How can justice be achieved?

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by lixluke, May 28, 2005.

  1. lixluke Refined Reinvention Valued Senior Member

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    I never question whether or not justice can be acheived. A planet with no poverty and crime. The only question in my mind is what can I do to help bring this about.

    How can justice be achieved?
    If possible, try to avoid discussing how it will never be achieved because that is not the question.




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    Practical question: How can justice be achieved?
    Impractical question: Why will justice never be achieved?
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    For some reason, whenver I ask the above practical question, I get an answer to the above impractical question.

    Why does humanity focus on the impractical?
    Is it me or does anybody else have the feeling that humanity seems to consider the practical to be the impractical and the impractical to be the practical?

    Is this focus on the impractical the sole reason that prevents the practical?
    What can we do to change the language or thought system to abide by a more practical paradigm or frame of reference?

    If you believe that what I am labeling to be practical and what I am labeling to be impractical is subjective and not objective, please explain yourself.
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2005
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  3. Xerxes asdfghjkl Valued Senior Member

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    It can't be achieved.

    However, I have a feeling that if people were more intelligent they would be less prone to hurting themselves.
     
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  5. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    !.Practical question: How can justice be achieved?

    Using non biased computers to meat out fines and punishment according to specfied rules and laws that cannot be appealed.








    Impractical question: Why will justice never be achieved?

    Justice can never be totaly achieved for there are to many variables that prevent it from being done. Justice is done, in many instances, which seems to hold society from becoming a vigilanty type of society. The rich seem always to get away with whatever they do but sometimes they to are given justice. Society changes its laws every day here in America for the lawyers are always appealing decissions to the Supreme Court to have certain laws overturned, modified or repealed. To the poor justice will never happen for they aren't given the top notch legal aid they need to avoid punishment. Whenever bribery, threats or intimidation can take place justice will find it tough to be honest.
     
    Last edited: May 29, 2005
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  7. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Why do you define "justice" as "no poverty or crime?" The standard definition of "justice," at least in America, requires only that criminals be apprehended and prosecuted. As for poverty, it's all relative. One of the major health problems among America's "poor" is... obesity!

    Anyway, to answer your question, we will continue to get closer to justice, even by your definition, as prosperity increases. The reason that the "poor people" in America seem like aristocrats to people in Zambia or Bangla Desh is that the standard of living here is so much higher. Even the people who fall far short of it are better off than most working people in those countries.

    There will always be crime -- not to fall into your second question but merely to debate your premise -- but as prosperity increases crime migrates from the street into the board room.

    So if you want to see worldwide justice, do your best to spread the prosperity of the industrial nations a little more widely.
     
  8. lixluke Refined Reinvention Valued Senior Member

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    Ending crime and poverty, and the use of the word justice is far from specific.
    They are just words and concepts so that I don't have to go into a whole explaination of what a society of freedom and justice is.
    Where there is high education, high physical health, access to food/water/medicine/technology/comfort/convenience. A clean environment. How to bring it about.

    The first step would obviously be to define what we want.
    We want a society that is clean, we want a society where there is no obesity or any form of poverty, we want a society with no crime and war, we want peace, we want technology, we want progress, we want freedom, we want cleanliness and beauty, we want safety, we want comfort, we want truth in information and entertaining education, we want freedom from racism and discrimination, we want fair treatment and opportunities, we want joy and fulfillment in everything we do etc.

    There is no practicality in asking any other question than how can we bring this about. Or asking what part can I play in bringing this about.
    The reason it is practical is because such a question automatically presumes it can be brought about. This is practical thinking. This is what realism should be.

    To ask the question why it will never happen is impractical because it automatically presumes it will never happen. This question is not practical and it is not realistic, yet this is the type of fallacy that many would refer to as realism and practical thinking. In fact it is no way realistic and definitely counterproductive. In other words, impractical. It's insanity to doom yourself with such a presumption.
     
  9. lixluke Refined Reinvention Valued Senior Member

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    The impracticality of presuming justice can never be achieved would mean that there is no point in pursuing it. Therefore, I could possibly conclude that the biggest enemy to justice is not necessarily injustice. The biggest enemy against justice is that it is not be pursued. Something that is not being pursued obviously cannot be achieved. The reason it is not being pursued is because of the belief that it will never be achieved. Therefore, the bigggest enemy of justice is the false belief that justice will never be achieved.

    Moreso, I could easily conclude that if one is not pursuing justice, one is pursuing injustice. There is no such thing as pursuing nothing. What you pursue will wither lead to justice or away from it. Therefore, to believe that justice cannot be achieved is to not pursue justice is to pursue injustice.

    Therefore, the biggest enemy against justice really is none other than the false belief that justice cannot be achieved. And all the pathetic reasoning that is thrown out there about why justice supposedly will never be achieved.
     
  10. KOE Registered Senior Member

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    87
    Sadly I think thats the closest to justice we could ever get. But that would also not be right. Computers have no compassion, and wouldn't understand how a criminal may have felt at the time.
     
  11. Xerxes asdfghjkl Valued Senior Member

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    What about indirectly? He who seeks not shall find.

    or something like that..

    Through less clouded judgement, I could easily conclude that if one is pursuing justice, one is also pursuing injustice. To me, they are one and the same.

    The fact that you have survived this long is proof enough that justice does not exist. Or, that its a fancy ideal your mother pursued.
     
  12. Yorda Registered Senior Member

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    Time makes justice. It's a question about the human evolution, the devolopment of the mind. People can't do anything to make justice. If they could, they would. They can try, and after a long time, they believe they have made justice. But justice and injustice exist in the mind, not in the world outside.
     
  13. lixluke Refined Reinvention Valued Senior Member

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    Ok the indirectly thing is always possile. Pursuit of injustice backfiring, and giving us justice.

    Justice and injustice are not one and the same. They are antithesis.
     
  14. siledre Registered Senior Member

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    487
    I agree it is acheivable but you have to take into account ego, pride, desire, lust, etc.. We all have these in varying degree's and fortunately these are offset by things like humility, love, sacrifice, understanding, etc..
    I think most of us understand that we can't always have something and move on but there will always be the few that are unable to come to grips with the darker side of themselves and unfortunately too many of them end up as our elected officials.
     
  15. xelius00 Registered Senior Member

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    78
    As you define justice (no poverty and no crime), you would also define communism.

    So to answer your practical question, justice can be achieved through (though not necessarily exclusively through) communism.

    The answer to the impractical question, however, is intrinsic to communism: Communism does not and cannot work, for what I believe to be three simple reasons applicable to almost all people.

    1) Desires that exceed the needs communism seeks to fulfill. These disires will ensure that there will never be an end to crime.
    2) The difficulty in relinquishing absolute power (hence the elusive nature of the epiphanic "withering away of the state", which communism also seeks to achieve).
    3) Loafing. Take for example the televisions produced in Soviet Russia that had a tendency to spontaneously explode. Without the initiative to produce working products that people would actually want to buy (something necessary to survival in a capitalist economy), companies in communist countries can simply seek government subsidies for any shortcomings in revenue. The result is an economy of miserable business failures supported by stilts that are the business successes, which of course, exist few and far between.

    To answer your other question, I'm not sure that it is a focus on the impractical that prevents the practical. Note that poverty is always the result of the actions of people. In developed and free countires, poverty results from poor life choices (dropping out of school, using drugs, etc) which leads to crime. In underdeveloped countries, poverty is the result of the actions of politicians and bureaucrats (wars, preferential supply of food, etc). While some blame drought and natural disasters, consider the case of western Canada, which has experienced a severe drought for several years now. Despite this fact, nobody in Canada is starving, proving that sufficient economic development and political stability can always offset the effects of any natural disaster. Nor can a lack of natural resources be blamed for economic underdevelopment, for if anyone can think of a natural resource that's left in the ever-prosperous Switzerland, I'd like to hear of it.

    It would seem that some crime is the result of poverty, but this is not true of all crime (for example, the case of Svend Robinson, the Canadian politician who stole expensive jewlery despite the considerable salary awarded to members of Parliament in Canada -- http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/04/15/canada/robinson_040415 ). So by eliminating poverty, one has still not eliminated crime. And by eliminating crime, one has done little and probably even nothing to affect poverty. In fact the elimination of crime would require such massive financial resources and that higher taxes would probably increase poverty. It would also require a desperate political and cultural shift that advocated the violation of rights of the innocent in the interest of investigating and preventing crime, something that seems to reek of injustice by itself.

    Sorry for going so deep into the question you didn't want me to answer.

    Despite the fact that justice seems to logically be a lack of crime and poverty, as Fraggle Rocker suggested, this may be the wrong definition.
     
  16. xelius00 Registered Senior Member

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    78
    Oh. I like Yorda's suggestion that time makes justice. Gene Roddenberry presented in Star Trek (not that I'm a Trekkie heheh) a world in which humanity enjoyed constant justice. Besides, one can realistically expect that as our race becomes more developed economically, socially and scientifically, we will become more just.

    But the problem with this theory is that it isn't TIME that is breeding justice. Something is occuring during this time, and this THING that is happening is what is making the world a more just place.

    The obvious difficulty here is pinpointing exactly what is going on across time which increases justice.
     
  17. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    A problem with computers comes to mind. Humans will program them so even computers are suseptable to becoming "rigged" as well, oh well there goes another idea.

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  18. Yorda Registered Senior Member

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    That's not so hard, is it? Infact, I already said that when humans advance, justice takes place. Justice happens over time.
     
  19. lixluke Refined Reinvention Valued Senior Member

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    No it doesn't.
    Crime rate can be pinpointed.
    Poverty level can be pinpointed.
    Health and well being can be pinpointed.
    Level of education can be pinpointed.
    Pollution level can be pinpointed.
    Standard of living can be pinpointed.
    Freedom to do what you want can be pinpointed.
     
  20. Xerxes asdfghjkl Valued Senior Member

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    Uh, cool skill.. Not everything can be quantified. Especially such subjective things as crime, poverty, education and health.

    People have to take responsibility for themselves.
     
  21. lixluke Refined Reinvention Valued Senior Member

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    Of course crime rate, education, poverty, health, etc can be measured and quantified.


    Time does not bring about justice in the sense of better quality of life and freedom for the individual which is what I am referring to when I say justice.


    People are not taking responsibility for themselves. The poor are serving the rich. Our primitive system is completely backwards. I'd seem crazy if I were to say that the rich should be serving the poor. But that is how a progressive system functions. People are free to do what they want. Nobody may serve anybody out of desperation, but out of their own free choice.
     
  22. xelius00 Registered Senior Member

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    78
    "Development of the mind."

    So it is economic/social/technological advancement that produces justice? If that's true, it's still an awfully broad range of variables.

    While it is technically correct to say "some numbers between two and seven can be added to equal nine", you haven't found exactly what numbers they are, nor have you accounted for the possibility that there may be more than one combination of numbers that would work to produce nine.

    What I'm trying to say is that I don't believe it's possible to achieve perfect justice unless we know what justice is and what makes it. To say "development of the mind" makes justice is a good starting block but it seems a little too anemic to me. The development of the mind is not constant and involuntary. Rather, it is done through actions, the effects of which are passed down through generations.

    When you say that people can't do anything to make justice, you're wrong. Justice can be made through the executive and legislative branches of government, which is nothing more than a group of people brainstorming and working to some end. One could brainstorm a million different examples of people "making" justice that do not have to include government.

    Justice does exist in the outside world. While there may be subjective elements to what justice is, there are certainly objective elements as well; a common centre of mass around which all ideals of justice orbit.

    I must reiterate that since we must know what justice is to achieve perfect justice, for as long as it is somewhat subjective, there will never be perfect justice. Being that we (and I'm assuming all others here) agree that justice increases with time, we can imagine justice becoming infinitely more perfect but never actually reaching true perfection.
     
  23. xelius00 Registered Senior Member

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    This is a subjective point of view. The rich serve the poor as well. As a fairly poor person myself (student) , I serve my rich corporation by being employed there and doing the work that needs to be done. They, in turn, serve me back by giving me money for my effort which I can use to feed and house myself. As soon as I find a better deal, I'm gone. The way I see it, my employer is rich, but he's still serving me.

    But if it is true that the poor are serving the rich and I am suffering from some kind of "false consciousness" (which I highly doubt), nothing is to say that the rich owe anything to the poor. Everyone has the opportunity to be what they like. It is through hard work and dedication, planning and foresight, that we find success and satisfaction. Those who choose to educate themselves earn higher wages and enjoy a higher quality of living than those who do not want to. Those who are unable to provide post-secondary education for themselves can try for scholarships and loans to be paid back when they actually have money.

    Some would say that poverty is a choice; In most cases, I tend to agree.

    *Oh and this of course assumes we're talking about a developed country. The third world is another story completely.
     

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