We seem to be having a lot of injustices around us. When we open the newspaper, see the news on TV, or open an internet news website, there seems to be disasters, injustices, atrocities, human rights abuses everywhere. It is not uncommon for people to think that the proportion of sinful people in the world is increasing daily. Many conclude that mankind is getting ethically/morally decadent and worse. Many long for the ideal world where there would be no injustice and everything is just “perfect”.
Firstly, is this “ideal world” really ideal? For once, the worst feature of that world will be the incredible boredom caused by its predictability. In that kind of world, the causes and effects are directly linked. You do a good thing, you are rewarded. Do a bad thing and get punished, and so on. Now seriously, wouldn’t we all long for a little bit of uncertainty so that we can display a mental resilience, courage and determination? Besides, where is room for freewill, which makes life so interesting, in that kind of a world.
Secondly, is the world we live in really so bad? The news from papers, TV channels, and internet sites does show a lot of negative stuff. But, by definition, what media reports is the exception, not the rule. They will report the out of the ordinary, the items that are interesting, and the ones the general population would take time to read. So what one reads in the newspapers is not the general societal trends, these are the exceptions. Mankind should be worried when the newspapers report mostly great stuff, because that basically implies that that has become more eye-catching and thus has become the exception which, in turn, implies the negative stuff has become common place.
Besides, I genuinely feel that justice is served on “average” in our world. For example, if you take any terrorist attack, it is true that many innocent people are killed. But if you consider the probabilities even in such a bad situation, the probability that a given innocent man will die in any such attack is really low and the probability that the terrorist will die is relatively really high. In our world, you can show exceptions to any trends. But in general, it is highly unlikely that a man who works really hard consistently despite repeated failures will end up as a failure or a man relying only on luck becomes the best. Injustice does exist in isolated incidents or pertaining to a given individual. But if you take a large enough sample, in my analysis, we will find that justice is served (a lot) more often than not. Besides, these isolated incidents of injustices are necessary to maintain freewill and interest in life.
I know people can point out that I should try convincing a disaster-struck good man of this stuff. I probably cannot. I only think that we have “greater chance” of enjoying life, and not killed/crippled in attacks/accidents if we play our probabilities right. It is not certain, it is only probable.
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