The World Isn't Fair. Any Fairness You Stumble Across Is There Because Someone Put It There.

At every moment in history, all human groups and institutions have been messed up to some degree. One of the marvelous things about human beings is that, despite having no supernatural essence or powers, they have a moral compass within them that allows them to judge groups and institutions as deficient in justice.

There is a fork in the road when confronting injustice. One path is the path of anger. Occasionally this works: after seeing how deeply you feel about an unfairness, the perpetrator of that unfairness might back down and rethink. And sometimes it may be that an institution needs to be torn down because its injustice is great and irredeemable.

The path of anger is not one to be undertaken lightly. Many will react to your anger with anger of their own rather than with the reaction you want. And when you succeed at intimidation that leads to an immediate result you consider fairer, it can lead to long-term resentment that can cause trouble in the future.

The other path is the path of reconstruction and fixing. The path of reconstruction and fixing and works best when you emphasize justice for others as much as or more than justice for you. Often, only justice for others is at issue; you are called on to put in great effort to make it possible for an institution to deliver justice in a particular instance. In other cases, you are trying to improve rules, processes and execution to achieve more justice for everyone, including yourself.

The turn toward the path of reconstruction and fixing comes with saying “How can I make things better?” rather than focusing on “How could they do this?”

Justice is water in a glass that is both half-full and half-empty. The half-emptiness hits us like a brick. Seeing the half-fullness requires a shift in perspective toward gratitude that due to those who have gone before us, and those around us now, there is occasionally some justice in the world. When we feel gratitude for the portion of justice that is there, it provides inspiration for us to do our part to contribute to the justice in the world and improve things—without too quickly deciding to tear down the structures that may stand between us and a situation of even greater injustice.

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