No Justice, No Peace
There was never, is not, and never will be any justice or peace. All conceptions of justice are incoherent and all times are terrible. Justice requires human equality, which is an impossibility that precludes human uniqueness.
“All humans are equal.” First, what is a human? This isn’t obvious. Are fetuses humans? Are skeletons humans? Is humanity dichotomous or continuous? When, if ever, does a corpse lose its humanity? Was Hitler less human than Gandhi? All of this is up to you. After you decide what “human” means, you must identify how humans are equal. What equalizes them?
You may say humans are equal because they are equally human. This is trivially true. There is no content to this claim because it merely asserts that the members of a category are categorized as members of that category, as “human” as opposed to “inhuman.” You settle on a binary definition of “human,” classify things accordingly, and conclude that the classified things are equalized simply by your application of a binary definition. “Humans are equal because they are equally human” amounts to “humans are human.” How couldn’t they be? You just defined them as such! The question is not whether things classified as human are equally classified as human. That would be stupid. Of course, they are! The question is how the members of your category “human” are equal. In what particular way are humans equal? Only the unserious respond “because they are human” for this non-answer avoids the question entirely.
For the members of a binary category “human” to be equal in a particular way, there must exist some identifiable quality that is proportionate to all of them. When you say that two race car drivers are equally fast, you mean that the speed with which they drive is proportionate. Driver 1’s 100mph = Driver 2’s 100mph. The quality of speed is proportionally exhibited by both. If Driver 2’s speed is actually 150mph, then the drivers’ speeds would be disproportionate. The drivers would not be equalized by speed.
What is the quality that you believe is proportionately exhibited across all the members of your category “human”? Answers to this question must be expressible in the form “humans are equalized by (proportionately exhibited quality).” What is this quality? If you claim humans are equal, you must be able to identify one or multiple such qualities otherwise your claim is baseless. So, what is it? Are all humans proportionally…funny? brave? compassionate? smart? skilled? creative?
There is no answer. There is no quality that is proportionally exhibited by all humans because specific humans are unique. No two actual humans have identical histories, life experiences, or genetics. All humans are born with unique DNA in singular, unreplicable circumstances.
If all humans were equally funny, no one would be uniquely (i.e., distinctly) funny. One who is uniquely funny must be funnier than others to be uniquely funny, to stand out as a “funny person.” Human uniqueness demands that humans be able to be better or worse, more or less, in all actually realizable ways. Uniqueness entails inequality because it necessitates that all the qualities that make people unique be disproportionately exhibited across the population (which they are).
Justice is impossible because it requires proportionality across offenders and between offenders and offended. In other words, it hangs on an indefensible notion of human equality. No two offenders have equal genetics, parents, life experiences, skills, etc. If no two offenders are equal, if every human is unique, then no one punishment can be justly applied to any two people. No two actual offenses are proportionately offensive because no two specific offenders are equal. Two murderers can both be said to have “committed murder,” but no two actual murders are equal because no two actual victims or murderers are. Every act of murder, actual victim, and actual murderer is unique because every human is.
Even if a “justice system” is perfectly fair, meaning that it enforces the same rules for everyone regardless of anyone’s unique circumstances, it would not treat people equally. In fact, all fair systems necessarily treat people unequally.
If no two people are equal, if everyone is unique, all standardized tests — of competence, intelligence, responsibility, or any other quality — treat people unequally. Tests can be standardized, meaning they can be made equal, but human testers cannot! All actually taken tests treat people unequally because no two people are equal before, during, or after they take a fairly judged, or standardized, test. Besides, what could possibly be the purpose of testing equal people? What use would tests, or comparisons of any sort, have if everyone were the same?
Unequally applied justice is no justice at all. All actual “justice systems” are unequally just in practice because they distribute rewards and punishments to unequal people. Systems of punishment can only be fair, never just. They can only apply the same rules to necessarily unequal people with more or less bias.
Hope for justice should be abandoned the moment human uniqueness is recognized for the two are mutually exclusive. The belief that justice is possible leads to obnoxious self-righteousness and moralism, purposeless guilt and shame, the setting of unrealizable political goals bound to disappoint, and, worst of all, an anti-individualistic attitude that stifles creativity by ignoring and suppressing uniqueness.
There can be no justice or peace, only fairness and uniqueness.
And, anyways, peace sounds boring as hell.
Author’s note: The ideas presented here are indebted to Walter Kaufmann’s brilliant 1973 book Without Guilt and Justice: From Decidophobia to Autonomy. I can’t recommend this enough, especially if you have not read many, or any, philosophy books.