Social justice is justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within society.
We believe social justice is an affirmed concept, believing so is misleading and contributes to the lack of understanding of important social issues.
It is a harrowing reality, that social justice is not achieved yet we give it as guaranteed assuming that our modern society and modern law are contributing to a welfare state.
The welfare state is the one that creates policies and acts to promote the health and development of everyone; by health, we do not mean the absence of disease, it is a state of complete well-being achievable when one is physically, mentally, socially, and environmentally safe.
Thoroughly investigating the current society’s democracy, it emerged that social justice, is known as the equal and fair distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within society; the definition is still arbitrary, and too good to the truth as it has become only a statement part of political philosophy.
Beneath the political philosophy, there is a contrasting reality, which underlines how our social justice is confined to political use only, still, in the 21st century, we are struggling to bring justice for issues related to homophobia, racism, women rights, poverty, and climate change.
Social justice concept in past vs present
Social justice has been around for a long, according to Aristotle justice is giving people what they deserve, this statement is confidential as how deserving one is hard to define.
Aristotle’s solution to equal distribution of goods based to prevent discrimination was to reason about the purpose of the things to be distributed, to make it more clear he argued by using a simple example related to the distribution of flutes, to understand who is more deserving, first it is important to argue about the end result which in this case is a good musical performance, thus making it easy to understand flutes must go to the best flute players.
Aristotle's theory about justice did not stop at materialistic good distribution, he went beyond to understand how political authority should be distributed, and he concluded that politics is about forming good character and only those who are able to cultivate the virtue of citizenship should be allowed to rule.
In today’s time, from a liberalistic perspective, social justice is considered a threat to personal rights, such as property rights, and freedom to decide for their owning, power is in the government's hands.
Liberalists feel they are compelled to sacrifice their freedom so that the government can redistribute income.
What kind of social justice at which we should aim for?
Social justice must be removing all the obstacles which prevent the creation of an even playground, where everyone regardless of their social background, sex, income, sexual orientation, race, or colour, is given equal opportunities to grow to the maximum of their possibilities.
An even society without boundaries will end the struggle to make a difference and will put an end to human rights violations which arose from the fact we think one’s life is more worthy than someone else’s, life is life so it should be protected in each case.
Why it is necessary to act fast
We have ended up creating a society where there is the greatest good is for the richest, and minorities are left alone.
Climate change is the biggest example of how the benefits of few have led to devastating results.
Powerful and developed countries have polluted the most contributing to the high carbon emission, yet the ones who are suffering before anyone else are Indigenous communities and poor countries which due to their geographic positions are most vulnerable to climate change.
The five most affected countries by climate change include Afghanistan, Bangladesh, The Philippines, Haiti and Senegal.
It is evident that lack of human solidarity is going to kill us all, before it is too late, we should leave our self-interest and think about others to save ourselves.
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