Justice: The Real Way To Fight Back

Talk to some people and they believe justice is force and punishment, but talk to others and they’ll say non-violence is the way. So who is right and how can we know what to do when an injustice takes place? How do we know if it is unjust? What should the justice system do to protect others from being objectified? Can we find a way to figure out what justice is and its purpose in our lives? Given what we now know about negative emotions, lets use this information to find out what justice is and what a correct judicial system should be.

To start, we must be in agreement that justice’s purpose is to resolve a conflict. The better the justice system is, the less conflict there is. So to determine what justice must do, we first need to define what conflict is. The definition of a conflict happens when two people want two different things and one or more people choose to objectify each other in order to get what they want. Things that people can do to objectify people in order to get what they want are:

- Stealing
- Lying
- Cheating
- Insulting
- Fighting

How does Conflict Begin?

To get a better understanding of a conflict, lets walk through how a conflict starts and how a conflict ends. Lets say there is a sale on kraft dinner for five cents and there are two people who want Kraft dinner, Mark and Paul, but there is only one box of Kraft dinner. There are many ways to resolve this conflict, but lets go through an example of how negative emotions can erupt over this five cent kraft dinner.

Lets say that Mark just takes the last box of Kraft dinner and Paul tries to take it away from him. After some grabbing, Mark loses grip of the box and Paul now has it, so Mark pushes Paul stating ”That was my box of Kraft Dinner”. Paul, who finds the push insulting, says “Don’t push me” and pushes Mark back. Mark, who doesn’t tolerate it when people push him, pushes back and so there is now a pushing match. In the midst of this pushing match, Mark’s hand slips off of Paul’s shoulder and hits Paul in the face. Paul sees this as an escalation and decides to punch Mark. Then Paul and Mark start fist fighting. After a long battle, Mark feels as if he got his butt kicked and feels insulted that Paul beat him up. Since he has a gun in his car, he decides to show some added force by proving to everyone in the store that saw him lose his fight, that he is not a wimp. So he goes in his car and shoots Paul and seriously injures him.

So this particular situation would be a perfect example of how two people who:

- First see that there is a lack of what they want,
- Try to control each other because of that lack,
- Change their perspectives on why they are trying to control each other (being pushed is insulting)
- View things in their own perspective (hand slipped off of the shoulder it meant he tried to punch him)
- Change why they are controlling each other from the lack of what they want to stopping the other person from controlling or judging them (or being objectified)

Given this example above we can see that conflict happens because of two reasons:

- There is a lack of what they want instead of an abundance.
- They objectify each other

If conflict happens because of a perceived lack instead of abundance and because people choose to objectify, then the purpose of justice is to show both parties that there is abundance in what they want, to show the perpetrator why objectifying people is wrong and to show the victim how to stop being objectified. In the case of this particular example, both Mark and Paul would be considered the perpetrator and the victim, as they both objectified and they were both objectified.

Justice Should Help People to Understand Life By Helping Others Change Their Perspective

A perceived lack of abundance is only a problem of perception and not a problem of resources. In the example we used, we know that there is an abundance of kraft dinner, as I can go to any grocery store, or convenience store to get a pack of kraft dinner. So the problem of perception is not with the lack of kraft dinner, but it was the price of kraft dinner, or the way Mark and Paul thought about money. Do you think that Mark and Paul are wealthy people that they have to fight and shoot each other for a five cent box of kraft dinner? I think not. So their problem is with their perception of money. If justice is to be served, it would be best served by giving Mark AND Paul a better perception of money so that they can see that money is an abundant resource. If they both thought that money was an abundant resource, Mark or Paul wouldn’t care who got the five cent Kraft dinner because they can go to the corner store to pickup some Kraft dinner for a dollar, thus stopping the conflict before it even happens.

Given Justice is Helping Others To Understand, Then What Should Jails Do?

To get Mark and Paul to understand the correct perception of money, they would have to be put in a place, like a jail, until they learned the correct perception. Therefore, the intention of jail should be to help people understand the correct perceptions of life. This means that a jail term would be served for both Mark and Paul, instead of just Mark who would be put in jail for shooting someone, and the length of time they are in jail would be until they understood the correct perception of money. So if it takes someone five years to understand money, then that is how long it should take for them to be in jail.

And how do we know if Mark and Paul have corrected their perspective on money? When they choose to stop objectifying people to get what they want. An objectification of another only happens if you have an incorrect perspective, so objectifying is the way to identify incorrect perspectives. Therefore, this jail system should have a way of letting both Mark and Paul use money to see how they work with others in order to obtain money. If Mark and Paul understand the correct perspective on money, then they would show this by not objectifying other people within this jail. Therefore, if jails can help change people’s perspectives, then it will help the perpetrator get what they want without objectifying and thus reduce conflict.

If We Can’t Control People, Why Should We Have Jails That Hold People?

However, the problem is that in order to help someone change their perception, you have to influence them without controlling them. If they are a mass murderer, you can’t let them continue to kill others while they try and change their perspective on life. Instead one has to control that mass murderer by setting them aside, away from society and then influence their perception. The problem with doing so is that the mass murderer is also being objectified when the justice system puts them in jail and so they may try to resist being in jail and resist the attempts to be influenced. Therefore, jail must somehow provide an environment that doesn’t objectify, while at the same time controls them until they understand the new perspective. This delicate balance between showing them they are a living being while objectifying them at the same time is the difficulty with having a jail as being a place to reform people. To counteract this difficulty, jail must be seen as a place to learn instead of a place to be objectified or controlled. It must be noted that the environment that the mass murderer currently lives in is helping to reinforce their controlling and judging beliefs. Therefore, jail should be an environment that will help them to change their beliefs by having them let go their controlling and judging behaviours.

What Should the Victim Do?

As for someone who is being objectified, or the victim, this person’s role in the conflict is that they created actions, through their own incorrect perceptions, to let themselves be put in a position that allows the perpetrator to objectify them. If the victim made it harder for the perpetrator to get what they wanted, then it would deter the perpetrator from objectifying them to get what they want. Also, in the event that the justice system cannot be involved in the matter, as the crime is deemed to be too minor (Insults etc.), the victim needs to do what the justice system would have done, which is helping the perpetrator understand why they feel objectified.

For instance, say someone had their house robbed and lets say they felt that they didn’t need to take precautions because they have a home security system. Lets say that the robber knows that the security system is hooked up through their phone line and simply disconnects the phone line to gain access to the house. Given that the robber has found away to rob their house, it is now up to the victim to protect themselves to stop this from happening again. To do so, they could buy a dog or hire a security guard, thus making it more difficult for the robbers to rob their house. If everyone were to make it harder for people to rob houses, more robbers would stop objectifying people to get what they want and begin to look for ways to get what they want without objectifying. The additional role of the justice system, in addition to helping the perpetrator’s perspective on money, would be to help the victim find ways to reduce being objectified, by giving their opinion on what to do based on all of the previous experiences they have seen.

Another example of how a victim would act, but without the justice system’s help would be if one person, Mary, insulted another person, Elizabeth, by saying she was fat, then it is Elizabeth’s job to find ways to avoid being objectified. This may be to tell Mary why she feel objectified and to stop objectifying. If she doesn’t stop, then Elizabeth can walk away and avoid Mary.

There is a reason why Elizabeth would not choose to insult Mary back. If Elizabeth were to insult Mary back, then Mary would probably take offence to the insult, because she is being objectified, thus causing her to insult Elizabeth again. This will obviously create an insult-a-thon that will never end until someone decides to protect themselves to avoid the other’s insult. Therefore, responding to someone else’s objectification by objectifying them will cause more problems, as living beings aren’t objects and those living being will resist being treated as one. So the role of the victim is to protect themselves from being objectified, if possible, help the perpetrator understand why they are objectifying and not to objectify back.

What does this mean for you?

If you are the victim, your role is to protect yourself from any future objectifications and help perpetrators understand why they are objectifying. If you find yourself objectifying, then this means that you have an incorrect perspective on life and you need to change it.

Summary

So to summarize, justice is giving people correct perceptions of life to stop them from objectifying others and to give victims a new perspective to stop themselves from being objectified. The success of a justice system would then depend upon how hard it is to get what people want by objectifying others. Proof of this is that in war torn countries, having a gun in your hand is the fastest way to get money from someone, but in first world countries it is a lot harder to get money with just a gun, as there are greater consequences when one objectifies.