Let's Rethink Social Justice

If we Progressives are going to dismantle the unjust systems that dominate our civilization, and not lose our minds in the process, we’ll need to get better at shifting our perspective.

I call myself an “Obama Democrat” not primarily because of Obama’s record as President (though I am prepared to defend it), or because he’s a cool guy (he is, though), or because I’m enamored with the Democratic Party (I’m certainly not). I’m an Obama Democrat because, in my view, Obama governed in a way that recognized and reflected the multitude of interlocking systems that comprise Human civilization, and in a way that reflected a right-sized understanding of the American President’s role in maintaining and/or altering those systems.

In more concrete terms, Obama understood the vast complexity of the systems that are at work at the civilizational level, and he understood how his administration fit into that network of systems. 

Or, in the simplest terms, Obama was good at shifting his perspective.

Billions of hideous events are unfolding in the lives of millions of real people, right now. In Blue states and in Red States, in the United States and abroad, in the global North and in the global South. Those lives matter. We Progressives want that suffering to end. Immediately. For everyone. Period. Because we’re not sociopaths. 

Still, when our perspective is narrow, fixed myopically on the many, many injustices that characterize our microsecond of history, we lose sight of the much broader arc. We forget that we, and everything we’ll ever experience, are part of multiple, interlocking, self-sustaining systems. Systems that operate largely below the level of our day-to-day awareness. Systems that are generally quite slow to change, and that are overflowing with injustices that any one individual is powerless to redress. We often become overwhelmed in the face of that powerlessness — demoralized, hopeless.

In that desperate place, “revolution” — catastrophic destabilization of existing systems — may begin to sound sexy, radical, necessary; even though revolution, successful or not, typically yields for ordinary people unpredictability and suffering that’s worse than the run-of-the-mill oppression that preceded it. This is especially true for marginalized groups, which always bear the brunt of social unrest.

The broad challenge facing those of us who care about reducing human suffering is determining systemic changes that are bold enough to address the dire realities of the day-to-day, but that also reflect our position on the continuum of human progress. We‘ve got to identify the various systems that comprise our civilization and then deliberately, compassionately devise plans for systemic change that result in as little collateral damage as possible. 

“Collateral damage” = real people, real lives, real death. And I can’t stress enough that marginalized folks always bear the brunt of collateral damage. Always.

Central to this project is individuals’ and organizations’ mastery of the art of toggling, consciously and at will, between the narrow perspective of the day-to-day, and the expansive perspective from which our lifetimes, our entire civilization, are mere blinks in the unknowable trajectory of the universe’s history.

Then we can stop responding to our inability to solve the world’s problems with self-flagellation and paralysis — after all, feeling shitty about the state of the world is not the same thing as contributing to the effort to change it. We can reallocate the time and energy we’ve been spending lamenting the state of the world on social media, or laying in bed worrying about this week’s news cycle. We can reclaim the mental space we need to identify deep within ourselves the unique gift we can bring to the fight for Justice. We can reclaim our agency. We can use our time, our lives, in a way that fruitfully reflects our small role in the drama of human progress.

Let’s try that.