as they were 250 years ago.
I intend what follows, therefore, as a record of a work-in-process... a monologue and diary in which I will try to record the evolution of our collective ideas by merging your comments and feedback into what I write.
What is justice? and Who is a just person? are questions that have occupied the minds and energies of countless men and women over the millennia... and my own for several decades.
From Hammurabi to Moses to Plato to John Rawls, there has been a huge diversity and variety of concepts, opinions, beliefs and theories expressed by way of answers. But it is not my intent to consider or review them in detail here.
The question I am addressing here is how to create a just society... which has much less to do with theory and much more to do with practice... to look at what we, as society, actually do. And though it may be a case of putting the cart before the horse, my working thesis is this:
Whatever philosophies, values and ideas we accept to define justice, a just society is one in which there exists a reasonable, accessible, expeditious, inexpensive, honest, transparent, accountable, fair, equitable and compassionate method or process for adjusting the conflicts that arise (i) between people, (ii) between people and institutions, (iii) between people or institutions and government, and (iv) between governments.
There is a parable from Jewish mysticism concerning the foundations of this world that I think is relevant to the task of designing a just society.
It is said that God did not create this world in which we now live on his first attempt to create it, but on the third.
The first time, He created it totally from justice. But it was too rigid, too fragile, too brittle, too fixed and unbending... – it could stand up but it could not stay up: it crumbled and fell apart.
The second time, He created it totally from mercy. But this world was too mushy, too whippy, too liquid and flexible ... and it could not even stand up.
So the third time, He created it from both justice and mercy... and put us here to decide just how much justice and how much mercy is required in each case.
So it is that the prophet, Micah, says that what is expected of and from each of us is to "do justice; love mercy; walk humbly."
