In the beginning there is injustice

Prologue
In this blurb I would like to explore the idea/notion of global justice. Justice, both its philosophical definition as well as everyday application, warrants numerous doctoral dissertations and I shall not embarrass myself in attempting to elucidate it. Global justice is arguably a task that is as formidable but no less important. Its scope and complexity are beyond my imagination and, quite frankly, intellect. As a young adult and your peer, I believe it would be more valuable and appropriate, and hopefully helpful, to offer nothing but my own limited, personal, subjective, and, inevitably, ill-informed view. I would rather make mistakes than to remain silent. It would be beneficial for us, and this blog, to see this essay and the ones to follow as a journey and an open-end exploratory discussion, rather than an exhaustive report.

In the beginning there is injustice
In order to understand and contribute to global justice, we must first know where we stand today as a community. Let me open with a clear and present example of global injustice—without which I fear that any discussion would be purely academic and rhetorical and futile.

Darfur (達爾富爾), a region in western Sudan, is witnessing genocide at this very moment. Since 2003, over 400,000 people have been killed; 2.5 million displaced from their homes, and even more are now relying solely on foreign aid (when there is any) to survive. It is estimated that a person is killed in Darfur in every 5 minutes. Living in mass refugee camps with no means of defense, African Sudanese are facing constant threat of murder, rape, and destruction and terrorism of all sorts. Their perpetrators are the Sudanese government and their hired gun, militant groups collectively known as “Janjaweed”. We are perhaps too young to remember the gruesome tragedy in Rwanda but suffice to say that the current plight of Darfur is at least as horrific as the 1994 genocide. When even survival is questionable, any discourse on human rights becomes a humorless joke. With this picture in mind, let us disentangle our assignment in understanding and relating ourselves to global justice in general, and the vast injustice of Darfur in particular.

Global justice is ultimately a process of redeeming and loving oneself and others. It is a process because it entails, if you will, a constant struggle. If there is one thing we could learn from history, it would be that suffering has always, and will always, existed. From the day we were born, we are struggling to survive, to procreate, to gain acceptance, to love and be loved, to find meaning amid meaningless, to dig for hope in endless hopelessness, and—the mother of all struggles—to deal with our inevitable mortality.

Moreover, our survival and existence are not unrelated to the suffering and struggle of others’. From materialistic demands (basic or luxurious) to emotional burden we inflict on each other (greed, pride, ego etc.), we are constantly creating more and more pain and suffering. One more tree we chop means one less tree for someone else. A gloomy, pessimistic picture it is, but I believe this realization is the first essential step towards the understanding of the importance and necessity of establishing and maintaining what we call justice. Knowing that we are not innocent is a crucial first step. Global justice is an ongoing process, it is an ideal we can aspire to but perhaps never can be achieved completely.

Obviously we also bring joy and happiness to each other. In fact, global justice in particular and justice in general is about—besides self-redemption—loving oneself and others. This necessitates the awareness of the relationship between oneself and others. It entails knowing that the person living next to you is as valuable as you are, as deserving as you are. Hence the “golden rule,” presumed to be the best moral standard our ancestors have derived and hence the law elucidated in the Christian bible, love your neighbor as yourself. Equally valuable in what sense and as deserving as what, are on the other hand questions that require further exploration and extended negotiation. In any event, the answers to these queries must be agreed upon or at least acknowledged collectively—as dyads, as a community, and as a family. I am mindful that this might be a controversial viewpoint, especially in our post-modern era in which a one-size-fit-all solution usually elicits strong reprehension. Allow me to rewind and explain what I mean.

Human beings are not equal. We probably were meant to be, but the established societal system has created a reality of inequality: Some of us are born more privileged than others, some of us are more fortunate than others, some of us are stronger, wealthier, faster, smarter, and so forth. Survival the fittest, some might argue as the bleak reality, but we must recognize that not everyone was placed on the same beginning line. While we, citizens of Hong Kong, enjoy the things we can easily take for granted—basic necessities, education, and even life—the chances of surviving and thriving for a young adult of our age in Darfur are a mere tiny fraction of ours—recall the 5-minute/life stat. The differences we are talking about include whether or not you need to worry daily that you or the person sleeping next to you will be still alive the next morning; whether or not your village will be raid and burned while you are asleep; whether or not your newborn son/daughter will survive to witness their first birthday. Is this just?

Obviously not. So what brought about such injustice? Perhaps it is useful to explore two of the fundamental limitations of our world that have been preventing us from reaching the noble goal.

Resources are scarce, or at least that is the basic tenet underlying most, if not all, practiced economic theories. As the logic goes, there is only so much resources out there and therefore allocation is necessary. Little would argue that how resources are distributed is a large perpetrator to global injustice (hint: Marx). The 19th and 20th Centuries witnessed a number of experiments in finding the “right” way to allocate resources. And as you know, these experiments are called communism, socialism capitalism, and everything along that spectrum. Our parents and grandparents were fiddling around with the competing ideas of whether to share everything equally or to let people fight for their own resources. In other words, they were debating the definition and practice of “fairness” and “justice” (I am well aware of my crime of over-simplification). What is currently happening in Sudan is that resources are controlled and allocated by a government that is not representing the interest of the people, let alone the oppressed. Sudan is actually a oil-producing country, with the potential of developing into a well-off nation. While importers of Sudanese crude oil enjoy the privilege of energy and modernity—and those in power enjoys the wealth that comes with it— locals in Darfur are scavenging daily for leftover branches to make fire. Women too often become victims of gang rape and brutal slaughtering as they go out to search objects to burn so that they could cook and look out for themselves at night. Is this just?

Besides resources, another often-quoted contributor of global injustice is the “us and them” mentality. Humans have a fundamental tendency to categorize—to distinguishing things from one another (e.g., person vs. animal vs. plant vs. object; like-me vs. not like-me). This process arguably is not necessarily evil per se. Even stereotypes can be helpful from time to time; they ease the cognitive burden in making deliberate decisions every moment. However, as we are well aware of, prejudice and discrimination are too often the consequences of separating people into groups (e.g., black vs. white, rich vs. poor). Sudanese distinguishes themselves from one another not by their skin color as they all have dark skin, not by their religion as the majority of people is Muslim, but by their ethnicity and, as a proxy, mother tongue. The main struggle between the Arabic- and African-Sudanese and the most salient indicators of one’s group identity is how one self-identifies and whether one speaks Arabic as a first or as a second language. And the consequence is life and death. Is this just?

Put together these two powerful mechanisms—economy and identity—we find ourselves in situations where we have to make difficult and often painful decisions such as who do we favor, who do we hire, who do we share our limited resources with. After all, we can only feed so many people with our scarce resources; after all, it is only “natural” that we first ensure the survival and well-being of those we love and those who love us. I believe this is partly how injustice and indeed global injustice came about. We should be fair to acknowledge that there could be an abyss between justice and equality (or injustice and inequality, for that matter): There is not an equal sign between the two ideas, or is there? Does equality = justice? Equity = justice? Fairness = justice?

We, as a society, a people, and specie, must establish what we consider as just. Some might decide that equality (at least in certain circumstances, to a certain extent) is the ultimate goal, while others might value meritocracy as the only fair rule. We could choose to engage in a lengthy discourse on the pros and cons of each value systems (e.g., religion, philosophy) from which justice is delineated before we make our decision. Or, we could choose one to endorse and adhere to before we begin our debate about justice. I favor the latter because I believe a common ground and understanding is a necessary immediate goal. We must establish a stance or even a working hypothesis because we cannot afford to remain neutral when it comes to something so pertinent to something as basic as survival (c.f., Howard Zinn). However, this begs the next question: do we really get to choose our destiny even if we had established the guidelines of morality and justice? Clearly, victims of Darfur suffer not because they chose to, but quite contrarily, the choice is not in their hands. In other words, some of us are born with more privilege of choice than others and some will suffer as a result. How did this come upon? Is this just?

As established above, human beings in the world as it is are not equal, which is at least in part the result of how civilization (or the lack of it) is structured and evolved. The interconnectivity of our world today obscures the idea of “local” justice—there is no such thing as purely local anymore. Some recent examples of global connectivity include the domino effect occurred during and after the 1997 Asian financial crisis, which not only destroyed the livelihoods of numerous East and Southeast Asians but is also closely related to the melt down of the economies in Latin America (especially that of Argentina) as well as Russia (see Joseph Stiglitz’s book “Globalization and Its Discontents” for an elegant introduction and discussion). It is almost impossible for us to live a day without affecting the well-being of others on the other side of the planet—just consider where your jeans, coffee, fruits, and indeed wealth come from (Naomi Klein’s “No Logo” provides an excellent discussion on our involvement in the current economy and political reality). In other words, everything and every event are in one way or another global. And indeed, even we—citizens of Hong Kong—are responsible for the genocide in Darfur. How? Recall mentioned above that Sudan exports oil. The major buyer of Sudanese oil is China (e.g., PetroChina). In other words, the cash we pay for gas and everything that was manufactured using energy from Sudan funds the genocide in Darfur. In other words, every dollar we (or our fund manager on our behalf) invest in PetroChina goes to finance an oppressive tyranny. Is this just? Are we just?

I do not intend to paint an overly critical picture of our world. But as I maintained in the beginning of this essay, the realization of such tragic reality is a step, a necessary one, towards global justice. If we are ignorant of what is happening right now—that the world is vastly unjust and we are part of the reason why—how can we even begin to explore what it means by, and what it takes to bring about, global justice? This is the beginning.

Other than the ones mentioned above, interested readers are referred to the following sources for more information:

On Darfur:
http://www.msf.org.hk/big5/news/special_detail.php?id=415
http://www.amnesty.org.hk/chi/modules/appealletter/index.php/1
http://www.savedarfur.org/content
http://www.genocideintervention.net/index.php

On politics/global justice in general:
http://www.opendemocracy.net/home/index.jsp
http://www.zmag.org/weluser.htm

Christian Chan
Cambridge, MA, USA
[This entry was modified from an essay the author wrote for lampful.com in March 2007]