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Social Justice
is a sub-topic within the broader conception of Justice generally. It refers to the fairness of the distribution of social benefits and costs, including income, property, legal rights, taxes, environmental quality, and so forth. Lots of current events involve conflicting conceptions of social justice, and social justice is a part of many conflicts within our society, including racial, ethnic, gender, socio-economic, and other types of relations. The recent events in Ferguson have relevance for social justice in the US.
Different people use different criteria for determining what social distribution is just; the most well known being equality (to each equally), merit (to each according to their ability to contribute to society), and equity (to each according to what they give back in exchange). Actually trying to apply these criteria in a practical in a real world setting is extremely difficult and complicated, as people will disagree on even basic definitions.
Human Rights are a set of rights that are intended to be given to every member of society in equal measure. They are the rights one receives simply by virtue of being human. There are different lists, the UN has one. Usually these rights are written in such a way as to ensure that everyone is treated equally, at least before the law.
Technically, if everyone has a right to some form of treatment by society, that should be the same thing as social justice. People will come into conflict over exactly what rights those are, or if a set of universal human rights even exists.
I hope this helps answer your questions.
My name's Ben.
Want a fun way to think about justice, social or not?
A gift given by powerful societies to themselves for the purpose of systemizing and limiting revenge.
Great men are almost never good men, they say. One wonders what philosopher of the good would value the impotence of his disciples.
I believe pretty much every society has a conception of social justice, regardless of their power.
In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good.
Also, revenge itself follows injustice. Without the concept of justice there would be no revenge.
My name's Ben.
Revenge is much, much older than justice, at least justice as we'd recognize it.
Regardless, the point is that justice is such a squishy concept and super variable by both time and location.
If a people are weak, they are not going to receive justice. They will instead receive tyranny. That's what I was trying to say.
edited 14th Sep '14 6:18:58 AM by garridob
Great men are almost never good men, they say. One wonders what philosopher of the good would value the impotence of his disciples.
Revenge is the Mr Hyde to Justice's Dr Jekyll. Both seek to "balance the books", karma-wise, but revenge takes a far more malicious approach to the endeavour.
In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good.
My name's Ben.
I'd agree with you both. I think that justice, as we'd call it today, is an attempt to systemize and tame vengeance. This is why you only see what we'd call justice in societies with relatively powerful populaces - because systemized and tamed justice is really inconvenient for tyrants.
Great men are almost never good men, they say. One wonders what philosopher of the good would value the impotence of his disciples.
Oh, you meant within a society. Fair enough, but my perception is that "populations" only because "weak" (or, to put it another way, extreme social hierarchy only became a thing) after the agricultural revolution. Hunter-gatherer societies seem to have had less of a problem with this.
My name's Ben.
That's a good point about the wanderer gatherers. Perhaps it's better said as power relative to the leadership of whatever society it is.
For example, a hunter gatherer has lots of power relative to his chief and can thus expect justice. But when the Spanish show up, he will have almost no power relative to them and thus cannot expect much justice at all.
Great men are almost never good men, they say. One wonders what philosopher of the good would value the impotence of his disciples.
Sounds plausible.
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
Would it be accurate to say that the only way you can judge people is through their actions, regardless of what they say or think?
I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.
I'd put speech in the middle. Actions speak louder than words, but words are still louder than thoughts.
How do you know what they think, if they dont say it?
Telepathy, mostly.
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
Point.
I think what I wanted to say is that if one say something, but his/her action indicates otherwise, I think it's better to judge that person by the action, rather than what s/he says.
I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.
Oh, yeah, sure.
In the pursuit of great, we failed to do good.
Speaking is an action. If someones other actions betray what they say, I would say it is better to judge them by their actions. This isn't limited to speech though. If someone donates to a charity only to look good but otherwise harms people as long as they get away with it, I would judge them by the latter too. On the other hand, if someone hits me (physical action) and then apologizes sincerly and explains that it was a misunderstanding (speeking) I would judge them by their speech.
Well, there is a recognized difference between the values one espouses and the values implicit in one's behavior. Often, people actually believe the values they espouse, and may be entirely unaware of the difference between the way they act and the values they endorse. I wouldn't disregard espoused values entirely, however. Studies show that certain conditions make people more aware of their espoused values, and they become more likely to follow them. Also, a change in one's espoused values is likely to "drag" implicit values along with them, although not to the same extent. For example, if one makes a conscious decision to become more sensitive to racial issues, then one's espoused values are likely to be very consistent with that position. One's implicit values will also change toward greater sensitivity, although to a lessor degree (being still affected by other factors such as self-interest). Discussion and dialogue will influence both types of values, so I would say that both are important.
Some suggesting talking about this here. That is, green modernism, not necessarily that article.
Basically, green modernism is environmentalism that sees nuclear power, biotech, high-yield agriculture, and dense cities as potential tools (if used properly) to help the environment. And they generally see geoengineering if not optimistically per se, then at least as a very cautiously considered possible last resort.
They think active ecological restoration deserve more attention, because conservation measures aren't working and won't in themselves fix what's lost already. More radically, they see the possibility of using biotech to to bring species back from extinction, perhaps even a massive "Pleistocene National Park" with free-roaming mammoths (the idea being bringing back extinct megafauna will help restore ecological balance and biodiversity that still hasn't recovered).
Now on the more philosophical tenets, which I'm more comfortable expressing as my own opinion.
The idea of untouched wilderness is a myth that hasn't existed for at 10,000 years. There is no place left that is untouched by human activity, and humanity was never "at balance with nature", even before agriculture. Moreover, as we see more evidence of prehistoric climate conditions, we can see climate is naturally extremely jumpy, and this extended period of climate stability is very unusual, and in fact most likely a result of the human population explosion at the end of the ice age.
And none of this is an unusual thing in nature at all. Organisms effect the climate and environment in profound and unstable ways all the time, and in fact, ecological balance has always been short-lived in Earth's history, "Gaia" undergoes profound, discontinuous, and even catastrophic change all the time. And the incredible wastefulness and ecological destructiveness of humanity isn't an unnatural deviation (there's plenty of evidence humanity always was), predators in the wild do this all the time if given the chance, regardless of the risk to the food supply. Evolution is a risk taker, at heart, and doesn't care about the long term and certainly not its individual reproductive vehicles.
Moreover, the very idea of species is a human abstraction with little basis in reality, useful as it might be. And so is the distinction between "unnatural" and the "natural". Neither has any real moral standing whatsoever, and at best are loosely guiding concepts useful for legal purposes, with many important caveats. I think there's a real heartlessness claiming otherwise. They think utilitarian perspectives towards the environment are cold, but they care nothing about individual animals, seeing them dispensable objects only useful towards balancing the aggregate population, equal to a plant or bacterium.
I feel like deep ecology accusing eco-pragmatists of anthropocentrism is well off the mark. In reality, their ideas are far too grounded in human-centered abstractions like "equality", "freedom", and "balance", which certainly nature doesn't care about. And there's too much wishful thinking about nature and pre-industrial society.
edited 23rd Oct '14 8:50:54 PM by CassidyTheDevil
Professional Writer & Amateur Scholar
Say, would you guys agree that Good Feels Good?
Well...I certainly hope that it's true.
edited 24th Oct '14 7:33:21 PM by dRoy
I'm a (socialist) professional writer serializing a WWII alternate history webnovel.
Do amoebae, slime moulds, and other assorted unicellular, heterotrophic organisms have sensitive souls?
...I should really refrain from reading Aristotle at 1 AM.
edited 28th Nov '14 10:55:43 PM by SantosLHalper
If they do, I imagine they're very small ones.
FABRICATI DIEM, PVNC!
If they do I can think of a few people who were probably amoebae in their previous life - and might actually be amoebae now.
edited 29th Nov '14 2:58:10 AM by BestOf
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur.
I'm not sure this is the right thread for this, but I've got a few questions:
- How is Social Justice different from "normal" Justice, and why is that so?
- How is Social Justice related to Human Rights, and can one conflict with the other?
Keep Rolling On