I haven't completely formulated my thoughts on this, just something I've been pondering and open to having a conversation about... Right now many of us seek justice under the parameters of how justice has been defined for us in the past, both individually and through the institutions designed to uphold justice. As we do this, we are very critical of those same institutions and their conceptualizations of justice. Is it possible to circumvent this current state? Can we collectively design a more inclusive concept of justice and see it through, without resorting to vigilantism? What are the limits? Where can we actually see this play out? Can we seek justice under a system with a very unjust legal structure? These questions have profound implications on everything from community development all the way to navigating workplace cultural interventions (like OD and DEI) vs. compliance.
I think the key words of what you wrote is 'collectively design (and I might posit imagine) a more inclusive concept of justice'. If you build a inclusive process to do that collective imagining and design, you should not end up in a vigilante place. That collective imagining should answer all the questions in your fourth paragraph, including how to shift or change the existing structure. This is why I have been using strategic foresight and futures in my climate work. It is a way to create those inclusive processes. Its not a perfect field and needs its own challenging as well. Idealistic I know.
This is why way back in 2005 a group of black and indigenous disabled queer artists developed the 10 principles of disability justice as a framework to build outside of the current views and system. That collective imagining and doing is happening... Just unseen and underappreciated. I often think of how to grow that movement authentically
I’ve thought A LOT about justice for many years now and have come to the conclusion in the past week that if we want to truly break the cycle of violence, we have to stop calling for justice. Justice does not serve humanity
I don't think justice is possible under capitalism. I think we should try to seek something that approximately approaches justice, but it's not possible to arrive there currently. This means that, in the context of corporate DEI, I'm engaging in harm reduction. And I'm 1000% OK with that. Those who seek to overthrow capitalism and imagine a different future -- I support them and hope they succeed. But that's not the work I'm doing, and I think it *can* be dangerous to muddle the two.
I honestly feel it depends on deep the analysis is or has to be or ends up being. For me, I love complexity and oblique discussions; something I’ve come to understand; albeit I guess not so much in a past previously naive context), is that it is a hard and onerous process of finding those that are intellectually capable of a depth of such a discussion, whether they’re interested and engaged, have the requisite foresight and self awareness to know the nuance and speak to it; even acknowledging their perhaps dearth of knowledge or experience within a domain; and yet still contribute in a meaningful way with that particular subject matter. And then all of that with also hopefully, emotionally intelligence! Or a kind spacious forebearance for when it may be of deep cultural pain and/anguish; not holding a cost for that forebearance to the other party for such an interaction; somewhat culturally unacceptable given the nature of the ever..consuming consumerism. And on that note, my brain went straight to the contemporary ontological and epistemological challenge today (not of the past, more so a deadbrained modern fascination with it) is the concept of freedom and free will, and determinism. Justice being derived from freedom.
I ponder this a lot as well. I love adrienne maree brown's book We Will Not Cancel Us, and this year I also read Truth and Repair as well as Anger and Forgiveness, all of which have helped me receive more clarity. I think restorative and transformative justice projects and movements are leading the way, even if they are limited and imperfect right now.
Farzin Farzad make compassion the ‘norm’… if a greater percentage of society practiced compassion as the societal norm, than the minorities would be brought back into place, but in a very different way, instead of coercion or exclusion as seems to be the case right now - that seems far fetched, I know, but I don’t think anything’s impossible
We need a full system overhaul… not sure how but this whole clusterf is unsustainable
Thank you all for these incredible thoughts