Even though I would like it not to be, the issue of social justice is a very personal one. To begin with, the concept of justice is a moral concept and this is inescapable. We can not talk about justice without reference to the moral perspective that gives value as such. I think it is something that concerns all individuals of this planet independent of where they are located on the political spectrum, and independent of their conditions of origin.
To follow, the concept of justice has a deeper meaning when we analyze the conditions that any individual is born. Without awarding any attributes, we can comfortably say that every human being is born into a situation that is given. No one chooses to be born.
The important thing about this analysis is the understanding that reflects an inescapable reality for every human being. This determinism is important to embrace because it generates great insight into the task of understanding that the conditions of origin strongly determine the processes and this should not be ignored or minimized.
Out of all these considerations relating to the circumstances in which we are born, it is also important to consider at the same level of analysis, the fact that we are born with a body that requires constant input and stimuli of all kinds. In general, these stimuli can be divided into two categories, both of them absolutely necessary for survival:
Food, air, light, water and everything that directly or indirectly contribute to the nutrition of the body.
Impressions(visual, auditory, tactile,etc) and all that contributes as a source of education and knowledge
The body also carries its own determinism, apparently and so far, inexorable. It will grow, develop, decline and eventually die. The body is the biological basis on which the whole human structure rest upon and despite having extraordinary features is limited in many ways and why not say, quite fragile. This fragility seems to be well balanced in our species with an enormous intellectual and emotional capacity, capable of generating all compensatory systems needed to not only survive, but to go much further.
If we can abstract the "mental" from the "physical" we would say that there are not two basic constraints, but three. The environment, body and psyche. Curiously, the design is the same for all three or two if you only consider the structure environment-body. This inherent design or feature is the conditioning we are interested in researching further.
The social is not the sum of bodies, but the sum of psychic attributes and this sum is of enormous diversity. When we speak of a social group we have to carefully contemplate that several individuals besides meeting physically and with their personal identities, they also bring their psychological baggage. For now we can synthesize all psychological phenomena with the word "intention" and we can say that all these bodies together have "needs" and "intentions". A society then structures itself with individuals who are in a similar external situation of determinism, with certain needs imposed by the body and a series of intentions also imposed psychologically which in turn depends on the body.
These intentions are those that can cure epidemics or they also can burn others at the stake. Those are the intentions that will make life a song or a tragedy. Those are the good intentions that could surpass obstacles and create new possibilities, or simply take refuge in fear and darkness to only respond mechanically with the minimum needed to survive.
We all come into this world without the ability to choose and that is how we are born in a place on this planet whom we did not choose, we are born in a city, town or region not chosen, in a cultural context not elected; in a social context not elected. We are born into a family with a name and surname that is imposed, or given, if the word "imposed" does not sound good. In sum, we are born conditioned to the maximum in a temporal and material circumstance within a particular historical moment in which it happens.
So, this body with all restrictions and capabilities will be always immersed in a given environment. Every human being is born with a body genetically conditioned and conditioned socially, culturally and economically. Finally, this body and environment are both inserted in a historical moment that also will determine our development.
When I refer to the word "condition" I do it in the broad sense of the word and once again, avoiding any possible judgments that could be derived by using this word. Descriptively there are no good or bad conditions, just conditions. The optimum is something that would have to be defined later, but for now we try to describe only.
Just as the body has its conditioning, also it has high flexibility and enormous power of adaptation to different external conditions. These features endow it with a "feeling" of power and an ability to break the limits. Not only in trying to get the body to overcome its limitations, but also the tendency to modify it through technology and science.
These conditions that have not been elected, are what determine who I am, without a possibility to say anything about it since I can not even talk until a year or two from being born and therefore my first words will be in the language that corresponds to the region where I was born and the objects that I will perceive and the music I will listen to and everything coming to my senses will be just what the historical cultural and social context will admit.
There is no judgement of any kind in this analysis. I'm just "describing" the basic characteristics of the process of human development. I think it is similar for everyone.
The history of mankind is the history of the effort to break the determinism of the psycho-social structure including the body in this structure. We include it because it is inescapable and because it is necessary as the physical basis for the development of all human potential.
By including it, we include determinism and also include the possibility of breaking it. Obviously the physical laws will dictate the material behavior with inertia, gravity and light dependence of all existing objects as we know them now. This also applies to the body and the social environment.
We admit it, we understand it and almost instantly we are "compelled" to change these conditions and so we do not accept the disease, or limitations imposed by ANY of the physical laws that we discover in our development. We arrived at the XXI century with the ability to fly through the air without having wings, sail the seas without gills, circulating in the earth at speeds unimagined by bodily abilities, conquer disease, extend life and change the body itself. In short, we break with all conditions imposed by physical laws and through these "prosthetics" or extensions of the body we leave behind the limitations.
This extraordinary development or "progress" as it is called traditionally is uneven or off coming to humanity as a whole. Instead, humanity as an entity receives only an infinitesimal part of the whole wealth of possibilities. And so paradoxically we slow down the social change and the rupture with social conditions even though it is evident in all fields of human endeavor that those are the priorities and goals that we have as a human race.
Why does this not happen?
Here we have a good question and deserves a good answer.
Psychological development in terms of breaking constraints as we do with the body and the material world is not very clear for humans in general. Although we are obviously aware that we have an "internal" reality as we feel and think, we love and hate, we enjoy and we get angry, we are capable of tenderness and also rage. We create, invent and sometimes in ecstasy we feel the world of our people is "our" world, even though rarely is something that has permanence or continuity.
It is not very different from our ancestors who longed to fly when watching birds circle the sky, but they did not have at the time the determination nor the interest to build it as a vital project. All that came much later and came with the advent of certain internal understandings that can be defined as "moral understandings".
First we talk about morality, values and subjectivity. All of that has to do with the internal human development despite being externalized in beliefs, laws and precepts which in turn are encoded as cults, religions, societies, associations, etc. The deeper these comprehensions are, the more strength they give to these values and there is greater recognition that we are not an island but a whole. A complete and extraordinary whole.
The body gives us the sense of identity, but it is the psyche that gives us a sense of belonging and complementation. The body moves by its own necessity to survive, thus generating power mechanisms which do not necessarily end in the objectal world but unfortunately they are exercised upon other human beings and that instinctual tendency of the body trap us in the paradoxical "bestiality" which had accompanied our development over thousands of years.
It is interesting that we can now understand it much better than at other times because we are in an unprecedented historic moment. We have taken our material development to the point in which we live globally as a daily reality. This situation of interdependence makes evident that building a social whole is now part of our survival as a species, but has not yet made a psychological reality for the total world population, let alone for those who hold power.
At the root of all qualitative process that breaks the conditions of origin is the internal decision to "jump into the void". Let me explain. When humans decided to fly, they also decided to risk their life and their body until they could stabilize the desire-object structure. When human beings discovered the infinite possibilities of electricity, it was not without going through hard times when many lost their lives until the process of domestication of these forces stabilized.
Fear is based on ignorance or sometimes is the byproduct of ignorance. While most fear, more ignorant and pre-judicious our perception of reality becomes. Fear is an instinctive action of the body to protect it and project it into the future as well. Fear has its "raison d'être" in the context body-environment, but once that context is stabilized, fear has no "raison d'être".
Looking at it in another way, the fear that gives us the darkness disappears with the light of a new day and not because the light magically have the power to heal the fear, but rather because the references are made evident to the senses, allowing analysis and intellectual understanding of the phenomenon. But those ways do not work well in the dark and is where the body responds with the primordial fear.
Fear originates in the body but its reality is actually psychological. It is "registered" psychologically and that is a very important register to understand more precisely since it reveals the basic deficiency we carry when it comes to promoting social development.
We said before that we are born in extreme conditioned situations and an important thing about this analysis is the understanding that reflects an inescapable reality for every human being. By recognizing the original determinism that my life is subject to, I also recognize it is a similar situation for everyone who is born, but uneven in the conditions in which that happens.
This basic inequality of conditions - not conditioning - has consequences that are social, cultural, economic, ethnic and ultimately human.
When being born in given conditions and hard determinism, it is not wise to talk of "freedom" unless we do it relative to its absence. It is precisely the lack of almost total freedom that will characterize the early life of every human being. And in most cases, if there was a free (real or imagined) situation would be hopelessly subjected to the initial conditions of origin. In other words, if it were possible to "move to another culture", or to learn another language, or to expand the horizon of knowledge, it is only possible if we are born in a given material condition that permits such a situation. In simple words, only if we have the economic means to do so.
Human intentions could seize the intentions of others because they are based on fear and ignorance. Or, these intentions can leap over possession and find that flying is not something extraordinary, but the application of knowledge and feeling into something that benefits others. No way to overcome fear if we do not understand that it is an internal phenomenon of possession.
As we will dis-possess ourselves from mental bonds, to the extent that we orient our lives toward others and we dis-cover that giving is much more interesting than to receive, fear recedes and life advances. I say "life" because the absence of fear creates growth and growth leads to life. Life expands thanks to the intentions of those who understand it well and work in that direction.
It is inevitable that in this generating process we reach the conclusion that "the other" is nothing but an extension of "the self". That is the time of rupture with the ancestral fear and when we understand that the moral value of "treat others as you want to be treated" is the beginning of the realization of social justice becoming a reality not by force, by decree or by simply agreeing with the idea, but because of a human need, as human as is to excel and overcome our conditionings of origin.
Social justice is necessary for the evolutionary development of our species. It will become a reality to the extent in which fear of "the other" recedes through the conscious effort or intention in a direction of personal improvement and direct communication with others.
We need to build concrete foundations to support these ideas and beliefs. An economy and a political will are interesting tools to carry this longing effort forward. A personal practice that will reinforce the positive recordings can generate enormous force that accelerates this process.
Every war and effort aimed to gain ownership of the physical and human resources are in the opposite direction to these concepts and they will undoubtedly generate suffering and contradiction, but certainly looking at the evolutionary process of the human being, we can’t help to marvel at the enormous achievements and efforts that have been made and continue to be made for the benefit of humanity as a whole.
These achievements pave the road for future advances in social accomplishments. They become the intentions which open the future and guide the process of social transformation
From a very personal and practical perspective, we can help this process become a reality when we adopt as a behavioral conduct the principle of solidarity that states “When you treat others as you want them to treat you, you liberate yourself”. This way of being in the world of others is morally in tune with the concept of social justice. It is not an idea but rather an action.
Fernando Aránguiz
Portland 2014
Revised and edited on January 2018
