Replying to
On Justice
Justice is wired deeply into our biology, it is not just a social construct.
Babies as young as 15 months expect resources to be distributed fairly. Monkeys, dogs, and ravens have all been shown to seek justice in various experiments.
Chimpanzees actually refuse a reward if it is not also equally provided to their peer!
As with anything that is wired so deeply into us, it's easy to get carried away with pursuing justice at all cost, sometimes to our own detriment.
One classic example is the movie cop, who ignores due process and public safety to achieve justice for a dangerous criminal.
Society and mainstream media often glorify these actions, because appealing to our deep-wired craving for justice is an easy dopamine hit.
But in our day-to-day life, justice can come at the price of peace or of work standing still.
A real-world example and case study has been the kitchens in our house. It is just and fair that anyone who makes a mess or dirties something should clean it. . . but that is not the whole picture.
We also all deserve a clean kitchen to use. We all sometimes fuck up and make a mess that we either don't notice, or forget about, or are just too busy to clean in the moment.
More controversially, we all have different handicaps when it comes to cleaning, and some people are seemingly just unable to do it, whether due to depression, pain, or just feeling overwhelmed.
While we pursue justice, at considerable cost in time and peace, the kitchen stands dirty and unusable, building precedent for a dirty kitchen.
The time and effort of just cleaning the kitchen, without looking too carefully about to figure out who exactly should clean what, is usually negligible in comparison.
I am reminded of an extreme example I encountered in real life. A church parishioner had become disabled, unable to see clearly. She was already living together with her disabled child. They are a low-income family. Together, just trying to survive, they made a mess of their apartment that they were unable to handle.
So a few volunteers got together and tried to help them. For 2-3 hours at a time on Sundays, we would show up with sponges and trash bags, and gather up trash, scrub the kitchen and bathroom, and organize the other spaces. It was a lot of work, and I learned just how efficient and effective I can be at cleaning a space.
We ultimately failed. Each Sunday, in those 2-3 hours of cleaning, we made an impact in some parts of the apartment, but these cleared areas would be overwhelmed in the following week. Eventually, professional cleaners finished the job for us. When we last visited them, their apartment looked tidy and normal.
Would it be just to ask them to clean their own mess? And would it be effective? This is an extreme example that makes the absurdity of this demand easy to see.
But in less clear cases, we regularly set expectations for people based on our own abilities that others are just not equipped to handle. Recently, we gained a new term for this: ableism.
Ableism started out in the disability rights movement, but what is a disability? Another term that's come about is "differently abled", as a way to shift attention away from what is normal or baseline to what a particular individual is capable of.
And if we expand the range of abilities from the traditional walking, talking, and the five senses, we can see that there are all sorts of abilities we assume or expect of people, and judge for not having.
For example, many people are able to navigate common social situations without becoming angry, but some are not. If a person gets angry and shows their anger, we treat it as their shortcoming. Their actions have undesirable impact on others, and we also perceive them as having a choice about getting angry or not.
Similarly, we judge people harshly for not doing their dishes and cleaning the kitchen after themselves, because it affects others negatively, and we perceive them as just blowing off their responsibilities and making a choice not to do their chores.
Just to be clear on where we stand: Angry interactions make social life harder to navigate, and a dirty kitchen is unusable by others, and we should not accept these things.
Having said that, what if start by treating people's shortcomings as temporary or permanent (unalterable) disabilities, and find ways to route around them?
Justice is wired deeply into our biology, it is not just a social construct.
Babies as young as 15 months expect resources to be distributed fairly. Monkeys, dogs, and ravens have all been shown to seek justice in various experiments.
Chimpanzees actually refuse a reward if it is not also equally provided to their peer!
As with anything that is wired so deeply into us, it's easy to get carried away with pursuing justice at all cost, sometimes to our own detriment.
One classic example is the movie cop, who ignores due process and public safety to achieve justice for a dangerous criminal.
Society and mainstream media often glorify these actions, because appealing to our deep-wired craving for justice is an easy dopamine hit.
But in our day-to-day life, justice can come at the price of peace or of work standing still.
A real-world example and case study has been the kitchens in our house. It is just and fair that anyone who makes a mess or dirties something should clean it. . . but that is not the whole picture.
We also all deserve a clean kitchen to use. We all sometimes fuck up and make a mess that we either don't notice, or forget about, or are just too busy to clean in the moment.
More controversially, we all have different handicaps when it comes to cleaning, and some people are seemingly just unable to do it, whether due to depression, pain, or just feeling overwhelmed.
While we pursue justice, at considerable cost in time and peace, the kitchen stands dirty and unusable, building precedent for a dirty kitchen.
The time and effort of just cleaning the kitchen, without looking too carefully about to figure out who exactly should clean what, is usually negligible in comparison.
I am reminded of an extreme example I encountered in real life. A church parishioner had become disabled, unable to see clearly. She was already living together with her disabled child. They are a low-income family. Together, just trying to survive, they made a mess of their apartment that they were unable to handle.
So a few volunteers got together and tried to help them. For 2-3 hours at a time on Sundays, we would show up with sponges and trash bags, and gather up trash, scrub the kitchen and bathroom, and organize the other spaces. It was a lot of work, and I learned just how efficient and effective I can be at cleaning a space.
We ultimately failed. Each Sunday, in those 2-3 hours of cleaning, we made an impact in some parts of the apartment, but these cleared areas would be overwhelmed in the following week. Eventually, professional cleaners finished the job for us. When we last visited them, their apartment looked tidy and normal.
Would it be just to ask them to clean their own mess? And would it be effective? This is an extreme example that makes the absurdity of this demand easy to see.
But in less clear cases, we regularly set expectations for people based on our own abilities that others are just not equipped to handle. Recently, we gained a new term for this: ableism.
Ableism started out in the disability rights movement, but what is a disability? Another term that's come about is "differently abled", as a way to shift attention away from what is normal or baseline to what a particular individual is capable of.
And if we expand the range of abilities from the traditional walking, talking, and the five senses, we can see that there are all sorts of abilities we assume or expect of people, and judge for not having.
For example, many people are able to navigate common social situations without becoming angry, but some are not. If a person gets angry and shows their anger, we treat it as their shortcoming. Their actions have undesirable impact on others, and we also perceive them as having a choice about getting angry or not.
Similarly, we judge people harshly for not doing their dishes and cleaning the kitchen after themselves, because it affects others negatively, and we perceive them as just blowing off their responsibilities and making a choice not to do their chores.
Just to be clear on where we stand: Angry interactions make social life harder to navigate, and a dirty kitchen is unusable by others, and we should not accept these things.
Having said that, what if start by treating people's shortcomings as temporary or permanent (unalterable) disabilities, and find ways to route around them?